My son was unpacking the printer, and I needed to take a shower. I asked him to wait until I returned, looked at him in disbelief and then a memory came to my mind.
Back in 1989, when no one had any computers or the Internet, my father brought home a Soviet computer Iskra 1030M. For an eight year old, it looked fantastic. I already had a ZX Spectrum, but in comparison with Iskra, it seemed like a toy. And this car is serious. A real personal computer! And there is no need to wait ten minutes for the game to load from the tape recorder (and unsuccessfully every other time). There's a hard drive here! And a floppy drive!
Iskra had a Euro-plug, and at that time it was difficult to imagine a Euro-socket in a Soviet house. Father scratched the back of his head and said that he would bring the adapter tomorrow and now go to bed. God, what a torment when you are about to touch space and here you have to wait again. All day!
Arriving from school, I sat down opposite Iskra. He looked at her mesmerized, dreamed of what was in her. Surely cool games. Lode runner should definitely be! I looked and I looked. Long. Minutes 15. And then a brilliant idea came to my mind. Why she didn't come to dad is not clear. We need to take an extension cord and dig bigger holes in it. Then the socket will fit. I went to the kitchen, took a kitchen knife, and found a purple extension cord with soft rubber sockets in the closet. And he began to pick bigger holes.
Half an hour later, it became clear that I would be picking until the evening. And then dad will come. I ought to think of something else. It is necessary to somehow deliver the current from the holes from the socket to the ends of the plug. They must be connected somehow. Everything seems to be simple. But with what? Naturally wiring! I went to the closet, took a good wire there, came back, cut off two pieces of 10 cm with a knife, cleaned the ends (my father had already taught me). I wrapped one pin of the plug with one wire, and the other with a second. And put them in an extension cord.
A spark buzzed, and the screen began to glow. It was a triumph lasting three seconds. Three seconds later, something banged somewhere, the screen went out, everything calmed down and began to smell slightly burnt. What happened? Why does not it work?
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My father put Spark in a box and took it back to work. It was repaired there for about a year, in those years it was not so easy to order and rearrange the power supply, which obviously burned out in this fragile car. And for this year I had to return to my ZX Spectrum and continue to train my patience by listening to the noise of the tape recorder.