A history of the microcomputer industry in 300 adverts

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 Sinclair's ZX81. It consisted...

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 being discontinued in 1985....

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, and with an impressive...

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 the advert was a revision...

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 [[4000|1981]] in [[now]] money) is actually cheap for a micro, when something like the top-of-the-range...

Three cures for amnesia: The new Oric Atmos 48K

Billed as a new computer when it was launched at the Which Computer? Show at the NEC in Birmingham between the 17th and 20th January 1984, the Atmos was in reality just an update of the original Oric-1...

Memotech MTX: Personal and Professional

The Memotech MTX500 had been launched during the previous summer at the Earls Court Computer Fair in June 1983. It was a little unusual in that it launched with a lot of expansion potential in mind,...

What else would I do with a GEC Dragon 64?

This advert appears during the phase of Dragon Data's history when it was being managed by GEC (General Electric Company) - the British satellites-to-defense-to-home-electronics business. This had happened...

Sord M5: At last, a home computer that improves with age

It's another advert for the Sord M5, known in the UK as the CGL M5, on account of its distributor. It ran a Zilog Z80A, along with the same video chip as the MSX standard, making it almost, but not quite...

The New Sinclair QL - There's no comparison chart because there's no comparison!

The Sinclair QL, or "Quantum Leap", also known internally to Sinclair Research as the ZX83, was Sinclair's first and only computer based upon the Motorola 68008. The 68008 was a version of the 68000 processor...

The new Mitsubishi MSX computers

Mitsubishi - a Japanese company perhaps more famous for heavy plant like diggers and bulldozers, as well as cars and home electronics - was one of the wave of mostly-Japanese manufacturers producing MSX...

Amstrad's new CPC 464 comes with plenty of free plugs

Harking back to the early all-in-one computers of the late 1970s - not least the very first, 1977's Commodore's PET with its built-in cassette player - comes Alan Michael Sugar Trading, or Amstrad's,...

Important notice to all micro-computer purchasers: The BBC Micro-computer system

This is perhaps the advert that really started it all for Acorn, at least in terms of the Acorn Proton, a.k.a. the BBC Micro. It announced the upcoming availability of the new BBC Microcomputer System...

Equinox 100: When you put it together, it's really together

For those moments when the computer's playing up and there's clearly nothing better to do than hit the bottle comes this advert for the Equinox 100, made by Parasitic Engineering of Albany, California....

Altos presents a new standard in quality and reliability - Altos ACS 8000

This is an advert for the Altos "Sun Series" ACS 8000, made by Walsh Avenue, Santa Clara, California-based Altos Computer Systems. Altos was founded at the end of 1977 by David Jackson and Roger Vass,...