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November 1987
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...
March 1985
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...
January 1979
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...
September 1984
"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-...
December 1982
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...
June 1987
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...
April 1985
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...
October 1984
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...
December 1984
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...
December 1984
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...
February 1985
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...
July 1985
"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 ...
November 1987
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...
January 1977
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...
December 1986
Programming the 68000 by Metacomco
St Pauls, Bristol-based Metacomco had been quietly writing system software and compilers for the Motorola 68000 processor, and had also previously licenced its own 8086 Basic interpreter for $800,000 ...