The EC on the pictures including all the peripherals was the demonstration machine in our office. The big station to the right of the computer is the 30MB harddisc station with built-in 5.25" fdd. On top of the Cub RGB monitor there is a Cumana 3.5" double-disk-drive. This harddisc is the one which survived and once it is back in operation (power supply) I will present it to you in detailed pictures.

The story about the cyrilic cartridge is a special one. Although I will give you the full story later I can tell you, that we had to do it in less than 5 months. In early summer 1989 there was a computer exhibition (or a technical exhibition) in Budapest. Vilmos and we took part with our products and a company called Olympiatrade contacted us there, asking us about the possibility of exporting the EC to the states of the former USSR. They brought a delegation of the Kazakh ministry of education to us and these people were looking for school computers for computer technical education. They were very fond of the Enterprise, especially as one computer with green monitor was only around DEM 500 instead of appr DEM 2700 for an IBM compatible XT clone from far east at that time.
 
We invited the delegation to Munich (they came in autumn 1989), not having any russian version of the machines ready. Work on the cirillic cartridge started immediately. As there was no time to make a new cartridge pcb, we took the already existing three slot pcb from Hungary. Vilmos made a first version of the cyrillic keyboard/printer driver and self-adhesive stickers for the keyboard have been designed. The demonstration machines were finished the night before the minister arrived in Munich (I remember, that Vilmos and I went home from the office around 04:00am, just to sleep an hour or two and go back again to welcome the delegation). I have lots of pictures from that time but there was no time to scan them yet.
 
The delegation was impressed, but asked for additional Kazakh characters (you can see them in the first keyboard-row on the pictures). We promised to be able to do that and therefore they signed a contract for two demonstration networks for Almaty. Installation should be soon (i.d.within 1989). We really had to do our utmost, to be able to get ready till then. The hardware (standard unmodified machines ex stock munich) were sent immediately by airfreight and Vilmos and I went to Almaty by the end of november, were we stayed till the 23rd, december. The software for the first two networks got ready somewhere on the 17th/18th, december and we tested the computers and the networks in our hotel rooms, were we had our "office" or "laboratory". We got back on the 23rd/24th of december, but our plane was delayed and there was no flight back from moscow to Budapest on the 24th anymore. We had to spend christmas on moscow airport and flew back to Budapest on the 25th, were I had my car.
 
As you already discovered, the Cyrillic roms have some specialities:
- We had to uppercase all reachable messages and error codes because of the missing smaller latin characters in cyrillic-mode.
- We decided to take version number 2.2 for all roms of the machines, just to have separate versions for the cyrillic machines
- The ZZZIP-compiler was only on the demonstration cartridges for Munich. The computers in Almaty had only the two-slotted cartridge with BASIC 2.2 and the PUPIL/TEACHER-ROM inside.
- EXOS137 and EXOS 138 are the EXOS versions for school number 137 and school number 138 (schools in Almaty had no names, but only a number at that time). These two schools got the demonstration networks. I cannot tell you the reason for these special EXOS roms anymore.
 
All the strange other things (Help-Screens, ...) are simply a result of the unbelievable short time we had to invent that all. We had nothing in June/July and two working computer networks with cyrillic/kazakh keyboard, printer driver, word processor in december of the same year. And this all happened appr. 4950 km away from Munich/Budapest in a time, were Perestroika and Glasnost were just 4 years old. There was no internet nor email at that time and communication was done by telex/teletex, by fax or by phone. There were no direct flights, applying for a visa took appr 4 weeks and everything was more than complicated - a real adventure .

we were in Moscow in March 1990 to talk about the possible manufacturing of the EC computers in the USSR (we were talking to ASI Computers, a far-east/russian joint venture at that time). And we met Alexander Perewostschikov (sorry for any misspelling) from Technika Molodeschi. This magazine got a shipment of computers, programs, printers and monitors from us a little bit later. The people from Olympiatrade managed all the appointments in Moscow and organized shipments and payments.
 
At these times it was almost impossible to sell anything to these countries against hard currency. Everything was done with barter contracts, i.e. goods against goods. Companies like EC GmbH always needed a man-in-the-middle who officially did the deal in both directions. Fx. Dhezgazkhan payed for their computers with copper. They delivered the copper, we delivered the computers. As we were not in a position to sell copper on the stock market by ourselves, Olympiatrade was managing everything around that and we received the money from them.

Fx. Dhezgazkhan payed for their computers with copper. They delivered the copper, we delivered the computers

But because the HELP list illegally closed, the ZZZIP don't displayed. For solve this problem HELP items added fot ZZZIP in the CIRIL ROM.

Great story Did the Kazakh story end here, or the story continued ?