A history of the microcomputer industry in 300 adverts

ZX Microdrive - Now on release

Sounding something like a statement on the fate of a serial murderer from a top-security prison, this advert, which was part of one of Sinclair's regular "mini magazines" within t...

Trying to play all the games you can get for the Sinclair Spectrum could kill you (about 5,000 times)

Perhaps the first time that "software sold a machine" was when the release of Visicalc saved the Apple II in 1979, but certainly by the mid 1980s the availability of software had ...

The world's best personal computer for under £500

Sinclair was nothing if not bold with its claims, including this one that the Spectrum - announced just a few months before at a press conference at the Churchill Hotel on Friday,...

Get your hands on the new Sinclair 128K +2. Before everybody else does

Released under the management of Amstrad, which had bought Sinclair for its name and assets on April 7th 1986, the Plus 2 was launched without much fanfare in the August of the sa...

Now, the complete MK 14 micro-computer system from Science of Cambridge

Right on the cusp of the launch of the ZX80, Science of Cambridge was still selling its MK14, which had been launched back in the summer of 1978. The price was still broadly com...

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 (£1,640 in 2025) 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...