Bizarre Brazil

Red freezer from the 70′.

The advertising says: “That is the better hint you can make about your daughter marriage.”

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Computers are Rico’s business but I can’t resist to this old and beautiful CP-500. This was a TRS-80 clone which ran a CPM-80 like OS, also from Prologica as you can see the small logo.

I do love its design! Good memories!

I love this old flyer from Embraer*. You could put this flyer at the back of you car and let a clear message to the drivers, who think they are pilots and want to surpass you.
Calma. Voar é pra avião. = Slow down. Flying is for planes.

* Brazilian Aircraft Industry

I am preparing a long post about my dear “Esquadrilha da Fumaça”, the Brazilian Air Force Air Demonstration Squadron, it is not ready yet… so take a look at those old pictures, long ago, in Sao Jose do Rio Preto (I am not sure about the place…) only to say hellooo to Rico.
Official site of Esquadrão de Demonstração Aérea - EDA.

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I think this Dromader M18A, was the first of its kind of aircraft that has landed in Brazil. (in 1990)

PLZ Dromader M18A, Polish agricultural aircraft

An old Grumman Albatross at Campo de Marte Airport in São Paulo, around five years ago. You can not believe, but this old and beautiful machine is ready to fly again.

As I’ve posted before, Brazilian tech industry between the 70’s and the 90’s bootlegged every succesful design from the major foreign industries. Atari 2600 was a kind of an exception. Although some designs like the “Dactari”, the “Dactar” and the Dynavision were almost a copy of the 2600 with minor changes, Polyvox, a subsidiary of Brazilian consumer electronics industry Gradiente, bought the license and started to produce a local, legal version of this console. Bellow the TV ad of the product, sold as a high-tech device that would impress all your neighbors and even put you in trouble with the cops . For I was a proud owner of a ZX-Spectrum clone, though, I’ve never had a gaming console and never felt as I needed one, by the way. :^)

The family.

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Brazil had from the 70’s to the 90’s a law that forbade microcomputer and related technology imports. The intention of the law: to protect Brazilian industry from competition to the level national industry could survive by itself. What happened? Despite minor Rio Grande do Sul and Sao Paulo industries born on their local Universities, most of the industry limited itself to bootleg designs from the major computer and peripheral makers. On the pics bellow, some of them.

TK95 arrived. And it’s not just for fun.

CP 200 was another famous Brazilian bootleg design for British Sinclair’s ZX-81. The company, Prologica, bootleged several other designs from other major foreigner companies.

CP 400 was the most expensive of the small 8 bits computers by the time (from 1982 to circa 1986). It was a bootleg design of RadioShack TRS-80 Color, also from Prologica.