[xrd]

I recently read the book "Gaming Behind the Iron Curtain." It's about the former Soviet satellite states trying to play video games inside the Czech Republicb in the late 80s. They had to smuggle in computers hidden inside suitcases from England. This feels almost like the same thing.

I'm stuck in thinking that someone smart could break apart these CPAP machines and bring in necessary parts, then find other parts from China and hand carry those in. Then reassemble them inside Vietnam. A price differential of $1500 seems like an interesting arbitrage opportunity, maybe better than drug dealing. And there aren't chip sniffing dogs in the airport.

What a nightmare.

[stuaxo]

Sounds like the zx spectrum was almost built perfectly for that.

[bitwize]

Russians have a significant presence on the ZX Spectrum game and demo scene. There may be something to this.

[stevekemp]

There were several similar Z80-based systems made at the time, locally, such as the Hobbit:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobbit_(computer)

[bitwize]

But to clone the Speccy they first had to obtain one (or a few) :)