Butel-Comco Advert - July 1980

It's a stretch to put a desktop Z80-based microcomputer into the same category as a room-sized mainframe catering for sometimes hundreds of users, but here it is in this early - possibly first - advert for southampton-based Butel-Comco's mystery Athena machine.

Unlike the company's later advert, which ran for at least a year, this one only seemed to run for a few months, which is a shame because unlike the later advert a) it actually has some details about the machine in question, and b) you can actually see the micro in the product photo.

Although it still fails to mention the CPU it uses, its 64K memory allocation is classic Z80, however the advert does also claim some sort of "multi-processing" which could either mean it supported additional terminals via its "buffered peripheral controllers", or it could host additional plug-in Z80 cards.

It also offered up to 1.2 gigabytes of disc storage made up of four 300MB Winchesters, which was a huge amount at the time, and came with a multi-tasking operating system callled AMOS, which doesn't seem to be a Thing, so could be a custom version of some other company's OS, such as M/PM.

How basic the basic system was isn't specified, but it retailed for £3,380, which is around £23,900 in 2026 money. However, a typical configuration" which came with 64K RAM, dual floppy drives and the printer retailed for £7,954, which is a hefty £56,900 now.