Micro Sistemas | Code Like It's 198x

Micro Sistemas went on sale in October 1981, at São Paulo’s first international computer fair, with a Brazilian computer on its cover and an editorial about the death of John Lennon. It called itself “a primeira publicação dedicada exclusivamente aos microcomputadores e calculadoras programáveis” (the first publication devoted exclusively to microcomputers and programmable calculators). Brazil’s own computer industry was barely a year old, protected by the market reserve, and the magazine grew up with it. Its pages ran from the TRS-80 copies of 1981 to Delphi courses and the intranet in 1996, and by Portuguese Wikipedia’s count it lasted until 1997 and issue 169.

Fast facts

First issue: October 1981, 40 pages, Cr$ 200,00; print run 10,000, later reprinted.
Publisher: ATI (Análise, Teleprocessamento e Informática Editora), Rio de Janeiro; Enter Press Editora by 1994; PRB from issue 158.
Editors: Alda Surerus Campos (1981 to at least 1985); Graça Santos (1987); Renato Degiovani (by 1991 to at least 1994); Antonio Marcelo (1996).
Special editions: Informática 85 (September 1985) and Informática 86 (August 1986), published for the national computer fairs.
Last issue: 169, in mid-1997 (web, secondary).

A magazine and a shop

The magazine began with a shop. Aldenor Campos, president of the publisher ATI, opened Computique in Rio de Janeiro the same year. Micro Sistemas later described it as the first shop in Brazil to specialise in microcomputer products. Computique’s advertisement fills the inside front cover of issue 1, with its address in the Cassino Atlântico shopping centre on Avenida Nossa Senhora de Copacabana.

The editor was Alda Surerus Campos. In 1985 she recalled that she was a newly qualified journalist and economist with “uma pilha de revistas estrangeiras como modelo, alguns contatos na área, um mês de ‘convívio’ com um HP-85 e muita vontade de acertar” (a pile of foreign magazines as models, a few contacts, a month living with an HP-85 and a great wish to get it right). She telephoned Wayne Green, the American publisher of Kilobaud Microcomputing and 80 Microcomputing, for advice. A few days later he and his assistant editor, Sherry Smythe, landed in Rio. Issue 1 reports the August visit. At Computique, Green remarked on how many teenagers came into the shop, and he told the magazine that Brazil was beginning to feel the microcomputer explosion. The two publishers talked about translating articles, but that never happened. Campos wrote that both sides felt the magazine had to reflect how Brazilians actually used computers. Green warned her that “uma revista sem anúncios não sobrevive” (a magazine without advertising does not survive). She knew that, she wrote, but in 1981 there was not yet much to advertise.

“The dream has begun”

The editorial in issue 1, “O Sonho Começou”, opens somewhere no computer magazine opens:

“Há poucos meses a bala de um assassino encerrou, inapelavelmente, uma época que já estava virtualmente terminada. Chorando John Lennon, milhões de jovens e pais de jovens, no mundo inteiro, tristemente murmuravam: o sonho acabou.”

A few months ago an assassin’s bullet brought to an end an era that was already virtually over. Mourning John Lennon, millions of young people and their parents, all over the world, murmured sadly: the dream is over. Dreams end and begin all the time, the editorial goes on. It then gives a short history of the microprocessor, from Busicom’s order to Intel in June 1969 to the 4004, and dates the arrival of microcomputers to the United States in 1976, western Europe in 1978, Japan the year after and Brazil in 1981. Specialist shops and software firms were already appearing, it said, and “tal como aconteceu nos países que nos antecederam neste caminho, as fábricas e marcas vão se multiplicar” (as happened in the countries that went before us on this road, the factories and brands will multiply). It quoted Grace Hopper and Christopher Evans’s The Mighty Micro, and promised to teach readers to program and to advise them on what to buy.

Issue 1

The cover line was “O D-8000 é o primeiro lance da DISMAC na disputa do mercado brasileiro de computadores pessoais” (the D-8000 is DISMAC’s first move in the contest for the Brazilian personal computer market). Inside:

The DISMAC interview. Oscar Alegre, commercial director of DISMAC, began by welcoming “a primeira revista brasileira dedicada à microcomputação” and went on to defend the market reserve. A Brazilian computer cost more than an imported one, he said, and “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 tin-plate image its pull-quote: “É preferível comer em um prato de lata de fabricação nacional do que ficar devendo um prato de porcelana inglesa” (better to eat off a tin plate made at home than to owe money for an English porcelain one).
A school planning for a computer. Carmen Condorelli ran the Colégio Baby Garden in Tijuca, Rio, with about five hundred children aged two to ten. She did not yet have a computer, but she was pricing one. Manufacturers’ leaflets, she said, had “muitas fotos bonitas e poucas informações” (lots of pretty photographs and little information); she understood what a micro could do only after a visit to Computique.
Chess. Márcio Miranda, president of the Brazilian Chess Confederation, said the best programs played like an average player and the commercial ones could not beat “um jogador regular de um clube carioca” (an ordinary Rio club player).
Programs for calculators and micros, including an accounts-payable system written for the Hewlett-Packard HP-85 and an article on the HP-41 calculator.

