A history of the microcomputer industry in 300 adverts

Pluto: run rings around the competition!

The Pluto graphics card from IO Research, first launched in 1982, could perhaps lay claim to being one of the first "high end" graphics cards aimed at consumers. Re-sold by Nasco...

If you want to know which computer to buy, ask your expert.

This is another of those adverts popular at the time which like to suggest that anyone over 20 couldn't possibly know how to use a computer. It was largely true. Before the home ...

One Sol-20 equals three computers.

Here's another advert for Processor Technology's Sol-20 - the microcomputer designed by Lee Felsenstein in 1976. It's offering the Sol-20 in three bundles - the Sol System I, II...

The Commodore 64 is compact and nippy. But its memory... well that's a little different.

Commodore was clearly milking the "elephants have a long memory" thing as this advert for the Commodore 64, first launched at the Hanover Computer Fair in April 1982, shows. It ...

Never in the history of business systems has so little done so much

Both the "budget" Amiga 500 and higher-end A2000 were announced at the same time during the winter CES show in Las Vegas in 1987. However, Commodore actually managed to start shi...

It's only £695. And that's the last reason you should buy it.

The Commodore 500 was part of the CBM-II Series - an attempt to produce an update for the original Commodore PET and seen as the company's last chance to break the business market...

It's not all Greek to Context

The Context was built by C/WP (Computers/Word Processors) of the UK from a design bought from Ontel in the US, where it was known as the Amigo. It was a dual-CPU machine, with a ...

Newbury. Growing mighty with the micros

Newbury Laboratories will forever be associated with the NewBrain - the small, portable micro that was temporarily the choice to be the BBC Microcomputer. However, development w...

Turn your Apple into the world's most versatile personal computer.

This is a real curiosity from Microsoft which shows how different the company was before the power of its coming hegemony with Intel and its own MS-DOS - and later Windows operati...

A Minstrel 4 eight-user package - £15,564 complete

It's often said that the rise of cheap commodity PCs and affordable networking killed off the multi-user system, but it's still here in 1987 in the form of Hotel Microsystems' Min...

For those that do, those that don't and those that might

The Japanese Sord M5, launched in October 1982 at the Tokyo Data Show, was one of a handful of computers - a group which included the Sinclair ZX Spectrum and Jupiter Ace - that d...

SWTPC: System B $4,495.00

It's another entry in that curious sideline of the early microcomputer industry: computers as furniture. On offer is Southwest Technical Products' System B - a CT-64 terminal, du...

New Amiga 500 - Now other home computers are just toys

The original Amiga, or A1000 as it came to be known, nearly didn't make it when it launched in 1986, as Commodore was going through some major financial problems whilst its potent...

Call Microcentre for Cromemco

It's three years into the era of the all-conquering IBM PC, and Cromemco - a company founded back in 1974 - is still hanging on. What's more, it's still producing broadly-similar...

Will you be the first Earthling to win a place among the Elite?

Elite was perhaps Acornsoft's most famous game. It was written by Ian Bell and David Braben, was hugely influential and, according to Sophie Wilson, one of the designers of the BB...