In October 1981 the first issue of Micro Sistemas, Brazil’s first microcomputer magazine, put a Brazilian computer on its cover and asked the man selling it why it cost so much. Oscar Alegre, commercial director of DISMAC, did not pretend otherwise. An imported cassette recorder, he said, was cheaper than the one built into his company’s D-8000. But Brazil could not afford the foreign currency. “O diferencial de custo é um preço a pagar pelo desenvolvimento” — the difference in cost is a price to be paid for development.
That was the logic of the reserva de mercado, the market reserve. From the late 1970s until 29 October 1992, Brazil kept its market for small computers for companies owned by Brazilians. Importing a computer needed government approval, and approval went to Brazilian manufacturers. So Brazilians learned to program on Brazilian machines, almost all of them copies of foreign designs: TRS-80s and Apple IIs, Sinclair ZX81s and Spectrums, and later MSX computers. Some were copied faithfully, some improved, and a few were original.
Fast facts
- Began: in practice in 1976–77, when the government commission CAPRE restricted imports and chose Brazilian makers for minicomputers; later run by the Secretaria Especial de Informática (SEI), created in 1979.
- Law: Lei nº 7.232 of 29 October 1984, the National Informatics Policy, controlled imports of computer goods for eight years.
- Ended: 29 October 1992, under Lei nº 8.248 of 23 October 1991.
- Typical machines: DISMAC D-8000 and Prológica CP-500 (TRS-80), Unitron AP II (Apple II), Microdigital TK-85 (ZX81) and TK 90X (Spectrum), Gradiente Expert and Sharp Hotbit (MSX).
- The exception: Hewlett-Packard’s HP-85, which Micro Sistemas called the only micro made by a foreign company to escape the reserve.
How the reserve worked
The policy grew out of the government’s computer commission, CAPRE (Comissão de Coordenação das Atividades de Processamento Eletrônico). Micro Sistemas’s 1985 history of the industry describes how, in the mid-1970s, CAPRE “closed the tap on imports” and gave shape to the reserve for minicomputers and microcomputers. At the end of 1977 it held a competition for minicomputer makers and authorised five: the Cobra 400, SID-5240, Labo 8034, Edisa ED-301 and Sisco MB-8000, most of them built on licensed foreign designs. Foreign firms such as Four-Phase and Basic Four closed their Brazilian operations. A 1986 article in the magazine dates the policy, as it was actually applied, from 1976.
In October 1979 a presidential decree created the SEI, the Secretaria Especial de Informática, and abolished CAPRE once the new secretariat was installed. It decided which companies could make computers and which imports could come in. Five years later Congress wrote the policy into law. Lei nº 7.232 of 29 October 1984 set up a national informatics council, CONIN, placed the SEI under it with the power to decide on projects to make computer goods and to approve imports, and allowed the government to impose “restrições de natureza transitória” (temporary restrictions) on the production, sale and import of computer goods to protect Brazilian companies “enquanto não estiverem consolidadas e aptas a competir no mercado internacional” (until they were established and able to compete internationally). Control of imports was to last eight years from the law’s publication.
The effect showed at the fairs. In October 1983 IBM put its Personal Computer on its stand at São Paulo’s computer fair, but Micro Sistemas noted that selling it was “proibida no Brasil pela reserva de mercado” — prohibited in Brazil by the market reserve.
The case for it, from inside the industry
Alegre’s interview in that first issue of Micro Sistemas is a clear statement of how the industry argued for the reserve. Asked whether the government would keep it, he said:
“O Brasil não tem outra opção. O Brasil não tem petróleo e possui uma dívida muito elevada, cujo serviço é pesado.”
Brazil has no other option. It has no oil and carries a very heavy debt. Every imported component was foreign currency leaving a country that could not spare it. He pointed to Argentina, which had chosen to import manufactured goods, “e os resultados foram desastrosos para o país” (and the results were disastrous for the country). The magazine made his image of the choice its pull-quote:
“É preferível comer em um prato de lata de fabricação nacional do que ficar devendo um prato de porcelana inglesa. Quanto mais se deve, mais dependente se é.”
It is better to eat off a tin plate made at home than to owe money for an English porcelain one. The more you owe, the more dependent you are.
