A history of the microcomputer industry in 300 adverts

Discover the full professional power of Hewlett-Packard's personal computer

Hewlett-Packard, which like Commodore, TI and Tandy also had a line in calculators, had launched its HP-85 micro at the beginning of 1980, with the machine even originating from the calculator side of...

The Commodore PET offers you a safe passage through the primeval swamp of computerisation

This advert had a point - there were hundreds of different manufactures around at this point all producing different systems with different CPUs on different architectures, and many of these systems appeared...

Buy a wordprocessor for under £3,500 - and get a microcomputer for free

Well, perhaps software was a bit more expensive in the early 80s, but word processing software for £3,500 (or [[3500|1981]] in [[now]] terms) seems a little steep. However, that's what the advert states...

Astronaut quality. Everyday simplicity. The HP-41C. £184

Hewlett-Packard, like Commodore in the 1970s, was also a calculator manufacturer - although Commodore had bailed out of that market the year before, in 1981. This particular model from Hewlett-Packard...

Nascom 3 - from Lucas Logic

Perhaps implausibly from the company better known for car parts - belts, bulbs and oil filters and so on - comes the Nascom 3, courtesy of Lucas Logic. Lucas had bought Nascom in 1982, after a previous...

The model of good business: Tuscan - the all-British microcomputer

Perhaps the chosen name - Tuscan - in the context of "all British" was meant to be ironic, but anyway this machine, an update of the regular Tuscan which had been launched the year before, maintains its...

Sinclair Owners - We'll give you £50 trade-in when you trade-up!

This is a curious attempt from Commodore to woo users of the ZX80 and ZX81 - small, low-memory and purely home computers that plugged into the television and could by held in one hand - to switch to a...

First time on Earth - Sharp MZ-80B

Perhaps unique in laying claim to some sort of extra-terrestrial origin, comes this advert for the Sharp MZ-80B. The "large" integrated screen had 320x300 pixel resolution and its processor was a Zilog...

The new Apple III - More computer power on your desk-top

This would seem to be the "missing link" Apple computer, as the world and popular culture seems not to register anything about it, and Apple's own history seems to skip from the Apple II to the Lisa or...

The DAI personal computer is here - High performance - High value

When Texas Instruments was developing its TI-99/2 and TI-99/4 computers, it knew that producing a PAL/SECAM version would be a hassle. Indeed, when the TI-99/4 finally launched in the UK it still couldn't...

Sinclair ZX81 Personal Computer - the heart of a system that grows with you

This advert was quite an impressive 4-page spread which featured in several computer magazines and was used to advertise the ZX81, which launched in the UK in March 1981. The ZX81 was a successful computer...

The new micro from LSI - Putting Britain back in front

It's another random entry in the "who?" category, from paid-up flag-flying British company LSI - not to be confused with Lear Siegler Incorporated, a US terminal manufacturer - which claims in the advert...

You can't get a home computer from Texas Instruments under 16K RAM

Here is an advert from the company that did quite a bit to shake up the 1970s calculator market, and in doing so caused Commodore to buy MOS Technology and with it the 6502, which led to the Commodore...

Over forty of the world's leading software houses have one thing in common - Transam Microsystems

It's another advert from Transam Microsystems Limited, showing a generic Transam box, that might be a Tuscan, in the "PET on steroids" style that Transam seemed to like, together with a scattering of...

The IBM Personal Computer, from £2,890

This is a third-party advert for the original Intel 8088-based 5150 IBM PC, the computer which defined the "PC" for a generation or two. In Europe, the Sirius/Victor 9000, which used the same 8088 CPU,...