Memotech Advert - December 1985

Thanks to the lead-time involved in placing adverts in a monthly magazine, which seemed to be around six to eight weeks, Memotech had already gone bust, or was on the cusp of it, by the time this one appeared in the December 1985 edition of Personal Computer World.

With the benefit of hindsight, it's a last-ditch attempt to try and place the Memotech MTX512 into the "personal computer" market, implying that the Z80-based CP/M machine is along the same lines as the increasingly-dominant IBM PC.

Unfortunately for Memotech, whilst its machines were generally well regarded, even a ludicrously low starting price of £79.95 - about £280 in 2024 - wasn't enough to shift them.

Along with its poor sales, the company was finished off by its high-stakes attempt to get into the Soviet Russian market, following the easing of the US's COCOM trade restrictions on the USSR.

Fuelled by an extra £1 million funding from the UK government, the company created a Russian version of its MTX machines, complete with Cyrillic keyboard and a brushed aluminium case in Soviet red which it pitched at the ten-day long Technobuch '85 exhibition in Moscow.

The USSR, however, ended up picking the MSX consortium^[1].