Unix in East Germany (GDR) (1990)

I visited a university supercomputer centre in Berlin that had been a merger of East and West Berlin facilities in about 1999. In the lobby they had a PDP-11 right next to the Eastern Bloc clone with its Cyrillic writing.

I probably have some old school photos somewhere.

Flea markets in East Germany even now are fascinating for classic tech, classic tech books, and many other things. Even as simple as going to one at Mauerpark or the Karlshorst race track, you will see working examples of classic DDR tech that you can buy and explore. Just like people explore classic macs, it's as interesting to see.

I want some of those unbreakable beer glasses from the GDR

> And here are we by our current problem: What are our directions for our research? Formerly, we were behind double walls -- one we built ourselves and the second by the West (eg. COCOM) -- but even this is crumbling. Our catching-up of the last years came from a sense of emergency, and we learnt our trade through it. Now we need security for our future research which will give us the freedom to purchase new hard- and software, participate in international conferences, connect to networks and update our literature.

> Whether this comes through cooperative projects with other institutions, through industrial research or however, is almos irrelevant to us -- we want, as far as possible, to determine our own future and not wait until it comes to us from `above'.

What happened next?