This mini forum is intended to provide a simple means of discussion about the Ice-Felix HC-85 computer. If you want to share your own experience or memories, or add relevant information about this system: post a message!

The price was 14.000, that$s mean 1120$ in that times

Actually the best Romanian Spectrum clone was Cobra, the computer designed and built at ITC Brasov. It was able to run both Basic and CP/M and used only cheap integrated circuits which were much easier to be found by enthusiasts who wanted to build their own computer.
Actually a whole black market industry existed which reused defective motherboards dumped by the factory and chips imported from DDR or URSS. I am quite proud to say that I assembled a few systems myself...

I''d like to add that the keyboard was really low quality . It had a couple of steel blades that were kept apart when the key was not pressed. When you pressed the key a plastic spacer $ped down and the springs would come together and close the circuit. Well, the blades used to get stuck apart and not touch even if you pressed the key. This used to happen very often.

Between the HC-85 and HC-91 weren't major aspect differences. But the mainboard is completely different at these two computers. HC-85 had a MMN-80 CPU, eight ROM chips... totally more than 50 chips, more than the HC-91. The performance was the same. The computers from ICE Felix were the best roumanian Spectrum clones. They give no errors, comparative with their rivals, CIP, JET, etc. We can still find HC-85, HC-91, CIP-03 , sometimes JET for sale, at second hand, in Roumania, for a very low price: about 50.000 lei (1,6 USD). CIP-04 and HC-2000 are very rare models. There are a few people who had such wonderful computers, but they will never sell them! After 50..100 years, I think these rare computers (eventually working) will cost ten times their weight in gold!

Actually, the image represent a HC-90, a latter model; the first one was even more poor quality in manufacture and had some significant differences in exterior design. However, it was identical with the HC-90, shown here.