Old Computer and PC Brands

naefeart

naefeart

naefeart

Soldato
Joined
26 Jul 2004
Posts
3,377
Location
Thunderdome
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…
 
picnic said:
Don't forget Research Machines and the venerable 380Z. We had one appear at school the last year of my A-Levels so 1980.
Click to expand...

Research Machines (RM) are still around and primarily in the education sector.

Another that I thought was gone but it still around is Viglen

en.wikipedia.org

RM plc - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org

Viglen - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
Armageus said:
Another that I thought was gone but it still around is Viglen
Click to expand...
I had a tour round their factory. Up to about that time they had been primarily manufacturing plastic cases and saw a market to put 5.25" drives in to a case and flog them for the BBC market. I guess this would have been 1983. I bought BBC that autumn and already had the dual 40/80 switchable drive from Viglen. Amazing where they went after that small start.

As we have Dragon I guess Commodore and Texas should get a remember too.
 
Last edited:
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:
Click to expand...
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.
 
Last edited:
banja said:
I remember MSX computers being advertised in the computer magazine I used to read (C+VG probably) I really wanted one, not sure why.
Click to expand...
MSX was meant to be a standardised home computer architecture developed by Microsoft and ASCII (I think).
To some degree it worked in Asia and computers were made by big Japanese and Korean electronics companies (Sony, Goldstar(LG), Sanyo, Toshiba, Mitsubishi Etc).
They featured, on cartridge, some great conversions of Konami arcade games of the time.
 
Not as retro as most of the brands in here, but I miss VoodooPC, loved the look of their Envy laptops hand painted in brightly coloured car paints

(Of course they ended up being bought by HP and eventually evolved somewhat into HP's Omen range)

e.g.
1737446116121.png
1737446133451.png
1737446150134.png
 
First computer was Acorn electron, the cheap mans BBC Micro. I recall often buying PC World and just drooling over the advertisements and reading up on all the specs of the then current IBM PCs. First IBM PC was an Olivetti 386 running at 16Mhz; What a demon! That PC got me through college working with Turbo Pascal, COBOL and dBIV.

All a bit sad really (:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom