1984 adverts

If you are thinking of buying more than one PC - think again

It's another all-British (for a definition ignoring the fact that most of the chips came from the Far East or the US) multi-user system, this time from Jarogate of Brixton in London, for its MP5 CP/M...

Memotech MTX Software: From NewWord to Newton to Nemo

Here's an attempt by Memotech to advertise itself as a software company, and to position its MTX512 as a dedicated word processing system - an approach that just a few years before had resulted in some...

Minstrel 68K - A truly sophisticated model that gives the power you need

This crossover advert takes March 1983's Z80-based Minstrel from Hotel Microsystems, replaces the Z80 with a Motorola 68000, rebrands the company as HM Systems and releases the machine as the Minstrel...

Apricot Xi: What will they say about this one?

Less than a year before Applied Computer Techniques, or ACT, changed its company name to that of its first computer - Apricot - comes this advert for its Xi model. ACT, which had started out primarily...

Unicorn - Five new channels for the BBC. Here's the full programme.

A few months before the launch of Torch's Graduate - an attempt at a complete IBM PC "plug-in module" for the BBC - comes the Unicorn. This was a range of what were effectively entire computers in a...

Commodore Plus/4: Clean up your study once and for all

Here's a nice advert showing Commodore's Plus/4 as some sort of vacuum cleaner, sucking up a load of invoices, receipts and a tax return. There are some great 80s names in the in-tray, including the...

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...

With PCjr, you can add options that haven't even been invented yet

The PCjr, also know by its development code-name of "Peanut" - and variously as Hercules, Sprite, Pigeon and Pancake - was IBM's attempt to crack the home market, which at the time was mostly owned by...

The New Electron from Acorn. Ask any child at school why it's worth £199

The Electron was first announced in 1982, launched in 1983, but was beset with production delays which meant it didn't really start shipping until early 1984. That could explain why this advert from...

How much available memory you get with the new Oric Atmos

A simple, if striking, advert for Oric's "new" Atmos - in reality the original Oric-1 in a new case and with a load of bug fixes. The advert points out that many home micros of the day used areas of...

Thanks to CompuServe's CB Simulator, 'Digital Fox' Accessed 'Data Hari' and Proceeded to an 'Altared' State

Probably like the 1960's generation liked to think it invented sex, today's "yoof" probably like to assume that they invented "on-line". However it was not so, as shown by this advert for CompuServe...

The DASH-80, designed and assembled in Great Britain

It's a mystery entry, courtesy of Aculab, for the DASH-80 - a Z80B-based machine operating at 6MHz (not 6 milli-Hertz as the advert would have it) with 128K RAM. It ran CP/M and came with with Wordstar,...

New from Casio - mighty micros that fit in your briefcase

1983 and 1984 were definitely the years of the "lap-held" computer, as PCW liked to call it. Pioneered in 1983 by machines like Epson's HX-20, they weren't true laptops as they lacked a proper screen,...

Make it portable! Make it possible

Bondwell was the trading name of Bondwell Holdings Limited of Hong Kong and was the company that had rescued the failed Spectravideo. Spectravideo - as SpectraVision - had made its name as a producer...

One way or another, you can have a computer in your pocket

Launched in 1984, the Psion Organiser, billed by Psion as the "world's first practical pocket computer" is considered - at least by its second incarnation, the Organiser II - as the world's first usable...