A history of the microcomputer industry in 300 adverts

A chip off the old block

Torch's Graduate was an unusual hybrid, being part sort-of IBM PC, with an Intel 8088 CPU and a pair of 720K 5¼" floppy disk drives, but no input or display of its own, as this wa...

Memotech Personal Computer

Thanks to the lead-time involved in placing adverts in a monthly magazine, which seemed to be around six to eight weeks, Memotech had already gone bust, or was on the cusp of it, ...

Frank Slater knew all about cleaning, but it took IBM to help him tidy up his accounts

Here's another advert for IBM's PS/2, or rather it isn't as such as whilst it features a PS/2 in the office photo, it is - in common with a lot of IBM's adverts - more about the c...

Don't worry. He's on your side

Sharp's MZ-700 was essentially a colour version of the venerable MZ-80K, which had been around since 1979. It was also the first Sharp micro to be launched without a built-in moni...

The Soroc IQ120

Soroc was founded in Anaheim, California, in 1975 by five ex-employees of Lear Siegler Incorporated (LSI), another terminal manufacturer. Various sources suggest that the company...

Key into Maxi-power @ Micro-price

ECD was founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in November 1974. Its first products were a capacitance meter and an industrial digital thermometer, both of which sold well. At the ...

Discover the secrets of the RAIR Black Box

It's an enigmatic advert from an enigmatic company - RAIR - for its original Black Box microcomputer. It looks to be in almost Cadbury branding, and in keeping with the chocolat...

When you get right down to it, nobody does it better

Carly Simon might disagree that "nobody does it better", but here's a nice advert from Vector Graphic for a whole range of its S-100 boards. The boards include a Z80 board for $2...

Asda price - for every Tom, Dick and Einstein

Asda - the UK supermarket chain founded in 1965 whose name is a contraction of ASquith and DAiries - is clearly not a microcomputer company, or even any sort of computer company w...

The profesionals - Zenith Data Systems

Only months after Zenith had purchased the Heath Company from Schlumberger - forming Zenith Data System - comes this advert for a terminal and two micros. Actually, the Z89 micro...

Now we've removed the biggest obstacle between you and the famous Apple IIe

This is a curious and apparently one-off advert from Apple positioning the Apple IIe as part of a Professional Home Computer Package. It's also possibly the only Apple advert that...

The 3 best takeaways of all time

Here's an amusing advert from Epson for its "PC Portable", otherwise known as the Q150A, which was launched at the beginning of 1988 - with the hard-disk version being launched in...

How much computer can you buy for £450?

It's another advert for Amstrad's PC 1512, this time featuring a nice bit of analogue Photoshopping showing competitors' micros chopped up to represent how much you could get for ...

SuperBrain II: Summa Cum Laude!

This advert appears to be about the only one that Intertec ever did itself that actually features its SuperBrain micro, which was fairly omnipresent from its launch in 1979 and fo...

Introducing the TeleCAT-286. AT performance for £2695 complete.

TeleVideo - the terminals company founded in San Jose, California, in 1975 - was one of relatively few companies from that era which survived through the era of the IBM PC and bey...