The CoBra was a Romanian ZX Spectrum-compatible computer designed in Brașov in 1986, with a CP/M mode if you added a floppy controller.
Why it matters
The team at ITCI couldn’t buy a Sinclair ULA, so they rebuilt its job from discrete TTL logic and went further than the machine they were copying: 64 KB of RAM and a floppy interface that could boot CP/M. About 1,000 official units went to factories, hospitals and accounting offices between 1988 and 1990, because private ownership of computers was not allowed. A black market in student-built copies grew up around it, and at the 1988 România 88 exhibition in Moscow the display machine was reportedly stripped of its chips overnight.
What to check before you buy
- Real factory CoBras are very rare, so be wary of anything sold as one without photos and provenance.
- Ask whether it is an official ITCI unit or a student-built copy; they differ a lot inside.
- Check the 4116 RAM chips and the power rails; the original design depends on a correct start-up sequence.
- If you want to run CP/M, look for the floppy daughter board and the extra eight keys.
- Modern replica boards are an easier way to own one, and the KiCad files are on GitHub.
