Research Machines Advert - November 1985

After selling what seems like the same machine since forever, or at least 1977 - the Research Machines 380Z - RM has finally stepped into the world of the IBM PC.

Except that it's not quite - it ran MS-DOS 3.1, but wasn't actually fully IBM compatible.

Nevertheless, the advert suggests that "a vast range of generic MS-DOS software" ran on it.

It also one of relatively few micros that used Intel's 80186 CPU, otherwise known as the iAPX 186.

Produced as an update to the 8088/8086 line of chips, the '186 - which was was originally intended to be an embedded processor - wasn't compatible with the support chips that had grown up around the more popular CPUs, and so most manufacturers chose to wait for the 80286 instead.

Part of an earlier advert for the Nimbus from April 1985's Practical Computing

The advert mentions networking capability as a feature. Apparently, most Nimbus PC-186's were intended as workstations in a local area network setup and had no hard disks of their own^[1], although Winchester disks were available as an option.

As such, they started from floppy disk or remotely over the network - very much an antecedent of the "thin client" idea that became popular in the late 90s.

When launched earlier in the year, the entry-level Nimbus PC 2, with 192K RAM and two 720K 3½" Sony-style floppy disk drives, retailed for £1,695 plus VAT, which is about £8,110 in 2026.