The magazine of an industry

Micro Sistemas reported the Brazilian micro industry from the inside. It printed type-in programs for the national machines and passed readers’ complaints to the makers, printing the replies. In September 1983 a reader complained that the manual for his DISMAC D-8001 did not even document INKEY$; the magazine forwarded his letter, and DISMAC replied in print. Its fair reports recorded each year’s crop of copies: in November 1983 it counted more than ten Apple II compatibles and noted that DISMAC had given up the TRS-80 for the Apple.

For the São Paulo computer fairs of 1985 and 1986 it published special editions, Informática 85 and Informática 86. The 1985 edition marked five years of the industry with a history of Brazilian microcomputing written, in Campos’s words, by people who had lived it.

Later years

By 1987 Graça Santos was editor. By 1991 Renato Degiovani was director and editor. Degiovani had coordinated the magazine’s data-processing department in 1985 and wrote columns for it on the direction of Brazilian microcomputing. In July 1992 the masthead still named ATI as publisher; by January 1994 it was Enter Press Editora, with Degiovani as editor-in-chief, and that issue began a Visual Basic course. The magazine followed its readers from home micros to the PC, and later to the web: issue 157, in 1996, edited by Antonio Marcelo, covered Delphi, HTML style and “a Intranet, a nova buzzword do momento”. Its cover still carried the line “A primeira revista brasileira de microcomputadores”.

According to Portuguese Wikipedia, a new publisher, PRB (Primeira Revista Brasileira de Informática Editora), took over from issue 158, and the magazine ended with issue 169 in mid-1997. The name returned in October 2021, when Bitnamic Software published a 132-page fortieth-anniversary issue, numbered 1a, with articles by Degiovani and other former contributors.

Its claim to have been the first Brazilian microcomputer magazine is its own, made in its first editorial and repeated in 1985. The public sources that repeat it, including Portuguese Wikipedia, name no earlier title.

Sources

Micro Sistemas issue 1, October 1981: cover (price, D-8000 cover line); inside front cover, Computique advertisement; p. 1, masthead (Alda Surerus Campos, ATI, print run of 10,000, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo offices); pp. 2–3, editorial “O Sonho Começou”; pp. 4–5, “Um ‘baby computer’ no ‘Baby Garden’” (text by Paulo Henrique de Noronha); pp. 6–7, “Homem x Máquina: Quem será o Grande Mestre?”, interview with Márcio Miranda; p. 11, report on the visit of Wayne Green and Sherry Smythe; pp. 16–19, “Dismac: uma empresa aquariana na ‘Era de Aquário’”, interview with Oscar Alegre (text by Alda Campos); “Contas a Pagar”, program for the HP-85.
Micro Sistemas issue 24, September 1983, p. 8: letters, “Manual do D-8001”, with DISMAC’s reply.
Micro Sistemas issue 26, November 1983, pp. 42–43: report on the 1983 Feira Internacional de Informática (the Apple line’s growth; DISMAC leaving the TRS-80).
Micro Sistemas, special edition “Informática 85”, September 1985: Alda Surerus Campos, editorial “Cinco anos de conquistas” (40 pages, 10,000 copies, the reprint, Aldenor Campos and Computique, Wayne Green’s advice); history of the computer congresses (issue 1 launched at the first Feira Internacional de Informática); masthead (Renato Degiovani coordinating the data-processing department).
Micro Sistemas issue 45, June 1985, pp. 8–9: Renato Degiovani, “Os rumos da microinformática”.
Micro Sistemas, special edition “Informática 86”, August 1986.
Micro Sistemas issue 71, August 1987: masthead, editor Graça Santos.
Micro Sistemas issue 105, June 1991: masthead, director and editor Renato Degiovani.
Micro Sistemas issue 118, July 1992: masthead, ATI named as publisher.
Micro Sistemas issue 135, January 1994: masthead, Enter Press Editora; editorial “Ao Leitor” announcing the Visual Basic course.
Micro Sistemas issue 157, 1996: masthead (Antonio Marcelo, editor-in-chief; Enter Press Editora on the cover); editorial “Ao Leitor”; cover line “A primeira revista brasileira de microcomputadores”.
“Micro Sistemas”, Portuguese Wikipedia (web, secondary): run from October 1981 to mid-1997, issue 169; PRB as publisher from issue 158. https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Sistemas
“Revista Micro Sistemas nº 1a – Especial 40 anos”, Bitnamic Software (web, secondary): the October 2021 anniversary issue, 132 pages, with articles by Renato Degiovani, Divino Leitão and Claudio Costa. https://www.bitnamic.com.br/produto/revista-micro-sistemas-no-1a-especial-40-anos/