A history of the microcomputer industry in 300 adverts

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...

If you can imagine it, you can achieve it with the Noval 760

Noval was founded in the summer of 1976 as a spinout of Gremlin Industries, a manufacturer of electronic arcade games. Its stated mission aim was to supply the market with its own ...

Rockwell AIM-65: As You Like It!

The AIM-65 - Advanced Interactive Monitor - was a development computer based upon MOS Technology's 6502, and as such it was a bit like an improved MOS/Commodore KIM-1. It was co...

In essence, the best in integrated circuit technology

First released around 1978, Altos is still offering the same machine - the ACS 8000 - in this advert from Altos's exclusive distributors in the UK, Logitek, based in Chorley, Lanc...

The Aviator - One man's flight to save his home town

The image above is a scan of the pre-press version of the advert and is used with permission. © Acornsoft Ltd 1985 This particular advert - which shows a Mark VI Spitfire of the ...

The new IBM Personal System/2. Marry into the future without divorcing the past.

By 1986 IBM was suffering, partly from the rise of the clones of its original IBM 5150 (the "PC"), but also because it had slowed down product releases in the PC market it had cre...

What will you do with 12-year-old programmers when he reaches 16?

This is an interesting advert - gender stereotyping aside - in the form of its implied message, from a company that controlled much of the UK Schools' IT hardware market until it ...