The reserve reached down into the hardware. Asked about adding a printer to the D-8000, Alegre said that when DISMAC did, it would not be a thermal printer, “para não depender de papel importado” (so as not to depend on imported paper). Peripherals of any kind were a problem: in the United States, he said, you could buy a micro and then go to any shop for peripherals, but in Brazil “por enquanto o problema dos periféricos é grave” (for now the peripherals problem is serious). DISMAC would build its own memory expansion.
He was just as frank about where designs came from:
“O Brasil ainda copia. Mas se a roda está inventada, para que inventá-la de novo? … Pesquisa quem pode, e não quem quer.”
Brazil still copies. If the wheel has been invented, why invent it again? Research is done by those who can, not by those who would like to. Brazil’s first task, he argued, was to train programmers and technicians in large numbers.
His was a manufacturer’s view. The same magazine printed others. In its second issue, in November 1981, an interviewee complained that small computers entered the country easily in travellers’ luggage — “contrabando de computadores” — so Brazil was importing them anyway while its engineers and programmers missed the work. In July 1983 Isu Fang, president of the printer maker Elebra, told the magazine that “o contrabando continua introduzindo no país uma grande quantidade de equipamentos e periféricos” (smuggling is still bringing a great quantity of equipment and peripherals into the country).
The machines
Micro Sistemas told the story of Brazil’s micro industry in a special edition for the 1985 computer fair. Before DISMAC showed the D-8000 at São Paulo’s household goods fair at the end of 1980, it said, “many Apples, TRSs and others less well known” had already “landed discreetly at our airports”, brought in by enthusiasts and wealthy tourists. There had also been Brazilian business micros, such as the Cobra 300, but they were expensive.
The D-8000 was compatible with the TRS-80 Model I and came in a metal case with the cassette recorder built in. It went on sale at the Mappin department store in 1981 at Cr$ 396,690, payable in up to fifteen instalments, and sold ten in three weeks, a large number for the time. Digitus’s DGT-100, another Model I compatible, followed at the first International Computer Fair in October 1981. The same fair saw Brazil’s first Sinclair compatibles, based on the ZX80: Prológica’s NE Z80, sold under the name of the magazine Nova Eletrônica, and the TK 80 and TK 82-C from the newly founded Microdigital. Cheap and easy to use, the Sinclair family became the best-selling computers in the country, and Microdigital led that market from the start.
Prológica did better with the TRS-80. Its CP-500, launched in April 1982 and compatible with the Model III, became the best seller in its class, helped by an order for 2,500 machines from the state telecommunications company Embratel for its Projeto Ciranda staff network. From 1982 came Apple II compatibles, among them the Microengenho from the Brazilian company Spectrum and the Unitron AP II, which became the standard Brazilian Apple.
For the ZX81 the next step was Prológica’s CP-200, but it reached the shops late, and Microdigital’s TK-85 took the sales. Micro Sistemas introduced it in March 1983. Microdigital’s director, Tomas Kovari, described a machine with the same Z80A processor, 32-column screen and block graphics as its TK82-C, but with raised rubber keys in place of a flat membrane, a 10K ROM instead of the TK82-C’s 8K, reverse video, and a fast tape mode at 4,200 bits per second. It would cost about Cr$ 150,000 with 16K of memory or Cr$ 200,000 with 48K. “90% das pessoas que compram o TK são leigas,” Kovari said: nine in ten TK buyers were beginners, who wanted to see the machine running at once and bought a program with it.
Copying was not always possible. Writing in June 1985, Renato Degiovani argued that foreign makers had answered copying with custom chips. The ZX81’s own chip, he wrote, “nunca foi realmente copiado no Brasil” (was never really copied in Brazil), and other machines regarded abroad as landmarks could have no Brazilian equivalents at all. Brazilian buyers, he wrote, were left dreaming of Spectrums, Apple IIcs, QLs and Commodore 64s.
MSX and the crowded market
By 1985 the personal market had settled, in Micro Sistemas’s account, around five suppliers: Microdigital (TK 85, the Spectrum-compatible TK 90X and the Apple-like TK 2000), Prológica (CP 200S and CP 400), Ritas (Ringo R 470), LZ (Color 64) and CCE (MC-1000). Sales had fallen as early demand was satisfied and the economy squeezed buyers. The newcomer was MSX, which brought the electronics companies Gradiente and Sharp into computing.
