Hawk Advert - December 1982

Hawk Computers had been around since at least 1978^[1] but seemed to have been fairly invisible, with this being the first advert noticed anywhere apparently featuring it.

The company appeared to have always had a particular focus on reliability and integrity of data, with this particular machine - the Hawk 1210 - being supplied with several unusual features.

These included a three-way key switch "to prevent unathorised access", a reset buzzer for some reason, continuously-running background diagnostics and, more usefully, an interlock which prevent the machine from being powered down whilst a disk was loaded, a feature which prevented accidental corruption of data.

It was also constructed with a strong metal case and came with a cleaner switched-mode power supply, which apparently catered for the "dirty and variable mains often found in industrial environments".

Otherwise, it was a reasonably normal "perfectly adequate" 4MHz Z80-based CP/M 2.2 machine - or Z 8 øA as the advert would have it - albeit with a minimum of 66K memory, possibly providing an extra 2K above the usual 64K, just for video memory.

The advert also shows, as well as a broken bird's egg, the cardboard shipping "floppy disk" still in the disk drive, with its "remove before use" tab still sticking out.