A history of the microcomputer industry in 300 adverts

Who says you can't get fired for buying IBM?

Wang, founded in 1951 by Dr. An Wang and Dr. G.Y. Chu, was a US computer company based in Massachussetts, US, which, at its peak in the 1980s generated revenues of $3 billion bef...

The DASH-80, designed and assembled in Great Britain

It's a mystery entry, courtesy of Aculab, for the DASH-80 - a Z80B-based machine operating at 6MHz (not 6 milli-Hertz as the advert would have it) with 128K RAM. It ran CP/M and...

Think ahead! ITT 3030 Programmed for Growth

When Apple had been a "new struggling company with few resources and was a big consumer group with manufacturing and marketing ability in Europe", ITT had secured the gig to manu...

Have you got what it takes to take what we've got?

This advert from Canon was aimed at potential resellers rather than buyers and was for the Canon CX-1, a machine first announced in 1981. Following the announcement, Canon went ...

RAIR: The box is not always black

This advert from RAIR shows the company's credentials as an OEM supplier, with the its original "Black Box" - shown on the bottom - also showing up as the Innsite micro, Ryman bus...

BASF gives a good deal

As if to prove that absolutely everyone seemed to be having a go at the microcomputer industry, even German globo-chemico-corp BASF launched its own micro, ostensibly off the bat o...

EuroC - Simplicity is the watchword

Built for Euro-Calc by Plessey Microsystems, the EuroC was firmly aimed at businesses with its "computer as furniture" manufacture and extensive list of requisite business softwar...

A Map of connections in the early microcomputer industry

This is an attempt at a visualization of the connections in the sometimes-incestuous early microcomputer industry. It is not yet claimed to be complete, but should be seen as a wor...

How to solve Systems problems - Zilog's MCZ family

Here's a rare advert from Zilog for its MCZ range of micros - everything from an entry-level floppy-disk-based model up to the MCZ 1/35 rack-mount machine with 10MB storage. Th...

Acorn Atom - from Acorn Computer

This was Acorn's first advert for its first full consumer-oriented micro - the Acorn Atom. The Atom was a 6502-based machine and was available primarily in kit form. It was a nat...

Tandy - new lower prices on the TRS-80

Tandy had announced its follow-up to the 1977 TRS-80 Model 1 at the end of 1979 and was expecting to take orders from the beginning of 1980. Even so, it wasn't initially expecting ...

RAIR Terminal Choice - choose from the best

This is another fairly early advert from enigmatic company RAIR. RAIR appeared to have started out, like ACT, as a timesharing bureau as well as a supplier of peripherals and te...

New from Tangerine Computer Systems - the Microtan 65

This is an early advert from Tangerine announcing the company's new Microtan 65 in its simplest form - just a board with chips on it and an RF-modulator to drive a standard domest...

The cheapest most advanced business Microcomputer

Marketed as the ACT Series 800 and built by Computhink of California, where it was known as the Minimax, the ACT800 was ACT's first micro and came some 15 years after the company'...

Sig/Net For a growing business

Shelton Instruments Limited, of White Lion Street near Angel Tube Station in London's Islington, had been started back in 1970 by Chris Shelton, who ended up working a stint at Na...