A history of the microcomputer industry in 300 adverts

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...

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...