Triumph-Adler Advert - March 1984

The Alphatronic PC was very much the baby of the Alphatronic family, being a Z80-based 8-bit machine designed and built in Japan to TA's specification, primarily for the home market.

It sold mostly in Germany - the home of Triumph-Adler - and thanks to its competitive price was apparently a top-five seller^[1].

Although it was pitched at the home and games market, it didn't support true graphics and offered only block-mode characters, a little like the Commodore PET from seven years earlier.

There was also not much home or games software made available, so because of this it ended up more as a small office machine where its ability to support CP/M at least meant that a reasonable amount of software was available, although even here its lack of expansion held it back^[2].

There's no price on this advert, but its price in Germany was DM1,495, or about £400 (£1,620 in 2024). That might have been competitive in its home market, but it put it at the expensive end of the UK home micro market, up with the far more capable BBC Micro and well beyond micros like the Sinclair Spectrum.

It's perhaps no wonder it didn't appear to sell well over here.