As a matter of fact, the "Oric Nova 64" was officialy adopted by the federal government in Yugoslavia as the main educational-purpose computer in schools (both primary and secondary) in 1986., after several years of heavy discussions about which computer should be the most appropriate one for that use.
It was assembled in Yugoslavia, by "Avtotehna" - Ljubljana, out of parts imported from Oric directly, under exclusive licence (only the label "Oric Nova 64" was printed in Yugoslavia). Each and every school had to have "Nova 64" for educational purposes, but almost noone has ever really worked on them. In 1988. most of the schools have acquired more powerful computers for computer science education (some of them even purchased PC clones) independently from the government regulations, so "Nova 64" was slowly but surely pushed away. To say nothing about strangeness of such computer in the country where "Commodore 64"s and "Spectrum 48"s ruled for years then...
All these informations can be checked out in Yugoslav computer magazines of that time, primarily in "Moj Mikro" (published in Slovenia).
I myself have graduated from the computer science high school in 1989., but never put my hands on "Nova 64"''s keyboard - those computers were kept in locked clasroom, in order to prevent anyone touching that expensive, but completely useless machine in time when my school has already purchased 32 PC clones and installed them in a classroom with unrestricted access (unlike the classroom equipped with "Nova 64"s)... Only once have I seen a couple of first-year students working on "Nova"s, but under strict supervision of three (!) teachers, while my (senior) class was making programs in Fortran 77 on those PCs next door completely unsupervised... |
