This article describes the history of computer hardware in Bulgaria. At its peak, Bulgaria supplied 40% of the computers in the socialist economic union COMECON. The

electronics industry The electronics industry is the economic sector that produces electronic devices. It emerged in the 20th century and is today one of the largest global industries. Contemporary society uses a vast array of electronic devices built-in automated or ...

employed 300,000 workers, and it generated 8 billion rubles a year. Since the democratic changes in 1989 and the subsequent chaotic political and economic conditions, the once blooming Bulgarian computer industry almost completely disintegrated.

Computer models

In the 1980s,

Bulgaria Bulgaria (; bg, България, Bǎlgariya), officially the Republic of Bulgaria,, ) is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern flank of the Balkans, and is bordered by Romania to the north, Serbia and North Macedo ...

manufactured computers according to an agreement within the

COMECON The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (, ; English abbreviation COMECON, CMEA, CEMA, or CAME) was an economic organization from 1949 to 1991 under the leadership of the Soviet Union that comprised the countries of the Eastern Bloc#List of s ...

Mainframes

IZOT series and

ES EVM The ES EVM (russian: Единая система электронных вычислительных машин (ЕС ЭВМ), translit=Yedinaya sistema electronnykh vytchislitel'nykh mashin (ES EVM), "Unified System of Electronic Computers"), o ...

series (abbreviation from Edinnaya Sistema Elektronno Vichislitelnih Machin, or Unified Computer System — created in 1969 by USSR, Bulgaria, Hungary, GDR, Poland and Czechoslovakia).

Personal computers

* IMKO, Pravetz-82/8M/8A/8E/8C — an 8-bit machine (Apple II clones), based on Bulgarian-made

6502 The MOS Technology 6502 (typically pronounced "sixty-five-oh-two" or "six-five-oh-two") William Mensch and the moderator both pronounce the 6502 microprocessor as ''"sixty-five-oh-two"''. is an 8-bit microprocessor that was designed by a small te ...

variants, Pravetz-16/16A/16H/286 (16-bit) — IBM PC clones based on i8088(V20)/286. * IZOT 1030 — based on East German-made

U880 The U880 is an 8-bit microprocessor that was manufactured by VEB Mikroelektronik "Karl Marx" Erfurt (abbreviated as MME; part of Kombinat Mikroelektronik Erfurt) in the German Democratic Republic. Production of the U880 started in 1980 at VEB ...

(a Z80A clone), IZOT 1036C -IBM PC compatible based on i8086, IZOT 1037C - IBM PC/XT clone based on i8088, For example, the Pravetz-8M featured two processors (primary: Bulgarian-made clone of

, designated SM630 at 1.018 MHz, secondary: Z80A at 4 MHz), 64 KB DRAM and 16 KB EPROM.

Production facilities

The largest computer factory was some from

Sofia Sofia ( ; bg, София, Sofiya, ) is the capital and largest city of Bulgaria. It is situated in the Sofia Valley at the foot of the Vitosha mountain in the western parts of the country. The city is built west of the Iskar river, and h ...

, in Pravetz. Another big facility was the plant "Electronika" in Sofia. Smaller plants throughout the country produced monitors and peripherals, notably DZU (''Diskovi Zapametyavashti Ustroistva'' — Disk Memory Devices) —

Stara Zagora Stara Zagora ( bg, Стара Загора, ) is the sixth-largest city in Bulgaria, and the administrative capital of the homonymous Stara Zagora Province. Name The name comes from the Slavic root ''star'' ("old") and the name of the medieva ...

made hard disks for mainframes and personal computers.

References

{{Reflist, 30em

External links