1984 adverts

It's lonely at the top: Tulip System 1 of Compudata

Founded in 1979 as Compudata, Tulip Computers is worth a mention for a couple of reasons. Firstly, when Exidy stopped manufacturing the Sorceror micro that Compudata had been im...

When you add up the facts, no other micro equals ours

It's another advert for British Olivetti's M20 - in this case the entry-level dual-floppy M20 CQ, available for £2,064 - about £8,710 in 2025. The M20 - first released in 1982 - ...

"When You Have An Enormous Memory, There's No End To The Things You Can Do"

From the time when 64K was still quite a lot of memory for a home computer, comes this advert from Commodore featuring a cute baby elephant with a whole pile of software piled on ...

Three cures for amnesia: The new Oric Atmos 48K

Billed as a new computer when it was launched at the Which Computer? Show at the NEC in Birmingham between the 17th and 20th January 1984, the Atmos was in reality just an update ...

The new Argus Pro-personal. Above all, a true 16-bit computer

Ferranti was a major UK-based electrical engineering firm which had been established in 1885. It had built its first computer in 1951, but was perhaps more well-known in the mic...

To get the most out of your new computer, you really need to use your feet

The SX-64 "portable" wasn't a new idea as there had been similar attempts at luggables in the past, for instance the Digital Group's Mini Bytemaster - although this did have a muc...

The Xcalibur portable: The Apple IIe-based system for people on the move

This is another advert for an official Apple clone from the days before Apple changed its mind and decided it wasn't going to allow such things. Rather than a straight-up Apple ...

The ORB Microcomputer from ABS Computers

Possibly the funkiest-looking microcomputer ever built, the Orb from ABS Computers of Brighton came in one of eight possible colours, including orange which, according to Personal...

Personal computers from Fujitsu. Japan's leading computer manufacturer

Founded in 1923 as a joint venture between Furukawa Electric Co. Limited and Seimens of Germany, originally as a telecommunications company, Fujitsu was part of the much-feared Ja...

There are spreadsheets and spreadsheets. And there's Multiplan

Multiplan was part of the wave of spreadsheet software that followed on from the release of Visicalc for the Apple II in 1979. It had been written in such a way that it could be...

NEC personal computers

NEC was another of those companies, like Texas Instruments and Commodore, that was vertically intergrated - in this case making the computers as well as - according to the advert ...

Discover the remarkable NCR Decision Mate V

Hot on the heels (well, not really) of 1962's NCR 390, comes National Cash Register's Decision Mate V. It was a dual-processor machine, with an 8-bit Zilog Z80 and a 16-bit Inte...

All microcomputers are made for tomorrow. But what about the day after?

Here's another also-ran in the micro stakes from yet another typewriter company - Olympia International. The curiously-named "People" was an 8086-based machine that ran either C...

Free software, only £225

Looking much like its contemporary - the Prestel adapter - and with the same BBC Micro case-matching shape, Acorn's new Teletext adapter was perhaps better value as at least the c...

The Company Computer vs. the Personal Computer

1983 had been the year of Ethernet, with 3Com breaking cover as the first commercial manufacturer, with its network card appearing in January on the Altos micro. At the time it ...