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In Yugoslavia in the 1980s, computers were a rare luxury. A ZX Spectrum or Commodore 64 could easily cost a month's salary, and that's if you could even get through the tough importation laws. Then in 1983, while on holiday in Risan, Voja Antonić dreamt up plans for a new computer, a people's machine that could be built at home for a fraction of the cost of foreign imports. The Galaksija was born, and with it a computer revolution."In 1983, hardly anyone knew what computers were for or how they looked," says Antonić. At the time, the only computer that most people in Yugoslavia would ever come across would be a programmable calculator, but things were changing fast. Antonić had already been messing around with microprocessors for several years, but the huge expense of ready-built machines drove him to make his own: "I liked to play around with Z80 microprocessor projects, mostly for controllers and computer animation. But computers were too expensive for me, so I had to make my own. One of those computers was so simple and easy to make that I thought that maybe someone else would wish to make it themselves."
"My friend Dejan Ristanović and I spent a lot of days and nights brainstorming while I was writing Galaksija's operating system. I had to walk outside sometimes just to dissolve the adrenaline rush."
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