The first ARM laptop. Acorn folded an ARM3 at 24MHz and RISC OS 3.11 into a clamshell with a mono LCD in 1992, years before anybody else shipped a portable RISC machine. Expensive, made in small numbers, and now genuinely rare — the screens and the batteries are the usual casualties. A landmark given what ARM laptops eventually became.

Acorn's last serious attempt at the British home market: an ARM250 — the ARM2 with the memory, video and I/O controllers folded into one chip — in the A3000's wedge case, sold through high-street shops with a joystick port and a games bundle. It did not work; the Amiga and the PC had the market. As hardware the ARM250 integration is the point, and it makes the machine simple and reliable.

The A3010's school-and-office sibling: the same ARM250 wedge with an internal hard disc bay and a proper network socket for Acorn's Econet. Sold into education where the A3000 had been, and the version most likely to turn up with period software still on the drive. Fitted machines are more useful than A3010s and no harder to find.

The A3020's boards in a separate desktop case with a detachable keyboard, for buyers who wanted an Archimedes that looked like a workstation rather than a home computer. Mechanically the most conventional of the ARM250 machines and the easiest to work in. Uncommon, having sold in far smaller numbers than the wedges either side of it.

The professional Archimedes: ARM3 at 25MHz, RISC OS 3, a high-density floppy and IDE on the board. It is the fastest and best-equipped of the classic Archimedes line before the Risc PC changed the shape of the range, and the one to have if you want a period ARM desktop that is genuinely pleasant to use rather than merely historically interesting.

Named like a Risc PC and built like neither: an ARM7500 with the video, sound and I/O on the processor die, in a cost-reduced case for the education market. The integration makes it the simplest RISC OS machine of the period and the cheapest way into one, at the cost of the expandability the Risc PC was sold on. A useful, unglamorous machine that schools bought by the trolley.

One of the first ARM machines anybody could buy. The 1987 Archimedes launch put Acorn's own 32-bit processor — designed in-house because nothing on the market was good enough — into a desktop computer running Arthur, later RISC OS. It was faster than anything at the price and had almost no software. The significance is hard to overstate: every ARM core shipped since traces to this design.

The top of the 1987 Archimedes launch: 4MB of memory and a hard disc when the A310 had half a megabyte and floppies, aimed at technical and publishing work rather than schools. Expensive at the time and consequently uncommon now. The interest is the same as the A310's — early ARM2, and Acorn's argument that a British RISC design could beat the American 68000s — with the specification the argument deserved.

The Archimedes that schools actually bought: one wedge case with the keyboard built in, priced for an education budget, and consequently the most common ARM machine of its generation in Britain. If you used a computer in a British classroom around 1990 it was probably this. Same ARM2 as the A310 in a cheaper package, and the case design that Acorn reused for the A3010 that followed it.

Acorn's first complete computer, sold as a kit or built, and the machine that got the company into the room for the BBC contract. A 6502 with Acorn's own BASIC in ROM, expandable to floating point and colour, in a wedge case with a real keyboard when rivals offered calculator keys. Most interesting as the direct ancestor of the Proton prototype that became the BBC Micro, and as evidence of how quickly Acorn moved between 1980 and 1981.

The BBC Micro finished properly. 128K, the 65SC12 processor, a numeric keypad, the 1770 controller, and the ROM software — View, Viewsheet, ADFS, Terminal — built in rather than bought as chips. It is the machine the Model B should have been by 1986, and the one that stayed in British schools until the Archimedes replaced it. Watch the battery: leaking CMOS cells have destroyed a great many Master boards.

The Master unbundled into three boxes — keyboard, monitor, drive — and aimed at the home rather than the classroom. Cheaper than a Master 128 and with a 3.5-inch drive when the rest of the platform was still on 5.25, which makes it the odd one out in the family and the awkward one to find media for. The least common Master, and the last BBC-badged machine Acorn made.

The cheap Beeb: 16K of memory, no printer or analogue ports fitted, and the expectation that a school would upgrade it later. Most were, which is why the Model A is markedly scarcer than the B despite being sold alongside it — an unmodified one, with the empty sockets still empty, is the find. Otherwise identical hardware, so it demonstrates Acorn's design intent: one board, sold at two prices, with the difference in what is fitted.

The machine the BBC's Computer Literacy Project was built around, and so the one a generation of British children learned on. Acorn's engineering is the draw: a 6502 clocked properly, four-channel sound, seven display modes and an expansion bus that made it the standard laboratory and school controller for a decade. Collectors watch for the Ferranti ULAs, which fail and take the display with them, and for the 8271 floppy controller of an early board.

Acorn's stopgap between the Model B and the Master: 64K or 128K of memory with shadow RAM for the screen, freeing space that the B could not spare, and the 1770 floppy controller as standard. Sold mainly into schools already committed to the platform, and unloved at the time for being neither one thing nor the other. That makes it uncommon now, and it runs a body of later software that will not fit a Model B.

