10 Computer Ads From The 80s
Written by The Shit
Anyway, as you can see from the title today’s post is on 10 old vintage ads that represented some of the famous computers in the 80s. I was around to see some of them but not all. Let us know what you think and which ads you remember. All images are linked directly to the source.
Click on the image to enlarge
- Franklin Ace 1200
Tagline : 13 good reasons to buy the Ace 1200
- Atari 800
Tagling : More capabilities than any other personal computer under $1,000
- Compaq
Tagline : Feature for feature, it’s hard to beat the Compaq Portable
- MicroAce
Tagline : For just $149.00, you get everything you need to build a personal computer at home…
- Macintosh
Tagline : Introducing Macintosh. What makes it tick. And talk
- IBM PC
Tagline : The quality, power, and performance of the IBM Personal Computer are what you’d expect from IBM. The price isn’t
- TRS-80 Color Computer
Tagline : Radio Shack’s $399 TRS-80 Color Computer - Innovation at it’s very best!
- Amiga
Tagline : Amiga under $2,000. Anyone else up to $20,000
- TI-99/2
Tagline : TI’s new basic computer. The one to start with and get smart with
- Hewlett-Packard HP-85
Tagline : Introducing HP-85. A new world of personal-professional computation
There it is. Let us know which ads you remember seeing. I for one remember the Macintosh ad not cause i was old enough but cause my old man had it on one of his magazines. Good ol’ days. What about you? Remember any of these or are you too young to even know these computers existed back in the days? 
54 Rockin' Comments
November 7th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
I remember these like it was yesterday.
Damn you Father Time!
November 7th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
OMG I just loved my TRS80. I still have my Commodore 64 from teh same era.
Jiff
http://www.anonymity.cz.tc
November 7th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
I had a MicroAce (actually I have most of all of the above). I ended up trading a guy for the MicroAce for one of those kids camcorders from the 80’s/90’s that allowed you to record video on a ordinary audio cassette tape. Ended selling it on eBay for a good amount of money though.
November 7th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
Interesting… haha yes and I agree damn you father time!
November 7th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
Soon our computers will look ridiculous to us too. This is certainly an indicator that even though people may think everything has been already invented, the truth is innovation never stops! My MAC certainly looks like a space rocket compared to the first release!
November 7th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Of the ten, the one I remember most was #6, those ubiquitous IBM commercials with the creepy Charlie Chaplin impersonator. IBM sure was (and is) a 20th century technology company. How quaint.
November 7th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
{yawn} {twitter} skool blows
November 7th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Amiga FTW!!!
November 7th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
And how many people here that used anything other than the Amiga feel as I do? I actually wish I could trade in all my PCs and Macs for that Amiga. The Amiga was 15 years ahead with graphics hardware, but no one has yet to catch up to the advanced OS that was fast and fun… I hate modern OS’s… Even though Steve is photocopying Workbench features for OSX as fast as he can, he still can’t duplicate the fun the Amiga was to use.
November 7th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
My elementary school had like ten Apple IIe’s and one Macintosh. No one was allowed to touch the Mac. I don’t even remember ever seeing it switched on. The ad still looks tantalizing to me…
November 7th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
Mac ad: “Serbo-Croation”?
November 7th, 2008 at 5:16 pm
I called the Atari 1800 number and got a sex line
November 7th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
It’s Bill Cosby, you see!
Fun retro list.
November 7th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
My current laptop is from 2002, and it seems as big and clunky as these.
Need. Next. Hot Thing. Now.
November 7th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
I did love my TRS-80 … lots of coooool adventure games! all in text!
November 7th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
I wish I had bought more apple stock back then.
I’ve got to go back now and get that Atari number.
hey bunny , Would you do a testimonial for me ?
What passion and commitment.
November 7th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
Does anyone remember the Sinclairs and the Kaypros? My Kaypro was as good as a Compaq or even the early IBMs.
November 7th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
The Radio Shack ad (#7) complete with the “its” vs. “it’s” grammatical error! Sweet!
November 7th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
all are nice, but the atari one is the best.
