DISMAC was a calculator company that became, for a few months, the whole of Brazil’s personal computer industry. At the end of 1980 it showed the D-8000, a copy of Tandy’s TRS-80 Model I, at a household goods fair in São Paulo. In October 1981 the machine was on the cover of the first issue of Micro Sistemas, and DISMAC’s commercial director used the interview inside to explain why a Brazilian computer cost more than an imported one, and why Brazil should pay the difference.
From imported calculators to the D-8000
Micro Sistemas dated the company’s beginning to the day: on 25 January 1973 DISMAC “iniciava sua existência comercializando calculadoras importadas” (began its existence selling imported calculators). The magazine made much of the date. The company had been born under Aquarius, whose people the astrology books called pioneering, creative and fascinated by science, and it headlined its cover story “uma empresa aquariana na ‘Era de Aquário’” (an Aquarian company in the Age of Aquarius). It then credited the company’s rise to its president, Joseph Martin Feder, and his team of managers and technicians. A few years after its founding DISMAC was making electronic calculators of its own. By 1981, according to its commercial director, it held 65% of the Brazilian calculator market and had more than 250 service centres across the country. Portuguese Wikipedia places its founding in Manaus and describes Feder as Austrian.
The calculator business carried the company into computers. At the end of 1980 DISMAC showed a prototype of its first personal computer, the D-8000, at the Feira de Utilidades Domésticas in São Paulo. The D-8000 was compatible with the TRS-80 Model I and came in a metal case with its cassette recorder built in. In 1981 it went on sale at the Mappin department store, the first department store in Brazil to sell computers, at Cr$ 396,690, payable in up to fifteen instalments, and it sold ten in three weeks, a large number for the time. By October 1981 Alegre was quoting Cr$ 300,000.
Micro Sistemas called the D-8000 “o primeiro computador pessoal do Brasil” (Brazil’s first personal computer). Its 1985 history of the industry was more careful. Brazil had microcomputers before the D-8000, such as the Cobra 300, Polymax’s WP and DP and the SID 3000, but they were expensive business machines. The D-8000 was the first of the simple, cheap machines, and in 1981 DISMAC was, the magazine said, the maker of the only “micro pessoal” of the time.
Oscar Alegre’s case for the market reserve
The interview in Micro Sistemas issue 1 is the fullest statement of how DISMAC saw its position. Oscar Alegre, its commercial director, argued for Brazil’s market reserve as a matter of foreign debt. An imported monitor or cassette recorder cost less than the ones DISMAC used, he said, but buying them abroad meant borrowing abroad: “O diferencial de custo é um preço a pagar pelo desenvolvimento” (the difference in cost is a price paid for development). The magazine made his image its pull-quote: it was better to eat off a tin plate made in Brazil than to owe money for an English porcelain one.
He was open about copying. “O Brasil ainda copia. Mas se a roda está inventada, para que inventá-la de novo?” (Brazil still copies. But if the wheel has been invented, why invent it again?) He said there was no point in developing original hardware or a Brazilian programming language; the country’s first need was programmers and technicians in large numbers. DISMAC, he added, watched Japan as well as the United States, because it was “não presa a nenhuma matriz no exterior” (not tied to any parent company abroad).
The reserve reached the product itself. There were no Brazilian peripherals yet, so DISMAC would build its own memory expansion, and any printer it added would not be a thermal one, “para não depender de papel importado” (so as not to depend on imported paper). Only DISMAC and Hewlett-Packard, he said, served the personal market; other firms made minicomputers and called them micros. DISMAC was opening branches in Argentina and Mexico before it tried to export.
He also told a story from the 1980 fair. An eleven-year-old boy asked for a demonstration, came back every day, and by the end of the fair could program. In the last days the staff had to pull him away, because he sat at the machine for five hours and let hardly anyone else use it.
The D-8000 family, and after
DISMAC sold the design in several forms. The D-8001 was, in the company’s own words, the D-8000 with a printer: replying to a reader’s complaint in 1983 that the D-8001’s manual was really the D-8000’s, DISMAC wrote that the manual was the same because the model name was “apenas um jogo comercial” (just a commercial move). The D-8002 turns up in readers’ letters beside the CP-500 and DGT-100 as a machine running TRS-80 disk operating systems. At least one competitor started inside the company: Mathias Alegrucci, who later made the Apple II Plus copy sold by Milmar, told Micro Sistemas that he had launched the Fenix, another TRS-80 compatible, after leaving DISMAC.
Brazil’s micro market moved to the Apple II, and DISMAC moved with it. At the 1983 computer fair, Micro Sistemas reported, “a Dismac abandonou os TRS, passando-se para a linha Apple”. Its D-8100, an Apple II Plus compatible with a 6502 and 48K of RAM, was shown without changes from the original. The company also turned to business computing: networked microcomputers, the Alfa multi-user system, offered as “o sistema que substitui 8 micros” (the system that replaces eight micros), and, from 1984, the PC-16, an IBM PC compatible that DISMAC sourced as an OEM customer of Microtec. At the 1985 fair it showed the PC-16, with an 8088, two 5¼-inch drives and 256K of RAM, at 1,000 ORTN, alongside the D-8100, an electronic typewriter and a point-of-sale terminal.
Later sources describe a third career in video games. The Brazilian games archive Bojogá dates DISMAC’s VJ-9000, a copy of the Atari 2600 sold with two paddle controllers, to 1984, and Portuguese Wikipedia lists a copy of the NES, the Bit System, among its products. Public sources give no clear account of the company after the 1980s, or of when it stopped trading.
Sources
- Micro Sistemas issue 1, October 1981, cover and pp. 16–19: “Dismac: uma empresa aquariana na ‘Era de Aquário’”, interview with Oscar Alegre (text by Alda Campos): the founding date, Joseph Martin Feder, the calculators, the 1980 prototype, “o primeiro computador pessoal do Brasil”, the price of Cr$ 300,000, 65% of the calculator market and 250 service centres, branches in Argentina and Mexico, the eleven-year-old at the fair, copying, the market reserve, peripherals and the printer, DISMAC and Hewlett-Packard as the only makers serving the personal market.
- Micro Sistemas issue 24, September 1983, p. 8: letters, “Manual do D-8001”, with DISMAC’s reply.
- Micro Sistemas issue 25, October 1983: reader’s letter on disk operating systems for the D-8002.
- Micro Sistemas issue 26, November 1983, pp. 42–43: report on the 1983 Feira Internacional de Informática (“a Dismac abandonou os TRS”); pp. 48–49: the D-8100 on DISMAC’s stand, and Mathias Alegrucci of Milmar on leaving DISMAC; DISMAC advertisement for networked microcomputers and the D-8100.
- Micro Sistemas, special edition “Informática 85”, September 1985: history of the micro industry (the D-8000’s launch, Mappin, price and first sales; earlier business micros; the D-8100; the PC-16 in 1984); DISMAC advertisement for the Alfa multi-user system; fair report on the PC-16, D-8100 and CRE 590.
- “Dismac Industrial S.A.”, Portuguese Wikipedia (web, secondary): founding in Manaus, Joseph Martin Feder, the Bit System. https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dismac_Industrial_S.A.
- “VJ 9000”, Bojogá (web, secondary): DISMAC’s Atari 2600 compatible, 1984, with two paddles; the later VJ 8900. https://bojoga.com.br/acervo/consoles-de-mesa/geracao-2/vj-9000/