Acorn's cut-down Beeb for the home: one custom ULA doing the work of the Model B's several, which halved the cost and roughly halved the speed. It arrived to enormous demand at Christmas 1983 and Acorn could not build them, a failure that cost the company its independence. As hardware it is a neat piece of integration; as history it is the machine that broke Acorn, and the ULA is the part that fails.

Acorn's answer to the PC: a stackable "slice" case you could add height to, two processor sockets, and the option of a genuine 486 card so RISC OS and Windows ran on one desk at once. That second socket is the collector's draw, along with a case design nobody else attempted. The last Acorn desktop line before the company left the computer business.

Amstrad's 1990 revision of the CPC: hardware sprites, scrolling, a proper DMA sound engine and a cartridge slot, in a restyled case. Everything the original needed to compete, arriving about four years late into a market the Amiga had already taken. Backwards compatible with the 464, so it is the best CPC to own and the one almost nobody bought.

The Plus hardware with 128K and a 3-inch drive — the top of the CPC line and the last machine of the family. The improved graphics and sound are worth having and the cartridge slot takes the GX4000 titles, which makes it the most capable Amstrad 8-bit by some distance. Sold badly, like everything in the Plus range, so it is uncommon.

The machine that made Amstrad a computer company: a Z80 with the tape deck built in, a proper keyboard, and a monitor in the box, sold at a price that undercut everything. Locomotive's BASIC is the best of its generation and the Amstrad-designed gate array gives it a genuinely good palette. The volume seller of the CPC range by a wide margin, and the one that turns up with its original green-screen monitor.

A tax dodge in a case. Spain levied duty on computers with 64K or less and a keyboard without Ñ, so Amstrad's Spanish distributor shipped 464s with a daughterboard carrying an extra, entirely unused 8K of ROM and a modified keyboard — enough to make the machine legally a 472. Sold only in Spain, in small numbers, and the pointless daughterboard is exactly why collectors want one.

Amstrad's shortest-lived machine. The 664 put a 3-inch disc drive in the 464's case and was replaced by the 6128 within months, having been made obsolete by Amstrad's own next announcement. That gives it a production run of about half a year and makes it easily the rarest of the mainstream CPCs — the one CPC collectors actually hunt for rather than merely acquire.

The CPC finished: 128K, a 3-inch disc drive, and CP/M Plus in the box, which turned a games machine into something that ran serious software. The banked memory is the interesting part, and the reason a body of CPC software will not run on a 464. The drive belts perish, which is the first thing to check, and the 3-inch discs are now the scarce consumable.

Amstrad's console: the Plus chipset with the keyboard and tape deck taken away, launched in 1990 against the Mega Drive and the Super Famicom with 8-bit hardware and a catalogue of about thirty games, several of which were CPC ports on a cartridge. It failed almost immediately and was cleared at knock- down prices. A famous commercial disaster, and cheap for what is genuinely capable hardware.

A Z80 notepad the size of a hardback: an eight-line screen, a full-travel keyboard, PCMCIA memory cards, and batteries that lasted weeks because there was nothing in it to drain them. Sold as a writer's machine and still used as one — there is an active following, and the serial port means text actually gets off it. One of Amstrad's genuinely well-judged products.

The NC100 with a sixteen-line backlit screen and a 3.5-inch floppy drive, which fixed the earlier machine's only real problem: getting the writing out. Heavier and hungrier for it, and sold in much smaller numbers, so it is the harder of the two to find. The drive is usually the part that has failed.

Not a home computer but a word processor that happened to be one. Amstrad sold the PCW as a complete writing machine — screen, printer, discs and LocoScript in one box — for the price of a typewriter, and shifted them by the million to people who would never have bought a computer. Underneath is a Z80 running CP/M Plus, so it takes the whole CP/M software catalogue.

The PCW with 512K and a second, larger disc drive, for people doing enough writing to be swapping discs. Same machine otherwise, and the extra memory makes it markedly better under CP/M than the 8256. The printer is the part that dies, and a PCW without its own printer is a much less interesting object than one with it.

The last of the PCWs, cost-reduced for 1991 with the memory and drive of an 8256 in the later styling. By this point the PC had taken the market the PCW invented and Amstrad was clearing the line. Least regarded of the family, and consequently the cheapest way to have one — the CP/M machine underneath is the same as any other PCW's.

The PCW with a daisywheel printer instead of the dot-matrix, sold to people who needed letters that looked typed rather than printed. That printer is the whole difference and the reason the 9512 cost more; it is also heavy, loud, and the first thing to fail. A complete working example with its own printer and daisywheels is uncommon.

The machine that broke the price of the PC in Britain. Amstrad sold a complete 16-bit computer with monitor, mouse and GEM for under £400 in 1986 and took a quarter of the European market with it. Everything is subordinate to that price: the power supply is in the monitor, so the machine will not run without one, and there is no fan — which is why so many died of heat.

Alan Sugar's answer to the question of why a PC cost two thousand pounds. The 1640 gave the 1512 proper EGA graphics and 640K as standard, bundled GEM and a mouse, and sold in enormous numbers to British small businesses. Everything is in service of the price: the power supply lives in the monitor, so the machine will not run without one, and the fanless design that Amstrad advertised as quiet is the reason so many cooked themselves.

