Fortronic Advert - March 1981
From Practical Computing
Fortronic F500: The £4,000 microcomputer that thinks it's an £8,000 microcomputer
This advert seems to be treading somewhat risky ground with its assertion that somehow £4,000 (about £21,400 in 2025 money) is actually cheap for a micro, when something like the top-of-the-range Commodore PET was available for around a quarter of the price.
It's proof perhaps that some companies still hung on to the concept that enough people will pay over the odds on the assumption that it's much better quality - an approach which certainly worked for Apple and IBM.
The F500 featured an 8-bit Motorola 6809 (an evolution of the 6800[1]) - the same chip which appeared in the humble Tandy Colour Computer and Dragon home micros - as well as disk storage of 500K upwards.
Fortronic, a company based in Dunfirmline, Fife and which specialised in banking and financial terminal systems (hence the steep prices) was bought out by banknote printers De La Rue for around £7 million in 1987[2], and again by Ingenico in 1999[3].
Date created: 23 November 2013
Last updated: 25 July 2025
Sources
Text and otherwise-uncredited photos © nosher.net 2025. Dollar/GBP conversions, where used, assume $1.50 to £1. "Now" prices are calculated dynamically using average RPI per year.