Tandon Advert - December 1986

This advert more than many sums up the dullness of the microcomputer industry in the latter half of the 1980s.

Instead of an actual variety of computers, like Commodore might have had with its VIC-20, Commodore 64 and maybe a few PET models - all at the same time - this advert from Tandon simply shows seven minor variations of the same thing.

Commodore's Chuck Peddle - one of the fathers of the PC, thanks to the Commodore PET and his 6502 microprocessor - ended up at Tandon after his previous company Sirius had gone into Chapter 11 at the end of 1984. The Sirius outsold the IBM PC in Europe until IBM finally managed to ship enough units over the Atlantic.

An earlier advert for Tandon's PC range, showing a perfect like-for-like copying of IBM's three models around at the time, the original PC, the XT and the Intel 80286-based AT. From Personal Computer World, February 1986

Tandon - founded in California in 1975 by Sirjang Lal Tandon, and incorporated a year later as Tandon Magnetics Corporation - was at one time the world's largest independent manufacturer of disk drives for micros^[1], with its first major break coming with a deal to provide all the floppy disk drives for Tandy's TRS-80.

It was also one of many IBM PC-compatible manufacturers around during the latter half of the 1980s, but ended up becoming particularly successful in Europe - a market which by 1990 was accounting for up 95% of its revenue^[2], and where for a while it was the largest clone manufacturer^[3].

Its IBM-compatible models ranged from the entry-level and floppy-based PCX unit selling for £1,195 - about £4,530 in 2025 - right up the the PCA40, with a 40Mb hard disk unit at £2,995 (£11,300).