A history of the microcomputer industry in 300 adverts

Commodore's philosophy: Computer PET 2001

This is an eight-page A5 booklet produced for the launch of the Commodore PET in the UK, a machine which made its debut at the Chicago Consumer Electronics Show in January 1977, m...

In a class on its own: Opus PCII

Opus was another of those companies (like Memotech) that had started out as a technology supplies company, selling things like the Discovery system for the Spectrum (this combined ...

From a Single Comart Workstation... The Mighty Comart System Grows

This is another entry in the IBM-alike pantheon, from one of several companies of the time that started out as re-sellers or importers. Comart had been importing systems from co...

The ITT 2020 Micro-computer system: No, this is not a typewriter!

The ITT 2020's claim to fame is that it was the first officially-licenced Apple II Plus clone made specifically for the European market. Despite being a clone, it differed in a ...

The Wren Executive: Carry the company in your hand, not on your shoulders

Billed as a portable, but really just a luggable along the lines of the much earlier IMSAI PCS-80/30 from 1978 or the more contemporary KayPro, the Wren was built by Thorn/EMI, a ...

Tandata Tm 200: Open up a new world of communications to your micro

Tandata Design Consultants formed out of Tangerine, the makers of the Microtan 65, as a designer and manufacturer of modems and communications equipment. The top end of Tandata's ...

The answer is an Apricot from ComputerWorld

Applied Computer Techniques - ACT - had previously been importing the Chuck Peddle-designed Victor 9000, which was known as the ACT Sirius in the UK, and before that it was a supp...

The new Epson PC Plus. It makes others look like PC Plod

This is yet another entry in the pantheon of almost-identical beige boxes that came to define the industry for years. It's the hard-disk-based update of Epson's previous and uni...

Compatible with you know who, priced as only we know how

At £449 (£1,580 in 2024) Amstrad wasn't wrong, although that was for the machine which only had a single floppy. The more useful version with a 10MB hard disc drive retailed at ...

The best thing next to a BBC Micro

Available at around the same time as Torch's "Graduate", Torch's Z80-based ZEP100 was considered by Personal Computer News to be by far the better system out of the two for BBC Mi...

Laskys - Win a Peugeot 205 GT

Here's another advert for non-computer company Laskys, stalwart of the micro revolution on the High Streets of the UK for several years. Laskys adverts often represent the zeitg...

If it weren't a handheld computer, it would be an XJS juggernaut

Psion had started out in 1980 as a producer of software for Sinclair's ZX80 - although founder David Potter's first output had been some utilities for Acorn's Atom - and went on ...

CAL Personal Computer: Bet you wish you were called IBM

It's sometimes mistakenly given that the name of the intelligent computer in 2001 - HAL - is a dig at IBM, as it's every letter of that company's acronym shifted down one in the a...

ZX Interface 2 - the new ROM cartridge and joystick interface

The Interface 2 was an update to the existing Interface 1 (formerly known as the ZX Expansion Module), a device required in tandem with the concurrently-launched Microdrive, which ...

Introducing the Atari XL Home Computers

Commodore had already run adverts for the VIC-20 with the celebrity endorsement of William Shatner and game-show host Henry Morgan in the US, and had used legendary 70s comedian R...