“What was the most weird computer you have ever used?”

(Answer requested by Chris Fisher)

Hmmm. Several come to mind.

There were a series of early Soviet-era PC clones I saw in Russia and Hungary in the early 90’s, shortly before the USSR dissolved. Many of the computers were in the “close but no cigar” category, superficially emulating Western PCs (IBMs, Apples, Commodores, Ataris…), but not really matching them.

One exception was a Moscow-based clone maker. He wanted to prove his computer’s compatibility with US standards, so he ran a Western game on it for me. But the American game he chose to show me — in Moscow, maybe 2 miles from the Kremlin, with the Cold War still cooking — was Raid Over Moscow, premised on a nuclear war between the US and USSR, with the main action taking place more or less over the very spot I was standing. That was slightly surreal.

As for the weirdest computer hardware, that would probably be getting to hold one the only two extant, hand-wired prototypes of the original IBM PC: a kinda messy, wire-wrapped, mainboard.

IBM kept one prototype for its hardware manufacturing; Microsoft got the other copy, for software development.

I don’t have my own photo, but the above (found online) is supposedly the back of that same prototype mainboard — although it looks cleaner than I remember. 🙂

It was an awesome artifact to hold: Progenitor of all Intel-based PCs, ever; and the hardware foundation of all Microsoft’s fortunes.

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