The Expert, made by Gradiente Eletrônica (to date best known as a game console and Hi-Fi equipment company) was the second and last MSX home computer launched in the

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

ian market, in the mid-1980s. It was presented to the public at th
5th International Computing Fair
nicknamed "Informatica '85". The event took place a
Anhembi Exhibition Center
in the city of

São Paulo São Paulo (, ; Portuguese for ' Saint Paul') is the most populous city in Brazil, and is the capital of the state of São Paulo, the most populous and wealthiest Brazilian state, located in the country's Southeast Region. Listed by the Ga ...

from September 23 to 29, 1985."Uma Vitrine Renovada" ''VEJA'' Magazine Nº891, p.88,89 São Paulo, 02/Oct/1985
At the announcement, the computer was priced 6
ORTN
s."A Microinformática no Brasil" ''Micro Sistemas'' Magazine, Special Edition Informatica '85, p.36, Rio de Janeiro, Sep/1985
Its market release date was 1 December 1985, one week after Epcom's

Hotbit The Hotbit HB-8000 is an MSX home computer developed and sold by the Brazilian subsidiary of Sharp Corporation through its EPCOM home computer division in mid-1980s. The MSX machines were very popular in Brazil at the time, and they virtually k ...

, just in time for 1985's Christmas and with a massive media campaign on magazines, newspapers and TV. In the newspapers ads the initial offer price was Cr$ 4,640,000, or US$ 470 by the value at the time,"BRENO ROSSI shop advertising" Newspaper ''O Estado de S. Paulo'' Nº33.987, p.24, São Paulo, 15/Dec/1985
/ref> or US$ 1,165 by the end of 2021. The machine was a clone of the

National National may refer to: Common uses * Nation or country ** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen Places in the United States * National, Maryland, c ...

CF-3000, with a

computer case A computer case, also known as a computer chassis, is the enclosure that contains most of the hardware of a personal computer. The components housed inside the case (such as the CPU, motherboard, memory, mass storage devices, power supply unit a ...

resembling a stereo system, a detached keyboard with a proprietary connector, no caps lock LED and no reset key,Gradiente Expert Plus
at old-computers.com although the soft-reset could be achieved by pushing in either of the cartridge slot covers. The Expert XP-800 was followed by the Expert GPC-1 ("Gradiente Personal Computer") in 1987, and by Expert Plus and Expert DD Plus (a system with a built-in 720 KB 3" floppy disk drive) in 1989. The Expert users waited for an

MSX2 MSX is a standardized home computer architecture, announced by Microsoft and ASCII Corporation on June 16, 1983. It was initially conceived by Microsoft as a product for the Eastern sector, and jointly marketed by Kazuhiko Nishi, then vice- ...

machine, but Gradiente never produced it and discontinued the MSX line in 1990.The MSX in Brazil
/ref>

Versions XP-800/GPC-1

The two first versions had a graphite case and socketed

chips ''CHiPs'' is an American crime drama television series created by Rick Rosner and originally aired on NBC from September 15, 1977, to May 1, 1983. It follows the lives of two motorcycle officers of the California Highway Patrol (CHP). The seri ...

, which caused a chronic problem: when the machine heated, the chips frequently pulled out and the system "froze". Also, the GPC-1, released in 1987, had a

ROM Rom, or ROM may refer to: Biomechanics and medicine * Risk of mortality, a medical classification to estimate the likelihood of death for a patient * Rupture of membranes, a term used during pregnancy to describe a rupture of the amniotic sac * ...

slightly modified to solve an ASCII table compatibility issue with the other popular Brazilian MSX, Sharp's

Versions Plus/DD Plus

The last two versions had a black case and the problematic socketed chips were replaced by an ASIC. Nevertheless, the

RAM Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to: Animals * A male sheep * Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish People * Ram (given name) * Ram (surname) * Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director * RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch * ...

was mapped to a secondary slot and, although it was straight by the MSX standards, caused a lot of crashes with programs who searched for memory in the wrong place. It did not contribute for the popularity of any of the Plus versions.

Technical specifications

Peripherals

* DR-1 ("data-corder"):

tape recorder An audio tape recorder, also known as a tape deck, tape player or tape machine or simply a tape recorder, is a sound recording and reproduction device that records and plays back sounds usually using magnetic tape for storage. In its present ...

* JS-1: joystick * MBW-12: 12" green CRT

monochrome monitor A monochrome monitor is a type of computer monitor in which computer text and images are displayed in varying tones of only one color, as opposed to a color monitor that can display text and images in multiple colors. They were very common in t ...

* TA-1: TV adapter * TM-1: 1200/75

bit/s In telecommunications and computing, bit rate (bitrate or as a variable ''R'') is the number of bits that are conveyed or processed per unit of time. The bit rate is expressed in the unit bit per second (symbol: bit/s), often in conjunction w ...

modem A modulator-demodulator or modem is a computer hardware device that converts data from a digital format into a format suitable for an analog transmission medium such as telephone or radio. A modem transmits data by Modulation#Digital modulati ...

with a

RS-232 In telecommunications, RS-232 or Recommended Standard 232 is a standard originally introduced in 1960 for serial communication transmission of data. It formally defines signals connecting between a ''DTE'' (''data terminal equipment'') such ...

C port

Notes

External links

Expert XP-800 @ MSX.org website

{dead link, date=October 2017 , bot=InternetArchiveBot , fix-attempted=yes MSX Z80