Hewlett-Packard Advert - 1983

More proof that it took at least a few years for the IBM PC format to bulldoze everything in its path, comes this advert for the Hewlett-Packard HP-86.

Looking a bit like a very slimmed-down Commodore PET - and for sale the year after the advent of the IBM - it featured HP's own custom CPU, running at a modest 625KHz, which was nominally only three times faster than a 1962 Elliott.

It made up for it with its advanced floating-point maths capability, which was not really surprising as HP was also a manufacturer of scientific calculators.

Also, like the PET, it came with a built-in BASIC interpreter and only 16K RAM, however it could also run CP/M software via a plug-in Z80A module.