At the 1985 fair Gradiente showed the Expert, with a Z80, 80K of RAM, 32K of ROM and 16 colours, at 65 ORTN. (Prices at the fair were quoted in ORTN, an inflation-indexed Treasury bond unit, rather than in cruzeiros.) Sharp showed the Hotbit HB-8000, built by the Sharp-group company Epcom in the Amazon region, with a TMS-9128 video chip, an AY-3-8910A sound chip and a keyboard with Portuguese accents and ten function keys. Brazilian keyboards and character sets were a change the magazine singled out: by 1985 makers had added the cedilla and the accents of Portuguese, which it called a change of “profundo significado cultural”.
The end of the reserve
Lei nº 7.232 had fixed an eight-year term. Lei nº 8.248 of 23 October 1991 kept to it. From 29 October 1992 the government lost its power to approve informatics projects and imports, and the law’s protective restrictions were revoked. In their place Lei nº 8.248 offered tax incentives, for seven more years from 29 October 1992, to computer goods made in Brazil with enough local content.
Some readers were glad to see it go. In July 1992 Micro Sistemas’s universities columnist, Marinilza Bruno de Carvalho, wrote of the eve of “o término da reserva de mercado — ansiosamente esperado por todos, quando nos sentimos defasados em dez anos” (the end of the market reserve, eagerly awaited by everyone, when we feel ten years behind).
Some of the machines outlived the policy. Micro Sistemas was still carrying advertisements for MSX software in January 1994, and the ZX Spectrum Next grew out of a Brazilian board, the TBBlue, based on Microdigital’s Spectrum-compatible TK95; the ZX Spectrum Next entry tells that story.
Sources
- Micro Sistemas issue 1, October 1981, pp. 16–19: “Dismac: uma empresa aquariana na ‘Era de Aquário’”, interview with Oscar Alegre (text by Alda Campos): cost of Brazilian components, “O Brasil não tem outra opção”, Argentina, the tin plate, the thermal printer, peripherals, copying, and DISMAC and Hewlett-Packard as the only makers serving the personal market.
- Micro Sistemas issue 2, November 1981, p. 40: interview on the “Reserva de mercado” and computers arriving in travellers’ luggage.
- Micro Sistemas issue 18, March 1983, p. 58: “TK85: novo pessoal no mercado” (text by Edna Araripe): Tomas Kovari on the TK85’s specification, prices and buyers.
- Micro Sistemas issue 22, July 1983: printer industry report, Isu Fang of Elebra on smuggling.
- Micro Sistemas issue 37, October 1984, p. 22: “Em foco, os 16 bits”: the IBM PC at the 1983 fair, its sale prohibited by the reserve.
- Micro Sistemas issue 45, June 1985, pp. 8–9: Renato Degiovani, “Os rumos da microinformática”: the ZX81’s chip never copied; machines with no Brazilian equivalent.
- Micro Sistemas, special edition “Informática 85”, September 1985: history of the micro industry (the D-8000’s launch, price and sales; the 1981 fair; the Sinclair compatibles; the CP-500 and Projeto Ciranda; the CP-200 and TK-85; the HP-85 exception; Portuguese characters; the five suppliers of 1985 and MSX); history of the computer congresses (CAPRE, the 1977 minicomputer competition, the SEI replacing CAPRE in 1979); fair reports on the Gradiente Expert and Sharp Hotbit HB-8000.
- Micro Sistemas, special edition “Informática 86”, August 1986: the Lei de Informática consolidating a policy applied by CAPRE and the SEI since 1976.
- Micro Sistemas issue 118, July 1992, p. 60: Marinilza Bruno de Carvalho, Universidade column.
- Micro Sistemas issue 135, January 1994: mail-order advertisement offering programs “para a linha MSX”.
- Decreto nº 84.067, de 2 de outubro de 1979 (Brazil): creates the Secretaria Especial de Informática and abolishes CAPRE on its installation. https://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/decreto/1970-1979/d84067.htm
- Lei nº 7.232, de 29 de outubro de 1984 (Brazil), the Política Nacional de Informática: CONIN and the SEI; Article 9 (transitional restrictions to protect national companies); import control “por 8 (oito) anos a contar da publicação desta Lei”. https://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/leis/l7232.htm
- Lei nº 8.248, de 23 de outubro de 1991 (Brazil): powers over projects and imports cease, and Articles 9 and 22 of Lei nº 7.232 are revoked, from 29 October 1992; incentives extended for seven years from that date. https://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/leis/l8248.htm