What no godaddy girls, awww. lol
November 7th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
John, yes, I do. Good machines in their days. Unfortunately this is an American list and mostly Americans will visit. They have little to no idea what an Amiga or Atari ST is, and there is no hope about Sinclair’s ZX81, ZX82 and Spectrum, and no hope of knowing about the BBC Micro, or Acorn Archimedes which was the first RISC machine.
Don’t worry though, those computers are remembered in countries all around the world… I’m typing from Australia.
November 7th, 2008 at 6:45 pm
Yep.. I used a number of these. I wrote reports on a Compaq Portable (’lugable’) with that little built-in CRT.. I programmed on a TRS-80.. owned a Commodore-64 (not pictured).. used the first Mac at NASA.. used IBM-PC for a long time.. back when none of these things even had a hard drive, just floppy disks. Or cassettes! Then I bought an Amiga, and used it for quite a while. (I had almost bought an Apple Lisa before the Mac came out..)
The craziest computer I ever bought was the “Videobrain” - with plug-in ‘function’ cartridges (like an old game system) and a big _1 kilobyte_ of memory. Enough for a couple lines of text.
The real lesson from these ancient computer ads is for us to try understand the forces that allowed such a rapid advance in technology and business. What gives us these Moore’s-law effects we see? We need to apply these lessons to lots of other areas of life to make similar rapid transformations.
November 7th, 2008 at 8:38 pm
What? You didn’t include the Shatner add? Shame on you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUEI7mm8M7Q
November 7th, 2008 at 10:37 pm
Ahh! The good old days. I ran a BBS on a TRS and whole world on a IIgs.
November 7th, 2008 at 11:36 pm
atari 8-bits rocked!
November 7th, 2008 at 11:46 pm
Ah yes, the Kaypro II. I had one and it was a great computers. And it was “portable” — if you didn’t mind lugging the huge, heavy thing around.
November 8th, 2008 at 12:35 am
But could they run Crysis?
November 8th, 2008 at 1:12 am
Wow, blast from the past! I had two (!) TRS-80 CoCo’s (the 1st gen and 2nd gen machines), programmed on an Apple II in 5th grade, discussed the intricacies of the “Trash-80″ vs the Timex-Sinclair and “Commode” 64 in 6th grade, and hated Fortran programming Freshman year/college on the dual-floppy Macs (with a lock over the 2nd floppy drive so you couldn’t eject the OS disk :-). The Mac was the worst — all the Macs in the computer lab were daisy-chained (token ring) together, along with the s-l-o-w “laser” printer. At least once an hour, the whole network would go down, and if you hadn’t saved your work, sux to be you! But the worst was writing a program that had an error, and instead of getting an error message, you’d get The Bomb. Next five minutes waiting for reboot…
November 8th, 2008 at 1:51 am
Eric, I think the real lesson is, for god’s sake don’t buy into leading edge technology!
Interesting though as I read these ads. Apart from the Apple IIe I used in middle-school, my first “real” personal-computer O/S was DOS 2.11. First PC was 8088 and I was so thrilled to upgrade to the 80286 with 1MB of RAM running at a screaming 16mhz (with turbo button ON of course). My first 40 Megabyte hard disk cost me $400.00 US but it was such a huge increase from my 10 Megabyte hard disk for the same money. What WAS I going to do with all of that hard disk space?!
More interesting is that I just configured a 64-bit Vista quad-core system with 8 GIGABYTES of addressable RAM, 1 TERABYTE of disk storage, 1 GIGABYTE of video RAM on a 25″ color display running at 2.66 GIGAHERTZ from HP for only $2999.00. Wow, who would have imagined we would need this kind of horsepower to run an operating system and the same basic apps we ran 25 years ago (word processors, spreadsheets, databases, games). Incredible…
November 8th, 2008 at 4:05 am
@Bunny — The Amiga, Atari, and Sinclair machines were commonly available in the U.S., and the Acorn RISC machines were talked about in popular computer magazines of the time.
November 8th, 2008 at 4:25 am
Nick,
Ahh, the 286… Where Intel first introduced their first Mhz lie. Every CPU before the 286 from all manufacturers was rated on the external clock. A little oscilating crystal. Intel however needed their new CPU to sound more impressive so only quoted the internal CPU clock which is always twice the speed of the external clock. The 286 at full “turbo” speed was actually 8 Mhz.
