1983 adverts

The Remarkable SV-318 Personal Computer

The Spectravideo SV-318 was a Zilog Z80A-based computer with 32K RAM and Microsoft BASIC, which had been the de-facto standard on pretty much every computer since the MITS Altair of 1975. When launched...

The Epson HX-20: for Business on the Move

Considered to be the world's first true mobile computer, the HX-20 came from a company better known for the printers which it had been producing for 20 years. The HX-20 was first announced in 1981 but...

Qume - A New Range of Video Terminals

Whilst the world of small-business and home computers was in a raging turmoil with hundreds of random machines coming and going, one thing remained a constant - the world of the terminal. Frankly, beyond...

New: The IT Andromeda Zita-E

This is another mystery entry, in this case for the Andromeda Zita-E - for Executive - from ITCS, or IT Computer Services Limited of Ashford, near Staines, in Middlesex. The Andromeda's hardware was...

Join the jet set

Apart from its Prestel and Teletext adapters, and the much-delayed 6502 second processor unit, all of which were high-end or niche, Acorn wasn't particularly well know for its own-branded peripherals,...

New TRS-80 Model 4 - from Tandy

Proving that sometimes the same model can live on seemingly for ever, at least in name, is this advert for the TRS-80 Model 4. The original TRS-80, one of the "1977 Trinity", had been launched six years...

With Aquarius you won't get left behind

Very much an also-ran in the home/personal computer race comes this advert for a Mattel Aquarius - a Z80-based unit with a chiclet keyboard built for Mattel by Far East-based Radofin Electronics. Mattel...

Oric-1 16K and 48K Micros

The Oric-1, designed by Tangerine and manufactured by Oric Products International, a company created by Tangerine to sell the Oric - was aimed at the Sinclair Spectrum market. The models and prices...

Samurai - your powerful ally

Despite fears of an imminent Japanese invasion going right back to almost the start of the Personal Computer revolution, not much really happened until Microsoft-sponsored Japanese-backed MSX machines...

Kenneth Kendall: Now in chip form

This advert is for a speech synthesis chip for the BBC Micro which used the voice of one of the greats of 1970s television news broadcasting - Kenneth Kendall. It's a nice bit of circular reference...

As your company goes places, will your computer grow with it?

It's another advert for the Alpha Micro, not to be confused with the Alphatronic Micro produced by Triumph-Adler. The AM-1062 model shown in the advert was an upgrade to the original Alpha AM-100 -...

Intertec offers the warranty your first computer should have offered

Intertec - based in Columbia, South Carolina, US - had been founded as a terminal manufacturer in 1973. It then launched its Z80-based SuperBrain micro in 1979, which seemed to be everywhere throughout...

Pluto: run rings around the competition!

The Pluto graphics card from IO Research, first launched in 1982, could perhaps lay claim to being one of the first "high end" graphics cards aimed at consumers. Re-sold by Nascom as its "Colour Graphics...

If you want flexibility and expandability, then you want the Microtan 65

The Microtan 65 was a single-board computer first built by Tangerine in 1980. Available as either a kit, or ready assembled, Tangerine sold around 10,000 of the 6502-based boards before abandoning it....

A history of communications: part 1

This colourful and quintessentially 80s advert from Torch was one of two sequential adverts in PCW and provides a nice summary of the company's output so far. This includes the original Communicator...