A history of the microcomputer industry in 300 adverts

The New Tandy 102: Technology ni yoru shinpo

It's three years since Tandy launched its TRS-80/100 portable computer, and it's back with an updated model, which is smaller and now comes with a built-in modem. It's also completely lost the TRS-80...

Amstrad CPC 6128: While other computers are still under starters orders, you're off and running

The Amstrad CPC 6128 (although the CPC part seems to have been dropped) was first launched in the US in June 1985, before appearing in the UK in August the same year. It had only been six months since...

Kaypro PC

The earlier Kaypro 2 luggable, built by Andrew Kay's Non-Linear Systems as a direct competitor to the Osborne 1, was very successful, selling around 10,000 units a month at one point. Its popularity was...

Concurrent CP/M - Multiplies the power of your microcomputer

Digital Research had been set up in 1976 to capitalise on the popularity of Gary Kildall's CP/M operating system - the popular and de-facto standard OS for most serious microcomputers during the 1970s....

Kaypro: Our Winchesters have been winning the West

Microcomputer adverts are never shy of going with the most obvious simile or metaphor, and this one certainly does that with the placement of an actual Winchester shotgun against a Kaypro 10 - the 10MB...

They're both analytical and calculating

It's not that common for microcomputer adverts to get political, but this one from Victor is getting stuck right in, with a comment on the lack of action for small businesses from the prime minister,...

Zorba: The portable personal with more

This almost-comedy wannabe hack at the Osborne and Kaypro market, with its claim that cramming 80 columns on to a 7" screen is somehow a good thing, appeared in 1983 and was considered as one of the last...

Apricot Collection starts where others finish - then GEM gives you more

This is an advert for an Apricot bundle - the "collection" - which includes the F2 micro, a monitor, printer, keyboard and a tracker-ball mouse. The whole lot came together with Digital Research's GEM...

Gemini: Pick a disk... any disk

Gemini had been founded by John Marshall shortly after the receivers had been sent in to his former company Nascom - builder of what was once Britain's most popular kit computer, the Nascom 1. Nascom...

The Tandata PA - Data/voice communicating workstation

Tandata originally formed out of Tangerine, which produced a single-board computer called the Microtan 65. By 1984 it had become Tandata Holdings PLC, with Tandata Marketing Limited as one of its divisions....

Casio PB-100: The best way to put 1,568 steps in your pocket

Casio's PB-100 was one of several small "pocket computers" released around the same time that look more like calculators, however it was programmable as it had a resident version of BASIC capable of storing...

From Clive Sinclair: The No-Compromise Z88 Computer

After the financial turmoil bought on by the QL fiasco - late delivery, dodgy early firmware, and the curse of the Microdrive - together with other disasters like the Pocket TV and the C5, developed by...

RM Nimbus: Success breeds success

After selling what seems like the same machine since forever, or at least 1977 - the Research Machines 380Z - RM has finally stepped into the world of the IBM PC. Except that it's not quite - it ran...

Introducing the new PC Quattro from ICL

The multi-user ICL Quattro - so-called because it could support up to four users - was a development of the RAIR Black Box - the machine which ICL had already used as its first "ICL PC". It seems to show...

Not another new company with a personal computer

Branding itself as a "new" company, ITT had actually been around for a while. It was already famous for its ITT 2020 microcomputer of 1979 - the first official clone of the Apple II for the European market....