A history of the microcomputer industry in 300 adverts

When you outgrow your personal computer, that's the time you'll wish you-d bought a DAI

Rather than being the name of a computer made by a staunchly Welsh computer company, the curiously-shaped DAI comes from Belgian company Data Applications International. It had 48K RAM and a generous...

The graphic difference between Atari computers and all the others

The Atari 800 and its cheaper membrane-keyboard sibling the Atari 400 were the result of a project that was kicked off soon after the launch of the legendary Atari 2600 "Woody" games console. They were...

New! Sinclair ZX81 Personal Computer

This is another common advert for Sinclair's ZX81 - the home computer which shipped with only 1K RAM, although Sinclair's BASIC was heavily tokenised and so it wasn't quite as bad as it sounded. These...

Outside of the garden you need a computer that can grow - Ithaca InterSystems DPS-1

This adverts shows one of many ageing Zilog Z80-based machines of this era running on an S-100 bus: the DPS-1, from Ithaca InterSystems, founded in Ithaca, New York, in 1977. The company was originally...

Commodore 64 - The Advanced Home Computer

This is a nice four-page gate-fold sales brochure for the computer that remains the best-selling computer of all time - the Commodore 64. The brochure, printed for the UK market - note the Royal seal...

VIC-20 Color Computer - What VIC-20 Can Do For You

This nice gate-fold sales material was made for the VIC-20 a few months after its UK launch. It's full of archetypal 80s people looking at screens, and the blurb contains information on how the VIC-20...

A Complete Colour Micro With No Hidden Extras for Around £499

Designed entirely by Tatung UK, an offshoot of Taiwan's largest company, the Einstein was aimed vaguely at the business market, but with a Zilog Z80A processor could also emulate the 48K ZX Spectrum,...

From only £764 the new Torch Graduate will upgrade your BBC Model B to a powerful 16 bit busiess computer

Here's something of a curiosity from the days when it was quite common to hybridise computers, like the Commodore C128 with its own native mode, a 6510/6502 equivalent for C64 compatibility and a Z80...

The Electron has added even more strings to its bow

Here is another advert for the Acorn Electron, or rather software from Acornsoft for the Electron, featuring a dude rather self-consciously dressed up as Cupid. The Electron, launched in the summer...

Hey Prestel. A new dimension for the BBC Micro

Here's another advert that shows that the world of 'on-line' was alive and well long before the advent of the Internet. Prestel was a UK electronic information system set up by the General Post Office...

Commodore 64: Are you only using 1/10th of your brain?

Another UK advert for the Commodore 64, extoling the virtues of more software and peripherals like printers, joysticks and colour monitors. Somewhat disingensouly, it suggests that only using your 64...

Mentathlete - the Sinclair ZX Spectrum

This is a slightly abstract advert for the ZX Spectrum, which appeared on the back of a home computer course. It shows an all-metal dude, like the T-1000 in Terminator 2, reaching up for the Spectrum,...

"The perfect lead.. Acorn Microcomputer System 1"

Acorn's "System 1" - formerly known just as the Acorn Microcomputer - was launched in March 1979 and appears here in an early-1980 advert selling for £75 in kit form (or about [[75|1980]] in [[now]] money),...

"When You Have An Enormous Memory, There's No End To The Things You Can Do"

From the time when 64K was still quite a lot of memory for a home computer, comes this advert from Commodore featuring a cute baby elephant with a whole pile of software piled on its outstretched trunk....

TRS-80 - The biggest name in little computers. Complete and ready to go NOW!

It's another advert for one of the "1977 Trinity" - the Z80-based Tandy TRS-80. A year after its launch, the Level-II system had appeared, with an expanded BASIC in ROM, now at 12K, and a numeric keypad...