1978 adverts

Altos presents a new standard in quality and reliability - Altos ACS 8000

This is an advert for the Altos "Sun Series" ACS 8000, made by Walsh Avenue, Santa Clara, California-based Altos Computer Systems. Altos was founded at the end of 1977 by David Jackson and Roger Vass,...

The world's most powerful microcomputer system is far more affordable than you may think

Formed in 1975 in Hiram, Ohio, but by 1978 based in Aurora, Ohio Scientific had started out producing a small 6502-based single-board computer called the Superboard. The C3-B of the advert was a revision...

SWTPC: System B $4,495.00

It's another entry in that curious sideline of the early microcomputer industry: computers as furniture. On offer is Southwest Technical Products' System B - a CT-64 terminal, dual 1.2MB 8" floppy disk...

MK 14 - the only low-cost keyboard-addressable microprocessor!

What would become the home-computing part of the Sinclair empire was at this time operating under the moniker of Science of Cambridge, whilst the Sinclair name itself was still attached to the now-part-nationalised...

Ohio C2-8P: An exceptional value in personal computing

Released at about the same time as the company's much larger (and more expensive) Challenger III range, the II was aimed more at the small-business and personal end of the market - as seen by the cassette...

COSMAC VIP: $249 gets the entire family into creating video games

RCA's COSMAC VIP was a small kit-built microcomputer, based around the COSMAC - COmplementary Symmetry Monolithic Array Computer - CPU and which was aimed at the video market created by games like Atari's...

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 name was an anagram...

TRS-80 - The biggest name in little computers. Complete and ready to go NOW!

It's another advert for one of the "1977 Trinity" - the Z80-based Tandy TRS-80. A year after its launch, the Level-II system had appeared, with an expanded BASIC in ROM, now at 12K, and a numeric keypad...

Triton One-Board Computer

The Triton one-board computer started life jointly sponsored by Transam and Electronics Today International (ETI), as a sort of cross-marketing collaboration. Transam provided the hardware in kit or...

The 200 mph micro

Whilst it feels like pretty much every modern car is more computer than motor, the idea of using electronics to manage some or all of a car's engine and performance dates back decades, with Engine Control...

The British Micro: RAIR Black Box Microcomputer

This is probably the first advert to feature RAIR's Black Box - a microcomputer that managed to survive until at least 1983 and which became popular as an OEM machine, cropping up with Ryman and Innsite...

Low cost, expandable Limrose LMC 6800-2

Limrose Electronics was founded in May 1971 by Dr Ravi Raizada as a seller of electronic logic tutors which taught how basic logic gates operated. It went on to release the MTP8080 Microtutor - a teaching...

New from Texas Instruments. The world's most powerful pocket calculators. For the easiest problem solving ever.

From the company which "made micro-electronic calculators and watches possible" - Texas Instruments - comes a contender for Commodore's "button monster" crown, albeit with a mere 45 buttons compared to...

The New Electronic Wonderland: Atari VCS/2600

Although the Fairchild "Channel F" had pioneered the idea of a video-game console which used generic microprocessors and plug-in cartridges - as opposed to the older systems which had hardwired discrete...

If it isn't Shugart, it isn't Minifloppy

The apocryphal story tells of a meeting in a restaurant with a customer who complained that the 8" floppy drives of the day were just too big for the smaller "personal computers" that had been appearing...