1981 adverts

Fortronic F500: The £4,000 microcomputer that thinks it's an £8,000 microcomputer

This advert seems to be treading somewhat risky ground with its assertion that somehow £4,000 (about [[4000|1981]] in [[now]] money) is actually cheap for a micro, when something like the top-of-the-range...

RAIR: Black Box III Microcomputer solutions

Nearly nine years before the band Black Box released chart-topping track "Ride on Time", the other "Black Box" - from RAIR - was released. Based on Intel's 8085, and later 8088 CPUs, and with an impressive...

Butel-Athena: The ideal Small Business System

From another company that appears to have left almost no trace whatsoever - Butel-Comco Limited of Southampton - comes this advert for the Athena, one of a handful of microcomputers that came with a built-in...

Prestel - the biggest breakthrough in communication since the telephone and television

By late 1981, Tangerine - a company founded in 1978 as a video display card manufacturer but which by now was more famous for its Microtan 65 computer - had released the Tantel Prestel adapter, via its...

If you think you've seen it all before, then take a closer look at the Sig/Net

This is the first known advert for Chris Shelton's Sig/Net, the range of hardware which is considered as perhaps the first ever modular multi-user personal computer system. With its budget monochrome...

95% off the cost of financial modelling

Although this advert is for software and not a microcomputer, it does come from Applied Computer Techniques (ACT) of Birmingham - a company that had been importing Computhink's MiniMax and selling it...

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...

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...

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....

Three Atari Video Computer Systems Must Be Won!

Here's a nice competition advert which featured in a March or April edition of the comic 2000AD, and which offered the chance to win one of three Atari VCS2600 (sometimes known as "Woody") game consoles,...

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...

Outside of the garden you need a computer that can grow - Ithaca InterSystems DPS-1

This adverts shows one of many ageing Zilog Z80-based machines of this era running on an S-100 bus: the DPS-1, from Ithaca InterSystems, founded in Ithaca, New York, in 1977. The company was originally...

Now the integral system with performance, quality, expandability and reliability

The ABC24 and ABC26 were Z80 micros which differed only in the size of floppy disk drive they offered - either 620K on dual 5¼" drives, or an impressive 2.3MB on dual 8" drives. The machines were actually...

The $149.95 Personal Computer: Introducing the Sinclair ZX81

Before Sinclair cut a deal with US watch-manufacturer Timex to distributes the ZX81 in the US as the Timex Sinclair 1000 or 1500, it was available in its original "Sinclair ZX81" form, as this US advert...

The Onyx C8000 Series

Onyx was formed in December 1978 by two former Zilog employees, Robert Marsh and Kip Myers, with some additional input from fellow former Zilog employee Doug Broiles, who had left the CPU company to join...