24 Jun
1999
24 Jun
'99
12:44 p.m.
On Thu, 24 Jun 1999, Hans Franke wrote:
The South American systems feel a bit like Eastern
Europe.
A lot of cloning and redesign of Western systems to
support the local market with computers ...
...
what have been the reasons for South America ?
Local trade barriers ? High import taxes ?
Could the Brazilian Sinclair clone phenomenon be related to Timex Computer
Corportation's presence in Portugal? Many of the Timex/Sinclair computers
sold in the USA were manufactured by Timex of Portugal, and the systems
apparently remained popular in Portugal after Timex pulled out of the US
market. If this was the case, then there may have been a ready supply of
Portugese-language software and documentation for Sinclair clones, making
them a reasonable choice for cloning in other Portugese-speaking
countries.
Speaking of rubber-keyed ZX81 clones, Timex made such a beast for the US
market - the Timex/Sinclair 1500. It's essentially a ZX81 with 16K of RAM
in a Spectrum case. I have a picture of one at
http://www.corestack.com/classic/machines/ts1500.html
--
Scott Ware ware(a)xtal.pharm.nwu.edu