A history of the microcomputer industry in 300 adverts

MK 14 - the only low-cost keyboard-addressable microprocessor!

What would become the home-computing part of the Sinclair empire was at this time operating under the moniker of Science of Cambridge, whilst the Sinclair name itself was still attached to the now-part-nationalised...

MK 14 - the only low-cost keyboard-addressable microcomputer!

This is the second-earliest reference in this collection - and the first to mention an actual computer - to the company that would become Sinclair, which did so much to kick-start the UK home computer...

Nascom 1 Microprocessor Z80 kit

Nascom, the computer company which was eventually acquired by car-parts maker Lucas was, for a while, the UK's biggest supplier of computer kits. It was established by Lynx Electronics - the hobbyist...

The new Sinclair DM235 digital multimeter. 3.5 digits. Under £50!

Sinclair Radionics, the company that was based in St. Ives, Cambridgeshire, was in some financial difficulties during the mid 70s, and was part-nationalised by the National Enterprise Board. During...

SWTPC announces first dual minifloppy kit under $1,000

South West Technical Products Corporation was a company that had started out in the late 1960s producing electronics kits, selling much of its output via articles published in Popular Electronics. By...

The Research Machines' 380Z - A unique tool for research and education

From its launch in 1977 through to mid 1982, Research Machines Limited, often abbreviated to RML or RM, seemed to be selling the same one machine - a Z80-based system called the 380Z, or rather 380Ƶ as...

A computer can get awfully bored when it can't communicate!

Heathkit was another of those companies better known for its consumer and technical electronics, but which jumped in to the market opened up by the MITS Altair 8800. This advert is actually for a couple...

IMSAI introduces the PCS-80/30 Integrated Video Computer

This looks a lot like the "portable" version of the Commodore 64 - the SX-64 - that would appear on the scene some seven years later, and as such was a similar early attempt, like the Osborne, at a luggable...

Your computer system needn't cost a fortune - SWTPC 6800

South West Technical Products Corporation started out as a company producing kits of the projects often printed in electronics magazines of the late 60s and 70s, before branching out into microcomputers....

£79.99 all in: the Commodore Communications Modem

Way before the masses discovered the joys of the Internet (as in after 1995), there existed a vibrant dial-up community using Bulletin Boards and infotext/Viewdata services like Prestel. Commodore had...

Commodore 64: It's not how much you pay, it's how much you get

In the era of the IBM PC, this Commodore advert compares the price and features of the Commodore 64 and the IBM PCJr. Known by IBM's codename of the "Peanut", the Junior was never released in the UK...

At last, the business PC you can welcome like an old friend

Not to be left out in the stampede for IBM PCs and their compatible ilk (it's four years since the IBM PC launched), comes this offering from Commodore for its version. This particular machine - the...

The Commodore 128. When you look at the facts, they do seem to weigh rather heavily in our favour.

The 128 was Commodore's last 8-bit computer and was released in 1985, although news of the 128 started appearing at the end of 1984, with Popular Computing Weekly saying that "Commodore is working on...

Buy one of these Commodore peripherals for £199.99 and get a Seiko RC-1000 free!

It's another advert depicting the mid-1980s rage-du-jour of the "wrist terminal", in the form of the Seiko RC-1000 (also seen here). Smart watches or wearables seem to pop up every decade or so as the...

The greatest breakthrough in wrist technology since Seiko introduced quartz

Not actually an advert for a computer, per se, but an interesting reflection of what was all the rage at the time: multi-function "James Bond"-style watches. The Seiko RC1000 is shown connecting to...