Pearcom Advert - September 1981

This advert is a brazen attempt to sell an Apple II clone machine, but unlike Franklin's ACE 1200, had the extra "beyond the call of duty" feature of even naming the machine and company after another not altogether dissimilar fruit, as well as giving it the same "II" model number, and a stripey-fruit logo.

At the time, before Apple clamped down on them, there were several rip-offs as well as legitimate licensed clones on the market. Certainly, the specification of the Pear II seems to support this, with a 6502 processor and a Z80 on an add-in card, just like the Apple II.

It came with 32K RAM, expandable to 96K, had 40 columns x 24 rows on-screen display and had 14 expansion slots.

It was supplied with BASIC (also like the Apple II) but could also run COBOL if a Z80 card was installed^[1].

The swiftly-revised Pearcom micro, no longer called the Pear II. From Practical Computing, December 1981

Not surprisingly, the Netherlands-based Pearcom company was soon "persuaded" to change the name of its machine, with an update to the advert appearing in December 1981's Practical Computing showing the machine now being called simply the Pearcom and being positioned as a "computer frame", whatever that is.

Even the company logo was changed to something that wasn't based on some sort of fruit shape.

And quite what an oil lamp - which appears in both adverts - had to do with selling computers is not clear, but by the end of 1981 it was retailing for £975 plus VAT, which is about £6,100 in 2026 money.

Another advert for the Pearcom from the following year, in which Pearcom is much more blatantly featuring the Apple II-compatibility of its machine, even showing a pair of Apple's own disk II floppy disk units. The machine has also had a £100 price cut. From Practical Computing, June 1982

By the summer of the following year, Pearcom was being much more obvious in its advertising about the Apple II compatibility of its machine, even going as far as to show it running with a pair of Apple's own Disk II floppy disk units.

Otherwise the system - which still manages to look like a piece of unfinished laboratory equipment - is unchanged, although it is now £100 cheaper at £875 plus VAT, which is around £4,960 in 2026 money.