A history of the microcomputer industry in 300 adverts

New from Casio - mighty micros that fit in your briefcase

1983 and 1984 were definitely the years of the "lap-held" computer, as PCW liked to call it. Pioneered in 1983 by machines like Epson's HX-20, they weren't true laptops as they lacked a proper screen,...

Grafpad - for as many uses as YOU can imagine!

British Micro was a company started by Manas Heghoyan, formerly of Hegotron Printed Circuit Boards Ltd and who had once tried to buy John Marshall's Nascom after it had gone bust in 1980. Although that...

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 before fizzling out, via...

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 came with with Wordstar,...

Think ahead! ITT 3030 Programmed for Growth

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

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 rather quiet about the...

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 business computer, and most...

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 of its manufacture of...

EuroC - Simplicity is the watchword

Euro-Calc of Tottenham Court Road was a company that appeared to have started as an importer and re-seller of electronic calculators and watches, seling what it claimed was the "largest range in London",...

<b>A Map of connections in the early microcomputer industry</b>

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 work-in-progress. Primarily...

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. The entry-level "low cost"...

Acorn Atom - from Acorn Computer

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

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 to ship until April,...

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 terminals. The company,...

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 a couple of friends...