A history of the microcomputer industry in 300 adverts

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...

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 ...

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...

As your experience grows, so can your Atari 600XL

The 600XL was one of two computers launched by Atari - the other being the 800XL - at the summer 1983 Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago. It was available in the UK in quantit...

It's lonely at the top: Tulip System 1 of Compudata

Founded in 1979 as Compudata, Tulip Computers is worth a mention for a couple of reasons. Firstly, when Exidy stopped manufacturing the Sorceror micro that Compudata had been im...

Camputers: New 96 and Laureate

Published only a few months before the company went bust in the summer of 1984, this advert doesn't really say anything about why you would want to buy either of the machines - th...

Nascom Imp plain paper printer - boxed and built for only £325

1980 was perhaps the year of the rise of the printer, but at the time these were still very much in the realms of "expensive" - much like floppy disk drives before them, where the...

Vector Graphic's microcomputer: What's in it for you?

Vector Graphic's Memorite "turn-key" microcomputer system (which meant "turn it on and it's ready") is an early entry in a curious sideline of the micro industry - that of the com...

AMX Mouse - Points the way

Pre-dating the launch of home computers that came with and were optimised for mice - such as the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST - there was a phase of "retro fitting" the fashionabl...

Triton One-Board Computer

The Triton one-board computer started life jointly sponsored by Transam and Electronics Today International (ETI), as a sort of cross-marketing collaboration. Transam provided t...

Is the information revolution passing you by? Nightingale - The Modem

[extra: hamish_dialup_1985.webp|A Nightingale modem in action in 1984 or 1985, connected to a BBC Micro]The mid-1980s - 1984 to 1986 in particular - were notable for the destructi...