[HN Gopher] Mexican Computers: A Brief Technical and Historical ...
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Mexican Computers: A Brief Technical and Historical Overview
Author : belter
Score : 161 points
Date : 2024-06-10 14:14 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arxiv.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (arxiv.org)
| CoBE10 wrote:
| This feels like something Asianometry could make a video about.
| cgannett wrote:
| Well now I want it and it doesn't exist. ) :
| agumonkey wrote:
| Methinks we won't have to wait long for it.
| moralestapia wrote:
| Not a single mention of the Toledo family ...
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28337064
| copperx wrote:
| That's like failing to mention TempleOS in an article about
| operating systems.
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| Someone is gonna do a dissertation on TempleOS one day
| romwell wrote:
| Indeed. It would be a glaring omission.
| makz wrote:
| It's a shame
| flobosg wrote:
| My thoughts exactly. More HN links here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39307700
| thiagoharry wrote:
| Nice. I know that Brazil also built its first computer in 1972,it
| was called "Patinho Feio" ("ugly duckling"), had 4KB of memory
| and can be seen in this picture: https://gizmodo.uol.com.br/wp-
| content/blogs.dir/8/files/2022...
|
| I was not aware about these Mexican computers. The fact that they
| had computers that could be programmed in LISP, not only in
| Assembly, is very cool.
| glimshe wrote:
| Brazil had a rich home computer industry in the 80s - although
| a lot of it were slightly modified clones (but not all).
| gnatman wrote:
| Brazil has a pretty rich home car manufacturing scene-
| learned about it in this Donut video:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8FFzS_CIHE
| Apocryphon wrote:
| The paper talks about Brazil in the conclusion:
|
| > In contrast to Mexico[;] Brazil, Singapore, South Korea,
| and Taiwan invested heavily in technological development in
| the 1980s. Brazil's case is significant because this country
| has many similarities to Mexico in terms of its economic and
| industrial development. Unlike Mexico, Brazil had relative
| success in creating a computer industry capable of producing
| its own technology. This was partly due to the decisive
| support from public and private sectors to create and
| continue developing a national computer industry.
| no_exit wrote:
| AI & Society Vol 37, Issue 3 has several articles on the
| history of cybernetics and computation across Mexico,
| Brazil, and other Latin American countries, for anyone
| interested in further reading.
|
| https://link.springer.com/journal/146/volumes-and-
| issues/37-...
| adl wrote:
| Here is the original paper in Spanish:
| https://www.ru.tic.unam.mx/bitstream/handle/123456789/1415/a...
| creer wrote:
| There are two stages really, right? Pre-microprocessor, it takes
| some effort to put together a programmable computer. Although now
| even amateurs implement computers based on 74-series and memory
| chips without a microprocessor.
|
| After the microprocessor, it was truly very manageable for an
| amateur anywhere to build a computer. A handful of chips get you
| there, with no requirement for elaborate PCB or routing.
| Wikipedia lists the Mark-8 as first published and available as
| kit, in 1974 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark-8 - from a
| chemistry grad student. So, any country is now in. No problem.
| And "more interesting" university or research projects shift to
| LISP machines, multiprocessors, coprocessors, etc, or the VLSI
| chips themselves. Which does not prevent countries from promoting
| "national microcomputers" (including OS and programming language
| translated in the local language). Around microprocessors what is
| also interesting in this second phase are the commercial and
| "industry" development attempts in various countries as described
| by Asianometry.
| javier_e06 wrote:
| I used to assemble Dell's Optiplex 486s at factory in North
| Austin back in the day (early 90s) before DELL move to Round
| Rock. Some of the components like the daughter board (a riser
| board to connect your LAN card or Souncard) was made in Mexico,
| among other parts. Great article.
| jll29 wrote:
| Thanks for sharing. What surprised me was that there was one
| group that tried to pull of parallel LISP on Z80s whereas the
| rest seem to be keen to use existing technology (no own operating
| system, no own microprocessor chip designs attempted).
| "Unfortunately, [...] the lack of collaboration and coordination
| among the various groups designing computers inMexico, and the
| lack of communication between industry and academia hindered the
| country's further development in this field."
|
| I found this sentence and subsequent passages to be the most
| interesting; how come Brazil could pull things off when a similar
| environment existed in Mexico and Brazil? Are Brazilians "more
| collaborative" as a tendency than Mexicans?Would be interesting
| to get more detail on good v. bad policy decisions in both
| countries that led to it.
|
| Minor corrections: Table 1. "intepreter" -> "interpreter"; "Hasta
| 64" -> "up to 64"
| huevosabio wrote:
| My suspicion is that Mexico has had either strong state
| industry periods or strong private industry periods, but seldom
| a combination.
|
| Brazil strikes me as having a decent history of industrial
| policy with the government partnering with private industry.
|
| That's why you have what I think it's a freer market in Mexico
| but stronger tech-heavy corporations in Brazil (eg embraer).
| bee_rider wrote:
| I wonder if there are just geopolitical or demographic issues.
| Brazil is larger than Mexico by a bit, there are a lot more
| Spanish speaking countries. Spain and Mexico are similar sizes,
| while Brazil is much larger than Portugal, plus Mexico has to
| deal with the US, and our endless appetite for talented people,
| being right next door...
| hcarvalhoalves wrote:
| Brazil had government incentives for fomenting the national
| industry as well as high taxation to deter imports.
|
| Nowadays only the high taxes remain (effectively a 100% tax),
| the current government is trying to implement new incentives to
| rebuild the national industry though.
|
| Also, I feel Mexico by being under strong influence of the US
| has been kind of sabotaged economically, while Brazil together
| with neighboring countries tried to develop a local market
| (MercoSul).
| akira2501 wrote:
| > include a small but rich (and sometimes astonishing) variety of
| systems ranging from research and teaching-oriented computers to
| high-performance personal computers.
|
| Why exactly would it be "astonishing?"
| pmcjones wrote:
| The paper notes: "Thus, an annual conference called 'Computers
| and Their Applications' was organized. It is interesting to note
| that the third edition of that conference, held in 1961, featured
| lectures by professors John McCarthy, Marvin L. Minsky6, and
| Harold V. McIntosh [9]." That conference was also known as the
| First International LISP Conference -- see
| https://mcjones.org/dustydecks/the-first-international-lisp-...
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