A history of the microcomputer industry in 300 adverts

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 ...

Microcomputer programming is a snap with the Iasis Computer in a Book

This is a real wild-card entry from Iasis Inc. of Sunnyvale in California - an actual functional computer in a book, with surrounding 250-page instructional material in the form o...

32K. One card. One low price. Only from The Digital Group

The Digital Group was entirely unrelated to the other Digital - Digital Equipment Corporation, or DEC - but was founded in Denver, Colorado, in 1974. It went bust only five years ...

HP85: It works like a big computer, only it's yours

HP's 85, launched this year, was billed as a "scientific desktop" computer. It was built around the company's own proprietary CPU, running at a surprisingly-slow 0.625MHz. However...

The Poly 88 Microcomputer System - from PolyMorphic

PolyMorphic had started out making expansion cards for the Altair 8800 - the 1975 micro that as well being the first affordable microcomputer in the modern sense also gave the wor...

Silicon Office: Now you can do all the filing with one finger

This is a slightly disturbing advert produced by Commodore in partnership with (or sponsorship of) Bristol Software Factory, for the latter's Silicon Office product. It's along t...

Micronet 800: Tunes your BBC into a new channel of news, views, facts and fun

Micronet was a popular subsection of the dial-up information system Prestel. Prestel - which shared a technological specification with television Viewdata systems like Ceefax and ...

Sinclair ZX Spectrum: Colour and sound... High Resolution graphics... from only £125!

This advert shows the Mark 1 Spectrum - as shown by the light grey keys - which retailed for £125 (or around £550 in 2025 terms), and in a bit of a Sinclair theme, promised "comin...

At £299 it's very little. At 64K it's very large

The Commodore 64 was the company's replacement for its VIC-20 machine, the limited but popular home computer which was the first to sell more than 1 million units. Designed by a ...

If you want flexibility and expandability, then you want the Microtan 65

The Microtan 65 was a single-board computer first built by Tangerine in 1980. Available as either a kit, or ready assembled, Tangerine sold around 10,000 of the 6502-based boards b...

CP/M Low-cost microcomputer software

Called at the time a "control program" for microcomputers, hence the initials CP, CP/M had become the de-factor operating system for many microcomputers of the mid 1970s, followin...

TLF Mini 12: Why buy a micro when you can buy a mini for less!

One of the most popular range of minicomputers in the 1970s was DEC's PDP - Programmed Data Processor - series of sometimes room-sized machines (once disk units and printers had b...

Cromemco Z-2: Meet the most powerful μC system available for dedicated work

Just a few months after Cromemco's Z-1 Z80-based micro comes the update in the shape of the Z-2. Only there doesn't seem to be that much updated - it still runs the same 4MHz Z8...

Dynabyte builds the Great Memory

Mangling grammar slightly to get in a reference to the Great Pyramids of Giza, and going the extra mile by apparently cutting up one of its memory boards to make an actual pyramid...

The Heathkit H11 Digital Computer

This advert, for Heathkit's H11 microcomputer, was part of an extravangant sixteen page spread in September 1977's Byte - The Small Systems Journal magazine. It introduced the c...