All the other CPU manufacturers learned to quote the internal CPU clock within five years and that is what we live with today.
So for all these machines pre 286, and anything that ran on any of the 68000 series CPUs, double the CPU speed to see how fast they were compared to the CPU you currently use.
November 8th, 2008 at 4:45 am
Atari 800, oh sweet memories. Thanks for taking me back in time. Dugg!
November 8th, 2008 at 9:43 am
well, you have to start somewhere, don’t you? In the 1970’s, National Lampoon did a ad insert each year for the new (1956, 1948, 1963) Belchfire. They were deadpan ads done in the style of each period, illustrated by Bruce McCall. They leveraged the ad verbiage of the relative times (longer — lower — wider!, etc) and were hilarious.
The video Mac ad in the 1984 Superbowl, the 1984-esque drones sitting, listening mindlessly to Big Brother on the big screen, and the woman runs up the aisle and throws the hammer through the screen. Never showed the product (kind of like the Infiniti ads) but set you up that something BIG was about to happen.
Ads are great artifacts of times gone by. Sometimes they show how silly we were (hence the Belchfire parodies). Sometimes they begin a trend (like the Mac ad).
Also, keep in mind, Amiga was Mac before Mac was Mac.
November 8th, 2008 at 11:14 am
This is very amusing yet sad. Amusing to us now about what was once thought of being futuristic cutting edge technology, sad for them for what in retrospect s laughably primitive.
But remember that before you laugh your silly little heads off over this, one day, a future generation will feel the same way about you.
November 8th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Damm, I feel old now. I have owned most of these…
Franklin Ace 1000 (and Apple IIc)
Atari 400 and 800
Macintosh (most up to current Macbook Pro)
TRS-80 and TRS Colour Computer
TI-99/2 anf TI 99/4a
Compaq Portable
IBM PC and PCjr (don’t remind me!)
Timex Sinclair 1000
and my personal favourite and still owned and working…Osborne 1
November 8th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
The name of your website is extremely offensive. Sorry about your low self esteem.
November 8th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
Good I loved my Amiga. Hell, I loved my Vic-20, C=64. and my Amigas more than any other computer.
November 8th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
Oh, yeah… and the day I plugged that 300baud modem into my C=64. WIN!
My fingers used to have blisters from dialing BBS’s that were busy all the time.
November 9th, 2008 at 2:43 am
@Bill : How the hell do you tie in the name of our website to low self esteem? By the way, did you ever think that we have enough balls to actually create a site with a name “Techyshit” and actually gather 400,000 visits in less than 3 weeks since its launch. Talking about self esteem….hell we are rockin and rolling and smokin. What about you? How’s your life going? Any recent achievements that you would like to share to justify your high self esteem?
November 10th, 2008 at 10:57 am
These ads are fantastic, or should I say, “totally awesome”. You can only think about all the changes that we’ve seen and how many of us thought these were cutting edge at the time when they were first released. Ah nostalgic Blue Monday…
Louise
November 10th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
I’m lucky. I’d use two of them in 80’s.
November 18th, 2008 at 10:14 am
Don’t forget to add the 80287 Coprocessor for additional speed on the AT’s……
We are getting old I guess……what a rollercoaster it is
November 19th, 2008 at 7:15 am
a) love the name!
b) you hooked me with your tweet about your blog–nice marketing
c) I’ve heard about amiga before. what exactly made it so awesome? and where is amiga now??
d) will you re-jailbreak my first gen iphone for me? shit, i’m in honolulu. nvr mind. ; c
November 20th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
Cosby hawking computers? Awesome.
November 22nd, 2008 at 11:59 am
Started on an old Atari 400, the “kid’s version” of the 800 - you know, back in the day when the ‘internet’ was something called BBS’s that you had to call up individually by phone on an acoustic modem. Pop the lid, stick in the cartridge, load the program, select your Baud rate, enter the phone number, pop your handset into the foam recepticals on the modem, hit Carriage Return, wait for the system to dial and hope the computer on the other end picks up.
http://oldcomputers.net/atari400.html
Ahhh … good times.
Geesh, what a ride it’s been.
LJ
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