1983 · Magazine Self-Build Computer · Work 985 of 1,871
A child's room in a tower block in New Belgrade on a snowy night in late December, on a desk a bare brown circuit board about thirty centimetres wide with a row of black integrated circuits and a cream-white keyboard with a broad space bar, every key plain, smooth and unmarked, a cable to a small portable black-and-white television showing coarse white blocks on grey, a soldering iron cooling in its coiled stand, a strip of dark foam holding spare black integrated circuits, a small hand resting on the keys from the lower edge of the frame, through the window snow falling past rows of lit windows in tall concrete blocks.
What it was used for
A self-build computer from Yugoslavia. Voja Antonić designed it; in 1983 the magazine Galaksija published, in the special issue "Računari u vašoj kući" (Computers in your home), the circuit diagram, assembly instructions, sources for parts, mail-order addresses for kits and ways to order components legally from abroad. Editor-in-chief Jova Regasek put Dejan Ristanović in charge of the project. Z80A, 4 KB EPROM. From reader feedback, over 8,000 people across Yugoslavia built one (Computer History Museum).
What was new
The design needed no video chip of its own: Antonić had the Z80A generate the 64 × 48 block graphics itself, because a video controller would have cost too much. This was not cleverness for its own sake. Per Tribune, Yugoslavia restricted imports of any item costing more than 50 Deutschmarks, and a ready-made home computer cost many times an average monthly wage. The barb lies in the success: Antonić had reckoned on at most 50 hard-core hobbyists. The normal print run of 30,000 grew to 120,000 copies, Regasek needed four reprints, and over 8,000 readers reported a finished machine.
What the sources leave open: The 50-Deutschmark import limit appears only in the Tribune account; no official Yugoslav source for it was found. The figure of over 8,000 machines rests on reader feedback (CHM: "according to feedback"; Tribune: letters to the magazine), not on production or sales records. Neither checked source gives a price.