A history of the microcomputer industry in 300 adverts

The Alphatronic PC means business

The Alphatronic PC was very much the baby of the Alphatronic family, being a Z80-based 8-bit machine designed and built in Japan to TA's specification, primarily for the home mark...

When you were a child, you didn't like it when the light went out. Are you any different now?

Zenith's notebook micro was based on Intel's CPU of the same name - the 80386SL, which was a variant of the '386 which had been designed specifically for use in portable computers...

Schneider Computers... Stand out from the crowd!

Alan Sugar sometimes claimed that Amstrad's early success was because it didn't try to crack the European or US market, a move which almost bankrupted Acorn. Eventually though th...

Our powerful multi-user systems come complete with some new Power Points!

From the days before "Power Point" meant something other than slideshow presentations in tedious meetings on a Friday afternoon, comes this advert from Equinox for its latest mult...

The if 800 - Colour in your computing

The awkwardly-named if 800 from LSI was something of a departure from the company's usual M models - with the System M-Three being around at about the same time - not least becaus...

One good idea leads to another. And another.

Here's an advert from Apple that nicely shows the updates made to the original Macintosh, launched in 1984, up to the latest - the Macintosh II. After the original Mac had been l...

Europe's best-kept business secret - Now revealed in Britain

It's the beginning of the end for Commodore, as the company is now fully on the IBM-compatible gravy train, leaving behind its roots as the company which launched the world's firs...

We want to show you how much our new £505 printer can produce in 60 seconds

"300 Adverts" was once contacted by someone asking whether there was a name for the style of adverts popular in the 1970s which were almost all some sort of text, often comprising...

The business computer that's a real mover

Here's another celebrity advertising endorsement for a microcomputer, this time featuring World Cup-winning footballer Bobby Charlton, where it's tempting to think that the legend...

At long last, the end of the queue is in sight

This advert, very reminiscent of the famous Saatchi and Saatchi "Labout isn't working" campaign of 1978 and '79, is for Gemini's MultiNet low-cost multi-user networking system. M...

Tandy Model 4P - Power and portability at a truly unbeatable price!

It wasn't until 1986 that Tandy/Radio Shack officially dropped both the Radio Shack part of the company name, as well as the TRS designation that had been part of its naming schem...

My job takes me away from my PC - but nothing takes me away from my Hewlett-Packard Portable

Staking a claim to the entire industry of laptop (or lap-held) computers with a highly generic name of The Portable, HP's laptop was from the era of portable computers with chunky...

The New Standard for Personal Scientific and Technical Visualisation Workstations

U-Microcomputers of Warrington in Cheshire, UK, had established itself as a supplier of Motorola 68000-based single- and multi-user systems aimed at the software developer market....

U-MAN: The next step

With customers as diverse as British Telecom, Oxford and Cambridge universities, the British Cast Iron Research Association and London Weekend Television, U-Microcomputers Limited...

Since Tava got that 20MB Winchester, they're inseparable

The Flyer appears to have been manufactured by Tava USA Incorporated, a company which was previously known as Replitech and which had bought out the original Tava Corporation only...