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Raw Blame History

title, categories, types, origins, years, cpus, params

title

categories

types

origins

years

cpus

params

Hobbit

Computers

Professional Computer

Russia

1990

UA800

name

company

company_name

specs

oc_id

source

Hobbit

/companies/hobbit

HOBBIT

label	value
NAME	Hobbit

label	value
MANUFACTURER	Hobbit

label	value
TYPE	Professional Computer

label	value
ORIGIN	Russia

label	value
YEAR	1990

label	value
BUILT IN LANGUAGE	Sinclair BASIC

label	value
KEYBOARD	Full stroke 88 keys with function keys and numeric keypad. 33 reprogrammable keys, supports cyrillic/roman/arabic alphabets

label	value
CPU	UA800 (Russian Z80A clone)

label	value
SPEED	3.58 MHz

label	value
RAM	64 Kb (could be switched in 48 Kb mode)

label	value
VRAM	6.5 Kb

label	value
ROM	16 Kb

label	value
TEXT MODES	32 chars. x 24 lines (80 x 24 in CP/M mode)

label	value
GRAPHIC MODES	256 x 192 dots

label	value
COLORS	16

label	value
I/O PORTS	System bus, Parallel, Serial RS232, 3 joystick ports (1 x Kepston, 2 x Sinclair), socket for language ROMs, TV out, TTL monitor out

label	value
BUILT IN MEDIA	None

label	value
OS	BETA (CP/M clone), network drivers (100 Kbaud)

label	value
POWER SUPPLY	External power supply unit - 5v, 1.5A, 220-240v

label	value
PERIPHERALS	Up to 4 5.25'' FDD, tape recorder, printer, joystick, lightpen, mouse, HDD with special patch, later version came with built in 3,5'' FDD

label	value
PRICE	About $170 equivalent

955

url	date
https://web.archive.org/web/20230324124846/http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=955	2023-03-24

Many Spectrum clones were designed and manufactured in the Soviet Union or Russia, among them Spektr 48, Moskva, Robik and Sprinter. Some of them greatly surpassed the features of the original Sinclair Spectrum.

The Hobbit was one of the most famous Speccy clones. It was a quite powerful system, mainly used in education, and also known in some Western European countries.

Like in many Eastern clones, the processor was a Russian version of the Z80A (UA800). However, the Hobbit had several powerful additional features: CP/M mode, Shadow mode allowing numerous BASIC extensions, various EEPROM configurations with additional languages like LOGO, Pascal, C or FORTH, network capabilities...

The early version of the Hobbit was a very limited edition and stoped being manufactured around early 1990. But at that time, another manufacturer called InterCompex changed it into the later version with numeric keypad and more features.

The Rage Hard magazine wrote about the Hobbit: "The Hobbit is a Soviet Spectrum clone that does everything Uncle Clive built into the original Speccy, plus lot of the things he forgot..." :-)

After switching on the Hobbit, you could see classic Sinclair screen, but in the Russian Cyrillic language. Furthermore, there was a special key allowing the user to switch between the Cyrillic or Latin alphabets.

One of the most amazing features was something like the early RAID system. In a Hobbit network, if some Hobbit in the network crashed during work, the "master" Hobbit could recover files and data from it.

Thanks to Vladimir Kopacek for information and Dimitri Kokken for the picture

We need more info about this computer ! If you designed, used, or have more info about this system, please send us pictures or anything you might find useful.

3.6 KiB Raw Blame History

3.6 KiB

Raw Blame History