1986 adverts

The Tandata PA - Data/voice communicating workstation

Tandata originally formed out of Tangerine, which produced a single-board computer called the Microtan 65. By 1984 it had become Tandata Holdings PLC, with Tandata Marketing Limit...

Gemini: Pick a disk... any disk

Gemini had been founded by John Marshall shortly after the receivers had been sent in to his former company Nascom - builder of what was once Britain's most popular kit computer, ...

Since Tava got that 20MB Winchester, they're inseparable

The Flyer appears to have been manufactured by Tava USA Incorporated, a company which was previously known as Replitech and which had bought out the original Tava Corporation only...

U-MAN: The next step

With customers as diverse as British Telecom, Oxford and Cambridge universities, the British Cast Iron Research Association and London Weekend Television, U-Microcomputers Limited...

Apricot Collection starts where others finish - then GEM gives you more

This is an advert for an Apricot bundle - the "collection" - which includes the F2 micro, a monitor, printer, keyboard and a tracker-ball mouse. The whole lot came together with...

They're both analytical and calculating

It's not that common for microcomputer adverts to get political, but this one from Victor is getting stuck right in, with a comment on the lack of action for small businesses from...

Kaypro PC

The earlier Kaypro 2 luggable, built by Andrew Kay's Non-Linear Systems as a direct competitor to the Osborne 1, was very successful, selling around 10,000 units a month at one po...

The new 1Mb 1040STF: With a memory like that you can be sure we haven't forgotten a thing

By the middle of 1986, the IBM PC was well-established as the "standard" computer architecture, but there was a handful of alternatives, including Commodore's Amiga, Apple's Macin...

Commodore 64: The World's Best-Selling Computer Now Comes ... With a Mouse

The first trackball pointing device had been invented way back in 1941 by Ralph Benjamin as part of British Royal Navy project, but the computer mouse is generally credited to Dou...

Amstrad 6128: While other computers are still under starters orders, you're off and running

The Amstrad CPC 6128 (although the CPC part seems to have been dropped) was first launched in the US in June 1985, before appearing in the UK in August the same year. It had onl...

Switch on to the world's first plug-in-and-go multi-user computer

Comart was another member of a small group of companies that survived from the 1970s and through the era of the IBM PC, although it wasn't entirely unscathed as it had been bought...

If you want to upgrade your office, here's a tip

It's another advert for Amstrad's P‍CW 8256, featuring a rubbish-tip metaphor that occured in a few of the adverts run around this time. The P‍CW 8256 and 8512 were hugely succes...

Introducing the TeleCAT-286. AT performance for £2695 complete.

TeleVideo - the terminals company founded in San Jose, California, in 1975 - was one of relatively few companies from that era which survived through the era of the IBM PC and bey...

The business computer that's a real mover

Here's another celebrity advertising endorsement for a microcomputer, this time featuring World Cup-winning footballer Bobby Charlton, where it's tempting to think that the legend...

We want to show you how much our new £505 printer can produce in 60 seconds

"300 Adverts" was once contacted by someone asking whether there was a name for the style of adverts popular in the 1970s which were almost all some sort of text, often comprising...