Archive for the 'Computers' Category
One of many wonderful commercials John Cleese did for Compaq Computer Corporation in the mid to late ’80s.
A very rare find and a treasure for any John Cleese fan, these classic ads were shown only in England.
One of many wonderful commercials John Cleese did for Compaq Computer Corporation in the mid to late ’80s.
A very rare find and a treasure for any John Cleese fan, these classic ads were shown only in Great Britian.
The Compaq Portable II was the third product in the Compaq portable series to be brought out by Compaq Computer Corporation. Released in 1986 at a price of US$3199, the Portable II was much improved upon its predecessors - It included an 8 MHz processor, and was lighter and smaller than the Compaq Portable. A model with a hard disk was also available at $4799.
Info taken from Wikipedia
If you are a Speccy fan and retro geek you will think this cool. Enjoy! 
1986 advert for the Honeywell Bull office computer.
Honeywell came into being through the invention of the damper flapper, a thermostat for coal furnaces, by Albert Butz, in 1885 and subsequent innovations in electric motors and process control by Minneapolis Heat Regulator Company tracing back to 1886. In 1906, Mark C. Honeywell founded Honeywell Heating Specialty Co., Inc. in Wabash, Indiana. Honeywell’s company merged with Minneapolis Heat Regulator Company in 1927. The merged company was called the Minneapolis-Honeywell Regulator Company. Honeywell was its first president, W.R. Sweatt its first chairman. Read the rest of this entry »
A UK commercial from Thorn EMI promoting the use of their Computer Software from 1985.
Thorn EMI was a major British company involved in consumer electronics, music, defence and retail. It was created in October 1977 when Thorn Electrical Industries merged with EMI to form one of the largest operating companies in the United Kingdom.
Computer Software
In the early-to-mid 1980’s, Thorn EMI Video Programmes released a number of games for several home computer formats, initially under their own name. They received a lukewarm reception with no major hits. These included Gold Rush, Road Racer and Volcanic Planet (1983) and River Rescue (1982). The label was later renamed Creative Sparks.
Info taken from Wikipedia
The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer released by Commodore International in August, 1982, at a price of US$595. Preceded by the Commodore VIC-20 and Commodore MAX Machine, the C64 features 64 kilobytes (65,536 bytes) of RAM with sound and graphics performance that were superior to IBM-compatible computers of that time.
The Commodore 64 is commonly referred to as the C64 or C=64 and occasionally known as CBM 64 (Commodore Business Machines Model number 64), or VIC-64. It has also been affectionately nicknamed the “breadbox” and “bullnose” due to its shape.
During the Commodore 64’s lifetime sales totaled 30 million units, making it the best-selling single personal computer model of all time. For a substantial period of time (1983/84/85), the Commodore 64 dominated the market with approximately 40% share, even outselling IBM PCs and Apple computers. Sam Tramiel, a former Commodore president said in a 1989 interview “When I was at Commodore we were building 400,000 C64s a month for a couple of years.” Part of its success was due to the fact that it was sold in retail stores instead of electronics stores, and that Commodore produced many of its parts in-house to control supplies and cost.
For more information on the Commodore 64 visit Wikipedia.
The Atari 2600, released in October 1977, is the video game console credited with popularizing the use of microprocessor based hardware and cartridges containing game code, instead of having non-microprocessor dedicated hardware with all games built in. The first game console to use this format was the Fairchild Channel F. However, it was the Atari 2600 that made the plug-in concept popular among the game-playing public.
Originally known as the Atari VCS—for Video Computer System—the machine’s name was changed to “Atari 2600″ (from the unit’s Atari part number, CX2600) in 1982, after the release of the more advanced Atari 5200. The 2600 was typically bundled with two joystick controllers, a conjoined pair of paddle controllers, and a cartridge game—initially Combat and subsequently Pac-Man.
The Atari 2600 was wildly successful, and during the 1980s, “Atari” was a synonym for this model in mainstream media and, by extension for video games in general similar to “Nintendo” and “PlayStation” in the 1980s and 1990s.
For more information see Wikipedia.
A Sinclair Spectrum 48k & Sinclair Spectrum 48k + Advert from the 80’s.