A history of the microcomputer industry in 300 adverts

The 520ST. Over-qualified and under-paid

After resigning from Commodore in January 1984 - the business he founded as a typewriter repair outfit in the 1950s, and the company that produced the world's first all-in-one "pe...

Oric-1 - created by Tangerine

Tangerine had been around for a few years, and had previously been selling a 6502-based one-board computer called the Microtan. This was abandoned after around 10,000 systems ha...

Probably the fastest computer in the universe - the Jupiter Ace

Perhaps this early advert for the Jupiter Ace - an 8-bit Z80-based micro designed by ex-Sinclair engineers Richard Altwasser and Steven Vickers, both of whom had worked on the ZX ...

Memotech explores the excellence of your ZX81

Memotech, the company which would end up producing its own range of well-regarded almost-MSX machines during 1984, started out as a producer of memory and interface expansions for...

Microcomputers? Let Rank Xerox point you in the right direction

Hugely influential in the early computer industry with its Palo Alto Research Center (Xerox PARC) spawning computer fundamentals like Ethernet, Laser printers and the graphical use...

Bywood SCRUMPI: 2 + 3 = ?

Had it not been for one of The Register's great articles on one of the forgotten pioneers of the early computer scene, this advert from Bywood, a company founded in Hemel Hempstea...

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...

64K User RAM and not a bit less...

Here is an advert from Memotech for its MTX512, which seven months after its release was down to the price of Memotech's previous entry-level model MTX500 at £275, or about £1,110...

Get on line with Laskys - for the best in personal computers

Laskys (or should that be Lasky's) was not a computer company at all, but the company is still worthy of an honourable mention in dispatches for being a stalwart of the home comput...

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...

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...

How to program your family with a VIC 20 computer

Despite the fact that the much-superior Commodore 64 had been around for a couple of years, the VIC-20 was still selling units, and would go on to sell about 2.5 million before be...

RAIR: Black Box III Microcomputer solutions

Nearly nine years before the band Black Box released chart-topping track "Ride on Time", The other "Black Box" from RAIR was released. Based on Intel's 8085, and later 8088 CPUs...

The world's most powerful microcomputer system is far more affordable than you may think

Formed in 1975 in Hiram, Ohio, but by 1978 based in Aurora, Ohio Scientific had started out producing a small 6502-based single-board computer called the Superboard. The C3-B of ...

Fortronic F500: The £4,000 microcomputer that thinks it's an £8,000 microcomputer

This advert seems to be treading somewhat risky ground with its assertion that somehow £4,000 (about £20,600 in 2024 money) is actually cheap for a micro, when something like the t...