A history of the microcomputer industry in 300 adverts

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

Although this advert shows the Model I - both the original Level I with 4K memory and the slightly-improved Level II with 16K - it also announces the arrival of a "bigger brother" in the shape of the...

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...

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 ACT 800 was ACT's first micro and came some 15 years after the company's 1965 founding by Roger...

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 Nascom - once the UK's...

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 must the opening gambit...