The Expert, made by Gradiente Eletrônica (to date best known as a

game console A video game console is an electronic device that outputs a video signal or image to display a video game that can be played with a game controller. These may be home consoles, which are generally placed in a permanent location connected to ...

and Hi-Fi equipment company) was the second and last

MSX 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-p ...

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, 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 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 ...

resembling a

stereo system Stereophonic sound, or more commonly stereo, is a method of sound reproduction that recreates a multi-directional, 3-dimensional audible perspective. This is usually achieved by using two independent audio channels through a configuration ...

, 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 A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined ...

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

Versions Plus/DD Plus

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

ASIC An application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC ) is an integrated circuit (IC) chip customized for a particular use, rather than intended for general-purpose use, such as a chip designed to run in a digital voice recorder or a high-effici ...

. Nevertheless, the RAM 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 A joystick, sometimes called a flight stick, is an input device consisting of a stick that pivots on a base and reports its angle or direction to the device it is controlling. A joystick, also known as the control column, is the principal cont ...

* 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 modulating one or more c ...

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'') suc ...

C port

Notes

External links

Expert XP-800 @ MSX.org website

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