1984 adverts

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...

Call Microcentre for Cromemco

It's three years into the era of the all-conquering IBM PC, and Cromemco - a company founded back in 1974 - is still hanging on. What's more, it's still producing broadly-similar...

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...

Weetabix: 100 Dragon Home Computer Sets to be Won!!

In the year that Dragon Data went in to receivership comes this "proxy" advert from Weetabix, in what would have been quite a good prize bundle at the time. Each of the 100 sets...

Climax 60: If you know what's good for you - you'll take our PICK

If choice of operating system is anything to go by, then this particular machine is fairly unusual. It features Pick - a multi-user multivalued database system which, whilst not a ...

The MTX Series described; straight from the author's mouth

Here's an advert for the almost-but-not-quite MSX-standard MTX512 from Memotech of Witney in Oxfordshire - a company that had started out making memory and expansion cards for Sin...

Spectravideo: Leaves the Atari, Dragon, Commodore 64 and Lynx for dead

Another advert from SpectraVideo - the company formerly known as SpectraVision - which had started out making games for the Atari 2600, Colecovision and Commodore VIC-20. It sho...

For home or business the IBM compatible Advance 86a

The Advance 86, produced by a small British company with big Ferranti connections, had the backing of high-street retailer WH Smith, which had picked it over the Sinclair QL as it...

Introducing Macintosh. What makes it tick. And talk.

Famously introduced by an Orwellian Ridley Scott-directed advert at the 1984 Super Bowl and billed by Steve Jobs as "the fastest and most powerful computer ever placed in the han...

Future Computers: Here is your future

Future Computers Limited had been created in 1983 as a result of venture-capital funding from MGM/APA, and additional funding from BTG - the British Technology Group. Each had app...

Is the information revolution passing you by? Nightingale - The Modem

The mid-1980s - 1984 to 1986 in particular - were notable for the destruction that swept through the microcomputer industry, with companies like Dragon Data, Camputers, Enterprise...

The New Sinclair QL - There's no comparison chart because there's no comparison!

The Sinclar QL, or "Quantum Leap", also known internally to Sinclair Research as the ZX83, was Sinclair's first and only computer based upon the Motorola 68008. The 68008 was a ve...

The Aviator - One man's flight to save his home town

The image above is a scan of the pre-press version of the advert and is used with permission. © Acornsoft Ltd 1985 This particular advert - which shows a Mark VI Spitfire of the ...

Compact System for Professionals

Once mentioned in Parliament as one of only two British computer manufacturers on the government's Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency list of approved suppliers to hav...

SuperStar Multi-User System is Just Right

Bromcom - initially known as Bromley Computer Consultancy Ltd - launched its SuperStar multi-user system at the beginning of 1984. Running a 16-bit host processor with the compan...