1983 adverts
Epson
May 1983
Are you the QX-10 that undertakes financial modelling, stock control, book-keeping...?
This advert is for the somewhat-flawed Epson QX-10, a machine aimed at the IBM/Sirius market and which was launched less than two months after Epson's previous HX20 portable. The Q...
Zenith Data Systems
May 1983
The Ultimate - Zenith Data Systems Z-100
One of a myriad of IBM-PC-like machines around during this era, although pitched more as an alternative than a compatible machine, the Z-100 was actually the pre-built version of ...
CAL/Durango
20th May 1983
CAL Personal Computer: Bet you wish you were called IBM
It's sometimes mistakenly given that the name of the intelligent computer in 2001 - HAL - is a dig at IBM, as it's every letter of that company's acronym shifted down one in the a...
Commodore
June 1983
Commodore 700: It's a picture - and it's worth a thousand words
With a case popularly believed to have been designed by Ferdinand Porsche, but which was actually designed by Commodore's regular industrial designer Ira Velinsky, an on-board 650...
Acorn
June 1983
A two-minute operation turns your BBC Micro into the heart of a word-processor
The Acorn Model B BBC Micro was quite a big thing in the UK, although didn't do much outside its home market. Its popularity in the UK was largely thanks to a unique collaborati...
Micronix
June 1983
Introducing the Micronix 80HD - a complete microcomputer on a single board
Single board computers - like the Raspberry Pi - are still quite popular, especially with hobbyists as they're often small and have low power requirements. The fun with this adv...
Commodore
June 1983
Commodore VIC-20 - Let Commodore expand your horizons
Even though the Commodore 64 had been launched the year before, the VIC-20 was still shifting units - it would end up selling over 2.5 million before it was discontinued in 1985, ...
Tandy/Radio Shack
June 1983
Introducing the Tandy Micro Executive Workstation
Proving that it's possible to stretch out a model name to any possible extreme, comes the "Micro Executive Work Station" (MEWS), otherwise known as the TRS-80 Model 100 - the TRS-...
Digital
June 1983
Rainbow 100 - It's The Complete System for Complete Solutions
No collection of adverts about the early computer industry would be complete without at least one featuring Digital - otherwise known as Digital Equipment Corporation or DEC. This ...
COMX
June 1983
ComX 35 - the new world in family microcomputers
Designed in the Netherlands by Noxon AB and produced by the Hong Kong-based company COMX World Operations Limited - a trading-name of Video Technology - the little-known ComX 35 w...
Digital
June 1983
Just How Big a Difference is there Between Digital and Other Personal Computer Manufacturers?
This advert is primarily worth including because it has a nice picture of the Grand Canyon in the background. It's not for any particular machine, rather it's to advertise DEC a...
RAIR
June 1983
RAIR: When it's time to stop playing games and get down to business
RAIR by name and rare by nature, if the lack of information about either the machine or the company (apart from at oldcomputers.com) is anything to go by. The company did, howev...
Cifer
June 1983
Cifer: When a microprocessor costs £3, why make do with one>
The Series 1, from Wiltshire-based Cifer, a company which had been "at the forefront of computer technology for over ten years" and which had a "bread and butter business in termi...
Gulfstream/Bytec
June 1983
Hyperion - The world's most powerful portable computer
Sadly, this particular Gulfstream was nothing to do with the rarified world of luxury executive jets but was rather more prosaically a subsidiary of Canadian company Bytec. The ...
Haywood
June 1983
Haywood: When the British make something, it's really something
It's tempting with 20/20 hindsight to giggle about bespoke single-task machines like the oddly-named Haywood 9000 Composite in the light of the all-purpose IBM Micro, which dawned...