Butel-Comco Advert - March 1981

From another company that appears to have left no trace whatsoever - Butel-Comco Limited of Southampton - comes this advert for the Athena, one of a handful of microcomputers that came with a built-in printer.

There's virtually no information about the computer itself in the advert, other than it was capable of running all the usual business stuff - accounting, stock control and word processing - so it most likely had a Z80 processor and ran CP/M.

But whatever it was built on, it was relatively expensive, coming in at £5,694 plus VAT, or about £35,100 in 2025 money.

As well as the built-in printer - as also seen in OKI's if800, HP's HP-85, 1978's Rockwell AIM-65 or the computer that was more printer than micro, Durango's 700 - the Athena sported an unusually-wide display housing.

Alhtough it's hard to tell from the low-contrast photo, the actual display wasn't this wide as it looks like it probably housed floppy disk drives as well.