1980 adverts

If you want what's best for your PET, choose Commodore software

This is an advert for Commodore's own software tentacle, which was placed in many Commodore - as well as general computing - magazines of the day, and which ran for at least six m...

The Alpha Micro Computer: Multi-user, Multi-tasking, Timesharing, Memory Management

The Alpha Micro is unusual in that it appears to be the only computer that ever shipped with a Western Digital WD16 16-bit processor as its main CPU. Western Digital had started ...

Buy Nascom 2 Now and get a free 16K RAM board

The Nascom 2 was one of a range of kits produced by UK computer manufacturer Nascom, a company founded by John Marshall and Kerr Borland. The previous model, the Nascom 1, had b...

Nascom Imp plain paper printer - boxed and built for only £325

1980 was perhaps the year of the rise of the printer, but at the time these were still very much in the realms of "expensive" - much like floppy disk drives before them, where the ...

The ITT 2020 Micro-computer system: No, this is not a typewriter!

The ITT 2020's claim to fame is that it was the first officially-licenced Apple II Plus clone made specifically for the European market. Despite being a clone, it differed in a ...

Now, the complete MK 14 micro-computer system from Science of Cambridge

Right on the cusp of the launch of the ZX80, Science of Cambridge was still selling its MK14, which had been launched back in the summer of 1978. The price was still broadly com...

Compukit UK101 - Low-cost Superboard in kit form

The Compukit UK101 was effectively an unauthorised UK clone of Ohio Scientific's Superboard - the one-board computer that, via the updated version the Superboard II, gave rise to ...

Micromation Z-Plus Microcomputer System

On the one hand, the Z-Plus Microcomputer System was a fairly standard computer of the day, with a Zilog Z80 CPU, 64K of memory, S-100 bus, Digital Research's CP/M and Microsoft B...

Take Your Pick of the Litter - Novation

Up until the back end of the 1990s, the Modem was the only affordable way that people at home could connect to the Internet - and various other networks, databases, dial-ups or bu...

Dynabyte - the Business Computer System your customers can afford

If nothing else proved the need for the likes of Commodore's Jack Tramiel or Sinclair's eponymous Clive to come along and build micros that normal people could afford to buy, it m...

The cheapest most advanced business Microcomputer

Marketed as the ACT Series 800 and built by Computhink of California, where it was known as the Minimax, the ACT800 was ACT's first micro and came some 15 years after the company'...

New from Tangerine Computer Systems - the Microtan 65

This is an early advert from Tangerine announcing the company's new Microtan 65 in its simplest form - just a board with chips on it and an RF-modulator to drive a standard domest...

Tandy - new lower prices on the TRS-80

Tandy had announced its follow-up to the 1977 TRS-80 Model 1 at the end of 1979 and was expecting to take orders from the beginning of 1980. Even so, it wasn't initially expecting ...

"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 £47...

RAIR Terminal Choice - choose from the best

This is another fairly early advert from enigmatic company RAIR. RAIR appeared to have started out, like ACT, as a timesharing bureau as well as a supplier of peripherals and te...