First, a little history.
A home computer is a cheaper and simpler computer compared to a professional one. Home computers became widespread in the world (including the USSR) in the 80s.
The first serial home computer in the USSR appeared in 1985 – Elektronika BK-0010. BK – is a “household computer”.
The second version was released in 1990 – “BK-0011”.
At the same time, enthusiasts – electronics engineers were developing their own computers.
The first one – “Micro-80” was published in the magazine Radio in 1983. It was a bit unlucky – it had scarce parts.
Three years later – “Radio 86RK”. This computer became much more widespread. Users themselves began to develop programs. But both of these computers had a significant drawback – they did not have graphics.
Storage media for home computer – audio cassette (Unsplash License)
The third version of home-made computers was Orion-128. It already had graphics and a much larger memory capacity.
At the end of the 80s, home computers in the USSR were already being manufactured industrially in a variety of formats. For example, “Sura”, “Neuron”, “Mikrosha”.
ZX Spectrum computers and those compatible with it were widely distributed. They were produced both in series and by amateurs. Here there was a mass of various software and this gave them a huge advantage.
And now what I remember and what I personally observed.
We only heard about computers in the late 80s. We already had computer science lessons at school, but there were no computers. We only saw them in pictures in textbooks. At the end of the 11th grade, we were given “practice” in working on computers at our pedagogical institute. There were Yamaha computers there. And not just computers – they were connected to a local network. There were no hard drives, but you could use a floppy disk on the teacher’s computer. A three-inch one. And transfer programs to all the computers over the network. I still remember the delight of all this.
Three-inch floppy disk (Unsplash License)
There were rumors about the Internet – we didn’t see it. I remember, around 1995, one friend told me about his friend: “Imagine what kind of person he is. He has his own page on the Internet!” It sounded about the same as someone would say to me now: “I personally know Steve Jobs!”
In the late 90s, the Internet was brought to the institute.
Already at the institute, my friends and I assembled Orions for ourselves. And we got home computers. But that’s a separate story.
Sources:
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%94%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%B0%D1%88%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B9_%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%BF%D1%8C%D1%8E%D1%82%D0%B5%D1%80