The TK 95

microcomputer A microcomputer is a small, relatively inexpensive computer having a central processing unit (CPU) made out of a microprocessor. The computer also includes memory and input/output (I/O) circuitry together mounted on a printed circuit board (PC ...

was a 1986

ZX Spectrum The ZX Spectrum () is an 8-bit computing, 8-bit home computer that was developed by Sinclair Research. It was released in the United Kingdom on 23 April 1982, and became Britain's best-selling microcomputer. Referred to during development as t ...

clone by

Microdigital Eletrônica Microdigital Eletrônica Ltda. was an influential Brazilian computer company in the 1980s, based in São Paulo. History Established in 1981 by the brothers George and Tomas Kovari (whose initials were the TK of the domestic computers line ma ...

, a company located at

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 GaWC a ...

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 ...

. It was an evolution of the

TK90X The TK90X was the first Brazilian ZX Spectrum clone made in 1985 by Microdigital Electrônica, a company located in São Paulo, Brazil, that had manufactured some ZX81 clones (TK82C, TK83 and TK85) and ZX80 clones (TK80, TK82) before. Technica ...

introduced the previous year. The case was redesigned (copied from the

Commodore Plus/4 The Commodore Plus/4 is a home computer released by Commodore International in 1984. The "Plus/4" name refers to the four-application ROM resident office suite (word processor, spreadsheet, database, and graphing); it was billed as "the produc ...

) and the

keyboard Keyboard may refer to: Text input * Keyboard, part of a typewriter * Computer keyboard ** Keyboard layout, the software control of computer keyboards and their mapping ** Keyboard technology, computer keyboard hardware and firmware Music * Musi ...

was said to be "semi-professional" (according to the Brazilian manufacturer), with the some additional

Sinclair BASIC Sinclair BASIC is a dialect of the programming language BASIC used in the 8-bit home computers from Sinclair Research and Timex Sinclair. The Sinclair BASIC interpreter was made by Nine Tiles Networks Ltd. History Sinclair BASIC was orig ...

commands that did not exist in the

s (for user defined charactersUDG), and better compatibility with the original ZX Spectrum (compared to the TK90X). Like the Spectrum, the machine had 48

kilobyte The kilobyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. The International System of Units (SI) defines the prefix ''kilo'' as 1000 (103); per this definition, one kilobyte is 1000 bytes.International Standard IEC 80000-13 Quantiti ...

s of RAM. Inside, the same processor:

Z80A The Z80 is an 8-bit microprocessor introduced by Zilog as the startup company's first product. The Z80 was conceived by Federico Faggin in late 1974 and developed by him and his 11 employees starting in early 1975. The first working samples we ...

running at 3.58 MHz, a 16 KB ROM chip and some RAM chips (old dynamic rams 4116 and 4416). Microdigital did some reverse engineering to develop a chip with the functions of the original ULA from

Sinclair Sinclair may refer to: Places * Lake Sinclair, near Milledgeville, Georgia * Sinclair, Iowa * Sinclair, West Virginia * Sinclair, Wyoming * Sinclair Mills, British Columbia * Sinclair Township, Minnesota * Sinclair, Manitoba People * Sin ...

Ferranti Ferranti or Ferranti International plc was a UK electrical engineering and equipment firm that operated for over a century from 1885 until it went bankrupt in 1993. The company was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. The firm was known ...

. The modulator was tuned to

VHF Very high frequency (VHF) is the ITU designation for the range of radio frequency electromagnetic waves (radio waves) from 30 to 300 megahertz (MHz), with corresponding wavelengths of ten meters to one meter. Frequencies immediately below VHF ...

channel 3 and the TV system was

PAL-M PAL-M is the analogue TV system used in Brazil since 19 February 1972. At that time, Brazil was the first South American country to broadcast in colour. Colour TV broadcast began on 19 February 1972, when the TV networks Globo and Bandeirantes t ...

(60 Hz). The

cassette interface The Compact Cassette or Musicassette (MC), also commonly called the tape cassette, cassette tape, audio cassette, or simply tape or cassette, is an analog magnetic tape recording format for audio recording and playback. Invented by Lou Ottens ...

ran at a faster speed than the Spectrum. Only two peripherals were released by Microdigital a

light pen A light pen is a computer input device in the form of a light-sensitive wand used in conjunction with a computer's cathode-ray tube (CRT) display. It allows the user to point to displayed objects or draw on the screen in a similar way to a tou ...

interface and a

parallel printer Parallel is a geometric term of location which may refer to: Computing * Parallel algorithm * Parallel computing * Parallel metaheuristic * Parallel (software), a UNIX utility for running programs in parallel * Parallel Sysplex, a cluster of ...

interface. Other companies in Brazil released clone versions of Interface 1 joysticks (

Atari 2600 The Atari 2600, initially branded as the Atari Video Computer System (Atari VCS) from its release until November 1982, is a home video game console developed and produced by Atari, Inc. Released in September 1977, it popularized microprocessor- ...

-compatibles) and interfaces for 5¼" PC drives (360 KB). The games had questionable legality being close to copies of the originals and the fans of the ZX Spectrum computer in Brazil were counted in tens of thousands.

References

External links

* �
Clube do TK90X

TK95 in Old-Computers

ZEsarUX – ZX Second-Emulator And Released for UniX
(GPL) Microdigital Eletrônica Computer-related introductions in 1986 Goods manufactured in Brazil Products introduced in 1986 ZX Spectrum clones {{Compu-hardware-stub