A history of the microcomputer industry in 300 adverts

<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...

If only he'd bought a Commodore computer

The Commodore 700, and its cheaper sibling the 500, were short-lived entrants in Commodore's business range. Confusingly named as the B128, B256 or CBM 128/256-80 in the US or the 700 series in Europe,...

American take-away

The first company to produce a clone of IBM's PC BIOS had been Columbia, but the second - and the first to do it legally - was Compaq, a company set up in 1982 and whose first product was this, the Compaq...

For impartial advice on which computer to buy, don't ask a salesman. Ask a computer

This is one of those implausible ads where the reader is expected to believe that Olivetti really programmed a bunch of computers in order to determine which, based on specs and performance, was the best...

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 programming languages...

Apricot - the 4th generation personal computer

ACT - Applied Computer Techniques - of Dudley, near Birmingham, was set up in 1965 as a mainframe accounting bureau by Roger Foster. Foster had left Wolverhampton Grammar School in 1957 before qualifying...

Can your computer keep pace with the Amstrad PC2286?

Several years after Amstrad had battered through the UK home and small-business microcomputer industry with its range of keenly-priced machines, it was still going, here offering an Intel 80286-based...