A history of the microcomputer industry in 300 adverts

Introducing Macintosh. What makes it tick. And talk.

Famously introduced by an Orwellian Ridley Scott-directed advert at the 1984 Super Bowl and billed by Steve Jobs as "the fastest and most powerful computer ever placed in the han...

Here's an up-front saving on the Tandy 16K Colour Computer 2

Here's a festively-themed advert for the second version of Tandy's Colour Computer 2, or "CoCo". With £20 off coz it's Christmas, the CoCo was available for only £99.95 - only £...

Introducing the new and improved IBM PC. From £49.50

Much has been written about how CP/M, the pioneering, multi-platform operating system written by Gary Kildall and his company Digital Research - originally known as Intergalactic ...

The BBC Master Compact: Think of it as a down payment on your child's future uniform

The BBC Master Compact was an entry in the BBC Master series, which in turn was produced as the follow-up to the BBC Model 'B' Micro. It was designed jointly by Acorn and design...

Micronet 800: Nice password, shame about the identity

With an advert containing a theme still relevant to a modern audience - "your special identity number and personal password the valuable key to a huge database" - Micronet 800 wa...

Trad? Not the Elliott 503!

The Elliott 503 was built by British computer company Elliott Brothers, a subsidiary of the Elliott Automation Group, as a much faster but software-compatible evolution of the 80...

A beginner's guide to the best in business computers

ACT had carved out a briefly-successful niche in the UK with its Apricot range of micros, several of which touted their "Sirius" compatibility, rather than the usual IBM. Howeve...

With PCjr, you can add options that haven't even been invented yet

The PCjr, also know by its development code-name of "Peanut" - and variously as Hercules, Sprite, Pigeon and Pancake - was IBM's attempt to crack the home market, which at the tim...

Be who you want to be: The new Sinclair has one big disk advantage

Hot on the heels of the Sinclair 128K +2 Spectrum, released in August of this year, came the +3 version, which had the same slightly-non-standard 3" floppy drive that owner Amstra...

Turn your Spectrum into a Spectrum+ for just £20

1985 was the beginning of the end for Sinclair, at least as far as Uncle Clive was concerned. The company's "next generation" QL, launched in January 1984 but not actually avail...

Introducing the personal computer you've been waiting for: The Exidy Sorcerer

Exidy Incorporated was the third-largest producer of video arcade games in the US when it was encouraged by Paul Terrell to enter the consumer electronics market towards the end o...

Re-balance This Sheet in One Second

Like several computers of the day, Acorn's BBC Micro could take software in the form of PROM - programmable read-only memory. However whilst some, like the VIC-20, would take it...

Atari Star Raiders: New game, private property

This "advert", which appeared in the pre-Christmas edition of Personal Computer World and which encourages infringers to write to Graham Daubney - who would later become director ...

Atari 520STM: To help you destroy the aliens, we've massacred the price

The Atari 520STM was fundamentally the same machine as the previous ST model, except that it came with a built-in TV modulator and had its OS and GEM graphics manager supplied in ...

Instead of computers catching up with technology, technology now has to catch up with a computer

In the summer of 1982, one-time Olympic chess player and former chess grandmaster David Levy, of Intelligent Software - a company best known for producing programs like Cyrus IS C...