A history of the microcomputer industry in 300 adverts

With PCjr, you can add options that haven't even been invented yet

The PCjr, also know by its development code-name of "Peanut" - and variously as Hercules, Sprite, Pigeon and Pancake - was IBM's attempt to crack the home market, which at the time was mostly owned by...

The new Sinclair has one big disk advantage

Hot on the heels of the Sinclair 128K +2 Spectrum, released in August of this year, came the +3 version, which had the same slightly-non-standard 3" floppy drive that Amstrad used on its other machine...

Turn your Spectrum into a Spectrum+ for just £20

1985 was the beginning of the end for Sinclair, at least as far as Uncle Clive was concerned. The company's "next generation" QL, launched in January 1984 but not actually available until April of tha...

Introducing the personal computer you've been waiting for: The Exidy Sorcerer

Designed by Paul Terrell as a response to the Commodore PET and the Tandy/Radio Shack TRS-80, the frankly-enormous-looking Exidy didn't last for very long in its native US, being cancelled in 1979 - t...

"Re-balance This Sheet in One Second"

Like several computers of the day, Acorn's BBC Micro could take software in the form of PROM - programmable read-only memory. However whilst some, like the VIC-20, would take it in the form of a plug-...

Atari Star Raiders: New game, private property

This "advert", which appeared in the pre-Christmas edition of Personal Computer World and which encourages infringers to write to Graham Daubney - who would later become director of developments for S...

Atari 520STM: To help you destroy the aliens, we've massacred the price

The Atari 520STM was fundamentally the same machine as the previous ST model, except that it came with a built-in TV modulator and had its OS and GEM graphics manager supplied in ROM. The "special off...

Instead of computers catching up with technology, technology now has to catch up with a computer

In the summer of 1982, one-time Olympic chess player and former chess grandmaster David Levy, of Intelligent Software - a company best known for producing programs like Cyrus IS Chess, written by Rich...

Kaypro: The last word in portable micros

Built by Non-Linear Systems but designed by an out-sourced circuit design consultant as a direct competitor to the Osborne 1, the Kaypro II - Roman-numeralled like the Apple II - was for a while a hig...

Olivetti - Compatibility plus!

Along with almost every major manufacturer of the time, Olivetti was not one to refuse a spot on the bandwagon that was the IBM PC format, here offering an 8086 "true 16 bit" PC clone, although with a...

On average, there is one new software package written for the IBM Personal Computer every day

IBM's original PC - the 5150 - had been the machine that spawned a whole new era of generic, dull and identi-kit computers which ended up trouncing everything that had gone before. However, this was n...

Ask an expert why the Electron's the best micro in its class

Another advert for the Acorn Electron, the cut-down version of the BBC Micro. In common with many other Electron adverts, it stresses the fact that it's mostly the same as the expensive £400 BBC Micro...

"All you need to do this, is this: The Commodore 128 and 64"

Officially launched at the 1985 January Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and built with the same case used for the late-model C64s, the Commodore 128 was the company's last 8-bit computer. Even ...

Z88: Buying a powerful personal computer is no longer a big issue. Or a big deal.

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...

Introducing Sol Systems - A complete computer/terminal concept

First shipped only one month before the date of this advert, in December 1976, the Sol-20, designed by Lee Felsenstein, was an S-100-based system which offered a range of CPU options (according to the...