A history of the microcomputer industry in 300 adverts

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 expecti...

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

Tangerine had been started in 1978 by Paul Johnson - who after school in Colchester went on to earn a PhD in high-speed analogue-to-digital converters at Bradford University - and...

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...

Dynabyte - the Business Computer System your customers can afford

If nothing else proved the need for the likes of Commodore's Jack Tramiel or Sinclair's eponymous Clive to come along and build micros that normal people could afford to buy, it m...

If only he'd bought a Commodore computer

The Commodore 700, and its cheaper sibling the 500, were short-lived entrants in Commodore's business range. Confusingly named as the B128, B256 or CBM 128/256-80 in the US or the...

American take-away

The first company to produce a clone of IBM's PC BIOS had been Columbia, but the second - and the first to do it legally - was Compaq, a company set up in 1982 and whose first pro...

For impartial advice on which computer to buy, don't ask a salesman. Ask a computer

This is one of those implausible ads where the reader is expected to believe that Olivetti really programmed a bunch of computers in order to determine which, based on specs and p...

The first Arabic personal computer in the world

This is an interesting advert for what was billed as the first ever Arabic personal computer in the world - a modified version of Sinclair's ZX81. In an era when English-derived...

Apricot - the 4th generation personal computer

ACT - Applied Computer Techniques - of Dudley, near Birmingham, had been set up in 1965 as a time-sharing bureau. In then diversified into reselling office equipment and produci...

Can your computer keep pace with the Amstrad PC2286?

Several years after Amstrad had battered through the UK home and small-business microcomputer industry with its range of keenly-priced machines, it was still going, here offering ...

Enterprise - a 16 bit business computer from only £2,300

Data General was a minicomputer manufacturer which was established in 1968 by Edson de Castro, the former manager of DEC's PDP-8 program. A year later it released the Nova minico...

The computer with the story!

It may have had a story to tell, but it seems to be a fairly conventional one, being as it was a 64K CP/M luggable, complete with a built-in carry handle. On the upside, it did h...