Compucolor Corporation Advert - July 1977

The Compucolor 8001, built by Compucolor Corporation of Georgia in the US, was an Intel 8080-based personal computer which upped the ante compared to other machines like the Cromemco and the IMSAI 8080 by having a real keyboard, 34 I/O ports and a colour display, when most other machines had this as only an optional extra.

This made it the first home or personal computer to offer built-in colour graphics^[1].

It's also interesting for what appears to be a fairly unique feature in having "continuous tape memory", which was a mass-storage device which stored up to 1MB of data on to a continuous-loop eight-track tape - the chunky cartridge-style tapes popular in cars before being usurped by compact cassettes.

Despite being a generous amount in 1977 - although high-density double-sided 8" floppies were offering capacities of a similar range - the Floppy Tape Memory system wasn't especially successful, with apparently only 25 being sold.

The follow-up machine - the Compucolor II, referred to by Compucolor Corporation as its "renaissance machine" - was released in 1978, making its way to the UK in the early summer of 1979 where one of the first machines to be imported, by reseller Abacus, was reviewed in June 1979's Practical Computing.

It was smaller and cheaper, and had by now switched to Shugart's new minifloppy 5¼" disks. Unfortunately, Compucolor's implementation only had a formatted capacity of a puny 51.2K per disk, considerably less than the 160K sometimes available elsewhere.

Practical Computing's reviewer, Martin Collins, was used to having machines lying around for testing, but said of the Compucolor II that:

"[it] proved to be very different. It was the first computer I had used which offered interactive colour graphics, and they frankly are stunning. As it is complete with colour display, minifloppy disk drive, BASIC and filing system in ROM, it offers considerably more than most micro systems. [My children] were so enthusiastic about the Compucolor that they almost forgot to watch Worzel Gummidge on Sunday afternoon as they were trying to break the bank on the one-armed bandit. Praise indeed"

The review concluded:

"We would like a Compucolor. It is an upmarket home computer or a very small business system but it has no pretensions to being anything else^[2]".

Prior to the signing of the contract with Abacus, which included a clause giving the reseller a pre-agreed percentage of Compucolor's output, the Compucolor micro had not been very common in the UK, largely because of earlier distribution problems.

However in the US the machine had jumped to fourth place in the "hobbyist popularity stakes" in the spring of 1979^[3], just behind the 1977 Trinity - Commodore, Tandy and Apple.

In the UK, the basic entry-level Model 3, which came with 8K of RAM as well as the fabled colour display, retailed for £1,390 plus VAT, or about £11,100 in 2026.

Models higher up in the value chain included 16K or 32K RAM, and keyboards with more keys on, including an option for an expansive 117 keys - significantly more than the standard 102-key IBM-stype PC keyboard of the modern era.

Thanks to the new dealership deal, the Compucolor II was finally available on the high streets of the UK, including via Byte Shop and Transam's retail outlet on Chapel Street in London.