Abstract
Based on oral history interviews, archival material, and paratextual analysis, the chapter chronicles the second life of the Japanese Sharp MZ-800 8-bit computer in late 1980s and early 1990s Czechoslovakia and investigates the practices and meanings that emerged around this machine in the local do-it-yourself community. Despite its incompatibility with major platforms at the time and its relative obscurity in the rest of the world, Czechoslovak users made it into a formidable gaming machine by producing around 200 ports of existing games and dozens of original titles.
The chapter uses this case to argue that despite the deepening globalization, 1980s Europe was a loosely interconnected patchwork of distinctly local markets and user communities that adopted (mostly) foreign technologies and adapted them to their own needs and ambitions.