This is a machine that you won’t see very often. It’s the Astral 2000. It was first mentioned in the May 1976 issue of the Homebrew Computer Club newsletter and first advertised in the November issue of Byte magazine. It was manufactured by M & R Enterprises and designed completely …
A now rare computer from the 80s came out under the name of Sinclair ZX80. Even though it was not overly popular, some say this was the computer that started the personal computer revolution in the United Kingdom. It was created by Sinclair Research and was a futuristic design for its …
Apple was one of the first manufacturers of personal computers. The Apple IIe was so early in the computing game that some call it the “original personal computer”. The later 5150 from IBM is said to have copied some of the aspects of the Apple IIe. Steve Jobs and Steve …
The Heath Company of Benton Harbor, Michigan founded in 1912 by Edward Bayard Heath became early pioneers in the electronics industry. They created a line of products known as Heathkits, these allowed electronic enthusiasts to purchase a kit version of an electronic product and build an equivalent home assembled version …
The Rockwell AIM 65 was a development computer introduced to the market back in 1976. The AIM acronym stood for Advanced Interactive Microcomputer and the 65 denoted the first two numbers of the 6502 MOS Technology microprocessor that the Rockwell AIM 65 was based upon. Rockwell were well known for …
Near the end of the TRS-80 product run came the Tandy TRS-80 Model 4 from Tandy / Radio Shack. Introduced in 1983, it was an upgrade from the Model 3 in that it ran at a blazing 4 MHz using a Zilog Z80 processor and had a display of 80 …
Released in January of 1980 at a retail price of $3250.00, the HP-85 personal computer was a self-contained system, designed to be portable for the small computer user or the technical professional. The HP-85 resembles the IBM 5100 physically and was based on Hewlett Packard’s 8-bit microprocessor technology. The system …
One of the more iconic machines in computing history is headed for the auction block soon. On October 9th, 2012 Christie’s will be including an Apple 1 in its sale. Only around 200 Apple 1’s were designed and hand built by Steve Wozniak, partner of Steve Jobs at Apple, and …
Roughly 10000 of these Sol-20 or Sol Terminal Computers were manufactured in either kit or pre-assembled form from 1977-1979. The company that made them was called Processor Technology Corporation in Emeryville California and was founded by Lee Felsenstein, Gordon French and Bob Marsh around mid 1975. Of course Lee Felsenstein …
The Commodore PET was Commodore’s first fully featured computer for the home computer market. Introduced to the world in 1977 the Commodore PET soon became a best seller in the North American educational markets and spawned a whole host of products based on its 8-bit microprocessor. This firmly managed to …
