A history of the microcomputer industry in 300 adverts

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 Chess, written by Richard...

Kaypro 2: The last word in portable micros

Built by Andrew Kay's Non-Linear Systems, with the motherboard designed by an out-sourced circuit-design consultant, and created as a direct competitor to the Osborne 1, the Kaypro 2 was for a while a...

Olivetti - Compatibility plus!

Along with almost every major manufacturer of the time, Olivetti was not one to refuse a spot on the bandwagon that was the IBM PC format. Here, it's offering an 8086 "true 16 bit" PC clone, although...

On average, there is one new software package written for the IBM Personal Computer every day

IBM's original PC - the 5150 - had been the machine that spawned a whole new era of generic, dull and identi-kit computers which ended up trouncing everything that had gone before. However, this was...

Ask an expert why the Electron's the best micro in its class

Here's another advert for the Acorn Electron, the cut-down version of the BBC Micro. In common with many other Electron adverts, it stresses the fact that it's mostly the same as the expensive £400...

All you need to do this, is this: The Commodore 128 and 64

Officially launched at the 1985 January Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and built with the same case used for the late-model C64s, the Commodore 128 was the company's last 8-bit computer. Even...

Z88: Buying a powerful personal computer is no longer a big issue. Or a big deal.

Clive Sinclair's company - Sinclair Research - had hit the buffers towards the end of 1985, and was sold - essentially for its name and merchandising rights - to brash new upstart Amstrad in 1986. Uncle...

Introducing Sol Systems - A complete computer/terminal concept

This advert - which was part of an impressive six-page spread - shows the Sol-20, a machine which first shipped only a month before in December 1976, as well as the impressive range of peripherals which...

Programming the 68000 by Metacomco

St Pauls, Bristol-based Metacomco had been quietly writing system software and compilers for the Motorola 68000 processor, and had also previously licenced its own 8086 BASIC interpreter for $800,000...

Commodore Amiga - astounding by any stretch of the imagination

The Amiga, code-named "Lorraine", was first demonstrated to a select few at June 1984's CES show in Chicago, by Amiga, a company founded by Jay Miner, one of the original designers of the famous Atari...

Decision 1 - the only machine that runs almost everything

George Morrow - the founder of Morrow Designs - was born in 1934 and earned a degree in physics from Stanford before going on to do a master's in mathematics at the University of Oklahoma. He became...

You'd better believe this... or you won't believe our prices

Michael Dell started out at the age of 13 selling mail-order stamps, and by the time he was at high school he was earning some $17,000 a year selling newspaper subscriptions with the aid of an Apple II....

The best software on earth comes from Psion

Psion had been founded in 1980 by David Potter, who had been born in South Africa but who had moved to the UK to study science at Cambridge University. He went on to get a doctorate at Imperial College,...

One way or another, you can have a computer in your pocket

Launched in 1984, the Psion Organiser, billed by Psion as the "world's first practical pocket computer" is considered - at least by its second incarnation, the Organiser II - as the world's first usable...

More than a Word Processor for less than a typewriter

Retailing for only £399 - about [[399|1985]] in [[now]] and about a quarter the price of an IBM PC at the time, the P‍CW 8256 and its follow ups were highly significant and transformative in the UK market,...