Old Computer and PC Brands

naefeart

naefeart

naefeart

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A little nostalgic trip down memory lane... the computer brands graveyard - something that occured to me when looking at the 'What was your first PC spec?' thread.

I had forgotten just how many computer manufacturers there were and many of them home-grown. From the 80s though the 90s in into the 00s we were certainly spolt for choice. Not all of them great, but many fondly remembered.

Who remembers these bygone brands? Doesn't just have to be computers, but anything related. I'll start us off...

  • Acorn - Obvious one, I still have my BBC B 32k and my BBC A3000 (Archimedes)
  • Abit - Great motherboards, what happened to them?
  • Cirrus Logic - still going!
  • Dragon - 8-bit computers produced in Wales!
  • Dan
  • Elonex
  • Evesham - The first PC I bought with my own money
  • MESH - Often PC Pro group test winner, always wanted one
  • Oric - Sinclair Spectrum competitor
  • Tiny - budget brand PC manufacturer, seemed ok at the time
 
Time computers were pretty poor. A friend bought one solely on the basis that Leonard Nimoy was part of their advertising campaign! We told him not too; it had a non standard psu and motherboard and would only run at reasonable temps with the case off.

Ah I didn’t know Argos sold PCs…
 
philldutton said:
Remember getting my first PC from Escom. P60, 8mb ram and a tiny HD in a full tower case, most of which was completely empty. :cry:
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Is that just before they went bust? They made my Amiga 1200 too!

Tandy is another I remember as a kid, they even had a shop in my local town.

Panrix was another that I lusted after, but they were at the more expensive end.

Aries… I think they made PCs too.
 
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rare said:
Agreed I always lusted after their desktops. They looked amazing.
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This is how I felt about Alienware, before Dell bought them and systematically removed their USP. Google what Alienwares used to look like, quite different to now with their lairy paint schemes.
 
OldKitMan said:
Amstrad, maker of absolutely everything, had a PC2386, CPC464 and Spectrum+2 from them.

Best Amstrad product I probably owned though was a NICAM Stereo VHS Video Recorder, sounded absolutely brilliant when you connected up a set of headphones and watched a film like Robocop.
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I was never fond of Amstrad's foray into the PC market (PC1512 and 1640 come to mind), letters pages of PC Mags of the time were always awash with owners complaining about unreliability and cheap/non-standard components limiting upgrades. There is however one PC that Amstrad made that did apeal to me (I was a kid afterall) - The Amstrad Mega PC. A fusion of 386 and a Megadrive.
 
Does anyone remember Silica Shop? They had stores in London and Sidcup iirc. They used to sell everything from Atari Sets and Amiga to games consoles and even PCs. Used to have rather colourful and eye catching adverts in many magazines back in the 90s and 00s.
 
sx_turbo said:
Don't remember them.

But sound similar to special reserve,

Dabs.com was once awesome aswell, then BT bought them out and promptly killed the business
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Yes! Totally remember Special Reserve, I bought my Gameboy and my GameGear from there. Couldn’t afford any of the more enticing items.

Dabs was my go to for years, long before the rainforest. My nVidia 6800 Ultra came from there.

That reminds me that Play.com used to be good too in the early 00s. Great for DVDs etc. but they also expanded later into electricals and other things.
 
Bubo said:
Intergraph, anyone remember them? Our office had a couple of these CAD stations when I first started.

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I remember doing work experience at an engineering design company, when I was 14. I spent a week using CAD software to design/redesign structures for offshore platforms. They had 22/24” flat screen crt monitors, when offices normally had 14/15”. Each designer had two of them - they were huge and very heavy, needing extremely large and sturdy desks.

Never saw the setup above, but it totally brought back memories. When I finished my week, the company boss said as a reward for working hard, I could take home something from his office. Thinking asking for his PC would be bad form, I ended up with a sealed big box version of AutoCAD and Turbo PASCAL. That rather cemented my initial future in computers and software dev. Good times.
 
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