1985 adverts

Get things going - with the Philips portable P2000C

The spec of this machine makes it seem almost like an update to 1984's KayPro, with a similar 9" green-screen monitor and 5¼" floppies - in this version capable of storing up to 6...

AMX Mouse - Points the way

Pre-dating the launch of home computers that came with and were optimised for mice - such as the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST - there was a phase of "retro fitting" the fashionabl...

Ask an expert why the Electron's the best micro in its class

Another advert for the Acorn Electron, the cut-down version of the BBC Micro. In common with many other Electron adverts, it stresses the fact that it's mostly the same as the e...

Turn your Spectrum into a Spectrum+ for just £20

1985 was the beginning of the end for Sinclair, at least as far as Uncle Clive was concerned. The company's "next generation" QL, launched in January 1984 but not actually avail...

My job takes me away from my PC - but nothing takes me away from my Hewlett-Packard Portable

Staking a claim to the entire industry of laptop (or lap-held) computers with a highly generic name of The Portable, HP's laptop was from the era of portable computers with chunky...

Tandy Model 4P - Power and portability at a truly unbeatable price!

It wasn't until 1986 that Tandy/Radio Shack officially dropped both the Radio Shack part of the company name, as well as the TRS designation that had been part of its naming schem...

At long last, the end of the queue is in sight

This advert, very reminiscent of the famous Saatchi and Saatchi "Labout isn't working" campaign of 1978 and '79, is for Gemini's MultiNet low-cost multi-user networking system. M...

The 520ST. Over-qualified and under-paid

After resigning from Commodore in January 1984 - the business he founded as a typewriter repair outfit in the 1950s, and the company that produced the world's first all-in-one "pe...

The MSX micro that's paid its musical dues

Luckily for the incumbent micro manufacturers of the UK and the US, the Japanese - whose invasion had been feared since the late 1970s - were surprisingly late to the party. Whe...

Instead of computers catching up with technology, technology now has to catch up with a computer

In the summer of 1982, one-time Olympic chess player and former chess grandmaster David Levy, of Intelligent Software - a company best known for producing programs like Cyrus IS C...

Who says you can't get fired for buying IBM?

Wang, founded in 1951 by Dr. An Wang and Dr. G.Y. Chu, was a US computer company based in Massachussetts, US, which, at its peak in the 1980s generated revenues of $3 billion bef...

A beginner's guide to the best in business computers

ACT had carved out a briefly-successful niche in the UK with its Apricot range of micros, several of which touted their "Sirius" compatibility, rather than the usual IBM. Howeve...

Type and Talk Speech Computer

The Type and Talk Speech Computer was built by Namal Peripherals of Gwydir Street in Cambridge, and distributed by the Cambridge Microcomputer Centre of nearby-ish East Road. Th...

A chip off the old block

Torch's Graduate was an unusual hybrid, being part sort-of IBM PC, with an Intel 8088 CPU and a pair of 720K 5¼" floppy disk drives, but no input or display of its own, as this wa...

The home computer that means business - Amstrad CPC664

When interviewed about the upcoming Atari ST, former Commodore founder and all-round legend Jack Tramiel said "Home computer? I never heard of it - I make personal computers". I...