Mikroszámítógép Magazin
Hungary before 1990, published by the John von Neumann Computer Science Society
Mikroszámítógép Magazin ran from 1984, published by the John von Neumann Computer Science Society with the state computing institute. It is the first pre-transition Hungarian title in this library, and the machine landscape it describes — with the Enterprise and the domestic Primo in its top six — vanishes entirely from the Hungarian press after 1990.
Mikroszámítógép Magazin was published in Budapest from 1984 — a Neumann János Számítógéptudományi Társaság kiadványa, a publication of the John von Neumann Computer Science Society, produced with the state computing co-ordination institute. Sixty-two issues are held here, running to May 1990.
It is the first pre-transition Hungarian title in this library. Until it arrived, Hungary was represented only by 576 KByte, which begins in January 1990 — so the Vault could describe a market already opening and not what it opened from.
A machine landscape that then disappears
| 1984–89, Mikroszámítógép | 1990–93, 576 KByte | |
|---|---|---|
| PC | 25% | ~0% |
| C64 | 23% | 41% |
| C16 / Plus/4 | 13% | ~0% |
| Spectrum | 11% | ~0% |
| Enterprise | 11% | ~0% |
| Primo | 5% | ~0% |
| Amiga | — | 56% |
Three things in the earlier column appear nowhere else in this Vault at these shares. The Enterprise — designed in Britain, sold largely into Hungary — at 11%. The Primo, a Hungarian domestic machine, at 5%. And the C16 and Plus/4 at 13%, a pair that failed commercially in Britain and that Argentina’s Commodore magazine also gave more room than the British press ever did.
By 1990–93 the Hungarian press is an Amiga and C64 duopoly and the rest is gone.
⚠ These are two different magazines, not one magazine changing. Mikroszámítógép was a computer-society publication with an education and professional bent; 576 KByte is a games magazine. Some of that collapse is certainly editorial rather than economic, and this library cannot separate the two. What can be said is that a diverse landscape including domestic machines is visible in the Hungarian press before 1990 and absent after it.
Who published it
The masthead is the point of comparison with the rest of the bloc. This is not a commercial magazine: it is the publication of a learned society, made with a state institute, its editorial board led by Kovács Győző, a founder of that society. Its first issue runs features on computing in schools and on educational software in England.
Set beside Bajtek, a supplement to Poland’s official youth newspaper, and Mikroprozessortechnik, published for the GDR’s engineering chamber under a state press licence, a pattern appears — see who published the bloc’s computer press.
⚠ This entry is built from issue 1 and from counts across the run. This library holds no secondary account of the magazine, and nothing here establishes its circulation or why the run held stops in May 1990.
See also
- 576 KByte — the same country, after
- Institutional computer press
- The C64 across borders