Love these ads.
There were almost as many computer companies back then as there are crypto currencies now.
For a mere $1595, you got a 16k computer with microsoft basic but the best part is that it comes with 2 Z80 chips. Not sure how much a Z80 chip cost but surely the user would prefer an extra 8k or whatever. Best part is that you get to learn how the computer works by building it.
There are things I don't miss about the era -- good riddance to floppy disks and hard drive crashes -- but the PC world pre-IBM had so much latent possibility and sometimes just plain weird stuff:
> A major advance was announced in a press release dated October 25, 1975 in which the young specialty firm offered a relatively new and promising concept. The Hypercube was advertised as a four dimensional arrangement of dual 8080 processor "nodes" configured in 2x2x2x2, 3x3x3x3, and 4x4x4x4 arrays, with each node capable of communicating, via shared memory, with 8 adjacent nodes. This arrangement provided for the first processor in each node to handle system overhead and communications tasks while the second was left free to execute user code. The operating code was to be stored in ROM, and the total system promised unparalleled processing power at a fraction of the cost and overhead of mainframe machines from IBM, Honeywell, Boroughs, and other giants of the period. The advertised price of these three offerings was $80,000 for the Hypercube II, $400,000 for the Hypercube III (about 1/10th the cost of an IBM 370-168), and $1,280,000 for the Hypercube IV which was to be released in the second quarter of 1976. The concept was legitimized by publication in the December 11, 1975 issue of ELECTRONICS magazine. Ultimately, the U.S. Navy ordered a Hypercube II for installation in Huntsville, Alabama.
I was a teenager, desperately looking for the cheapest possible system (because I couldn't afford any of them). And I would longingly read all the ads hoping a miracle wold happen. Later on I learned that one of those companies was named after the college dorm where the computer was conceived. So cool.
For a mere $1595, you got a 16k computer with microsoft basic but the best part is that it comes with 2 Z80 chips. Not sure how much a Z80 chip cost but surely the user would prefer an extra 8k or whatever. Best part is that you get to learn how the computer works by building it.
You can see why user testing is so important.