Just a little correction to Ricardo Tolomelli, the so called protection to brazilian industry and technology has been imposed after the brazilian military government, by the president José Sarney.

MSX could only be bought on the black market, mainly (but not uniquely) from Paraguay.

When I was a college student, in 1984. These little Macintosh computers were so expensive, nobody could buy them. I would had loved to had the Brazilian copycat computer. I was so mad at Macintosh for the expensive computer, which I had to use at the University to type my homework on. I resolved never to buy an Apple product. Years later, delivering air freight, Apple still "pimps" their products to kids, and the poor parents have to pay out of their pocket for overpriced computers!

During the military dictatorship in Brazil, which lasted till 1986, the government applied rules to "protect" brazilian industry and technology development by forbidding any kind of import for products that we "could produce" here. The cloning industry was then : supported" by the government when they showed they could produce similar computer with "local technology", in fact they were just cloning and manufacturing them here, the development involved was just on how to produce the same components here and not import anything.

I used to have and Apple I and Apple II clones, both from Microdigital, and an MSX from Gradiente (which I''m not sure if it was cloned or licensed, but it was fully produced in Brazil). Those were the only options we could find on the (white) market during those days. Anything apart from it has to be illegally imported, and was very hard to find (not to mention their programs).

Those "protection" laws were on until beginning of 90''s, when Fernando Collor, the president, $ped them, and the cloning industry died. Actually, that was the only good thing he did to our country... but that''s another story.