A history of the microcomputer industry in 300 adverts

Designed for expanding minds

This advert for the Transam Tuscan S100 curiously features product photos of the older Tuscan before it was rebranded. However, at least it manages to be one of the few adverts for the machine where...

Expand your Horizons

With an odd mixture of tech and Monty Python visuals, here's an advert from Hotel Microsystems, the company that would become HM Systems, which clearly hints at HM's change of direction which would lead...

Another successful deal completed while Genie III looks after your business

Adverts for microcomputers in this era can be broadly grouped into three or four types: a micro sitting on a table surrounded by something incongruous like the family silver, a micro in an office being...

SWTPC Computer Systems: Nothing beats experience

This three-page advert, which is great for viewers in dark mode but which is not so good for the consumption of black printing ink, shows that Southwest Technical Products (Computers) Company Ltd was...

The complete multi-purpose, multi-terminal desktop computer system for business

After several years selling the same ACS 8000 system, Altos is finally out with something new: the Series 5. And whilst one of the company's earliest adverts featured its micro stuck on a table with...

U-Net: Professional-standard micronetwork software

U-Microcomputers, or more commonly U-Micro, started out in the late 1970s as the factory-appointed distributor of Ohio Scientific's range of machines for the north and midlands regions of the UK. Products...

Introducing performance to the microcomputer-based small business system

On the face of it, the PBM-1000 is yet another standard business micro, what with its Z80A processor, 80K RAM, 5¼" floppy disk drives and CP/M. Possibly designed by IMSAI 8080 co-designer Joe Killian,...

A powerful multi-user system for under £6,600

As more adverts are added to the collection, the challenge is on to discover more and more obscure microcomputers that time forgot. And this is defintely one such computer: the Clenlo Ace Multi-User...

Sinclair Owners - We'll give you £50 trade-in when you trade-up!

This is a curious attempt from Commodore to woo users of the ZX80 and ZX81 - small, low-memory and purely home computers that plugged into the television and could by held in one hand - to switch to a...

New Adler Alphatronic: Now £1550 can buy you a lot of computer

Here's an advert for the new Alphatronic from Triumph-Adler of West Germany - one of several traditional office equipment manufacturers, like Olivetti and Olympia, to enter the new-ish microcomputer market....

The systems: Rader 1000 and Rader 2000

Even though Rade Systems of Ballards Lane in north London ran this advert for at least a year - despite being full of grocer's apostrophes - the company itself is another of those that has managed to...

Ohio is now in Berkshire

Acknowledging that the opening line would "upset geographers but delight OEM systems designers", this advert from Ohio Scientific of Aurora in Ohio announced the opening of the company's UK office near...

Transdata's Cx 500 microcomputer family: the problem solvers

Here's another Z80-based system, albeit with a slight twist in that it's aimed not just at business but at the scientific community. The entry-level Cx 502 had a Z80A CPU, 64K RAM and twin 8" IBM-format...

Wouldn't you like an Oscar for a superb performance

Here's an advert for yet another Z80A-based, S-100 CP/M system, from Interactive Data Systems (IDS) of Milton Keynes. At least this time the advert admits as such, suggesting somewhat understatedly that...

The NeXTStation has landed at Sign Express

After Apple had released its Macintosh in 1984, it was almost immediately found to be slow, thanks to its limited memory and disk space, and by 1985 there were already plans for a "fast Macintosh". ...