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Julio Hirose reports to us:
This is really a very weird computer. As far I remember, despite the fact
that CCE MC1000´s architecture is technically similar to the MSX
hardware, MC1000 is closely related to the TRS Color Computer or CoCo
(they are not compatible, though). Some programs from CoCo machines were
also ported to MC1000. In the 80´s.
Because of the internal market regulations, Brazil produced a lot of
computers that were merely clones of the originals made in the US, Europe
or Japan. Some of these clones, however, were "almost" similar,
but not entirely compatible, with the originals. The MC 1000 was one of
those "strange undefined" computers (another famous clone was
TK2000, that "resembles" the Apple II - although it is not able
to run Apple II software).
Various Information from Emerson José Silveira da Costa:
The MC1000 has a SHIFT key, it had only uppercase characters. The SHIFT key was used for fast typing, writing at once the BASIC reserved word above each letter-key:
shift + ... = ...
Q = STOP
W = LOAD
E = PEEK
R = RUN
T = TLOAD
Y = PLOT
U = SAVE
I = INPUT
O = CONT
P = PRINT
A = READ
S = STEP
D = DATA
F = FOR
G = GOTO
H = HOME
J = THEN
K = POKE
L = LIST
Z = RETURN
X = NEXT
C = CLEAR
V = RESTORE
B = GOSUB
N = SOUND
M = DIM
This is not MC-1000's full set of BASIC reserved words, just the ones you can fast-type with SHIFT.
Differently from the Sinclair computers, the inserted word is not "atomic". You can delete parts of it, just as if you have typed it letter-by-letter.
Pressing SHIFT+RESET resets the computer.
The up-arrow key (between P and RETURN) actually produces an up-arrow character. It is the exponentiation operator.
Characters with ASCII code 128-256 were reverse-video versions of the characters 0-127.
The "MC" in the name stands for "microcomputer".
It has joystick ports on both sides (Atari 2600 compatible).
There was no cursor positioning statement (LOCATE, PRINT @). I discovered later (by disassembling its ROM) an undocumented way of doing it with a CHR$(27) escape sequence.
Variable names could have any number of letters, but only the two first ones were significant (HI, HISCR and HIGHSCORE represented the same variable).
It had no function like INKEY$. An undocumented PEEK() at an specific address could return the ASCII code of the last-pressed key, but you didn't know if it had already been released. It was no use anyway -- the BASIC interpreter freezed until you released a pressed key... (Yeah, forget about action games in BASIC here!) :-)
No cursor movement keys. You were supposed to rubout/retype if you had an error in the middle of a line.
MC-1000's BASIC is much like Apple II's BASIC but not totally, and the hardware is completely different. So you could hardly use an Apple II's program on MC-1000 unadapted.
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