A history of the microcomputer industry in 300 adverts

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 1960s and '70s was DEC's PDP - Programmed Data Processor - series of sometimes room-sized machines (once disk units and printers had been added)....

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 was launched comes an update in the shape of the Z-2. Only there doesn't seem to be that much updated - it still runs the same 4MHz Z80 microprocessor,...

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 - complete with awesome...

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 company's H8 and H11 micros,...

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 in-house microprocessor...

Rockwell AIM-65: As You Like It!

The AIM-65 - Advanced Interactive Microcomputer - was a development computer based upon MOS Technology's 6502, and as such it was a bit like an improved MOS/Commodore KIM-1. So much so that it actually...

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, Lancashire. Altos is still...

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 RAF's 124 Squadron -...

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 created in favour of development...

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 finally bailed out of...

Der Schnellste PC der Welt - Tut's Auch

This advert from German magazine Der Spiegel - which roughly translates as "The fastest PC in the world - that'll do" - continues a frequently-visited meme of microcomputer advertising - that of wheeling...

BBC External Services

This advert seems to represent the end of a period of retrenchment for Acorn following a difficult year which had seen it bailed out by Italian company Olivetti back in February. For most of the year...

The Archimedes A3000

The A3000 was an update of the original Archimedes - also known in at least some parts of the press as the ARM, or more simply the Arc or Archie - which had been launched in 1987 and which first started...

Introducing Macintosh. What makes it tick. And talk.

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

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

Here's a festively-themed advert for the second version of Tandy's Color Computer 2, or "CoCo". With £20 off coz it's Christmas, the CoCo was available for only £99.95 - only [[100|1984]] in [[now]]...