Amstrad's 1988 successor to the 1640, with VGA on the board when VGA was still an expensive option elsewhere, and the 3.5-inch drive that the 2000 series became notorious for. Still an 8086, so it is slow for its date, but the integrated VGA makes it a tidy period machine for DOS graphics. The 2000-series hard disc problems are the reason to check what is fitted.

Amstrad moving upmarket: a 286 at 12MHz with VGA on the board, aimed at the business buyer who had outgrown a 1512. The 2000 series is where Amstrad's reputation turned, having shipped with a troubled 3.5-inch drive and a hard disk controller that earned the company a famous amount of bad press. That history is most of the interest — it is the machine that ended Amstrad's run as Britain's volume PC maker.

The top of Amstrad's business range: a 386SX with VGA, sold to buyers who had outgrown a 1640 and had not yet lost faith in the brand. It is the most capable PC Amstrad made in the period and among the least common, the 2000 series having been overtaken by its own reputation before it sold in volume.

The first laptop-shaped PC most British buyers ever handled: a full keyboard, a supertwist LCD, two floppy drives and ten C-cells, with a modem socket on the back. It is not a laptop — it is far too heavy to use on one — but it runs for hours on shop batteries and folds shut, which in 1987 was remarkable at the price. The screen hinge is the usual break.

The PPC512 with 640K and, in most configurations, an internal modem, which made it a genuinely useful machine for a travelling salesman in 1987. Same chassis and the same C-cell arrangement. The modem version is the one worth having, and the batteries left in the compartment for thirty years are the reason to open it before powering it up.

The machine that created the personal computer market. Wozniak's design does more with fewer chips than anything of its generation — the disc controller and the colour graphics are famous pieces of engineering economy — and the open slots meant a whole industry grew inside it. VisiCalc, which ran here first, is what put computers on office desks. Original 1977 machines with the early boards are serious collector's items.

The II with Applesoft floating-point BASIC in ROM instead of Woz's integer version, and autostart, which meant the machine was usable without a manual. This is the Apple II that sold in volume through the early eighties and the one most surviving software expects. Mechanically and electrically it is a II, so it has the same slots and the same repairability.

Apple's portable II: the whole machine, with a disc drive, in a flat white case with a carrying handle and no slots at all. It is the II reduced to a sealed appliance, which is either the interesting part or the disappointing one depending on what you want from an Apple II. Snow-white industrial design by Frogdesign, and the machine that set Apple's look for the rest of the decade.

The last Apple II: a 4MHz 65C02, a 3.5-inch drive built in, and an internal power supply, in the IIc's case. Substantially faster than any other II and the only one with the modern drive as standard, which makes it the most practical of the line and the scarcest — it was sold quietly for two years while Apple's attention was entirely on the Macintosh.

The Apple II consolidated: 64K, lower case, a proper keyboard and most of the common expansions folded onto the board, with two slots' worth of clutter removed. It stayed in Apple's catalogue for eleven years, longer than any other model the company has sold, largely because American schools kept buying it. The enhanced and platinum revisions are worth telling apart.

The Apple II's 16-bit future, and the road Apple did not take. A 65C816 with a 4096-colour palette and an Ensoniq synthesiser giving thirty-two voices — sound hardware years ahead of the Amiga's — while staying compatible with the II software library. Apple deliberately clocked it slowly to protect the Macintosh, and the machine never got the support it deserved. The battery on the board leaks; check before powering up.

Apple's first failure, and an instructive one. Aimed at business, it was designed without a fan on Jobs's insistence, and the heat lifted the chips out of their sockets — the official advice really was to drop the machine on a desk to reseat them. Recalled, revised, and abandoned. Worth having as the object lesson that paid for the Apple II's continued life.

The first commercial computer with a graphical interface, a mouse and protected memory, and a spectacular failure at ten thousand dollars. Almost all unsold stock was buried in a Utah landfill, which is why survivors are among the most valuable machines in computing. Its Twiggy drives were replaced by Sony 3.5-inch units on the Lisa 2, and its ideas went straight into the Macintosh that killed it.

The original Macintosh: a 9-inch screen, a mouse, 128K and no expansion of any kind, sold on the promise that a computer could be used without a manual. The memory is too small for the software that followed within months, so most were upgraded — an untouched 128K with the original board and the signatures moulded inside the case is the collector's machine.

The Macintosh with enough memory to be useful. Nicknamed the Fat Mac, it is what made MacPaint and MacWrite practical and what the early Mac software library actually assumes. Same sealed case and same lack of slots, so the machine still has to be opened with a long screwdriver — which Apple intended.

Apple's answer to the clone makers at the bottom of the market: a Plus-class machine in the compact case at under a thousand dollars, with a ROM disc that would boot System 6 with no drive attached at all. Cheap, slow, and made in very large numbers, which makes it the easiest compact Mac to find and the least interesting to own.

A Classic case with an LC's 68030 board, which makes it markedly faster than the Classic but crippled by a 16-bit memory bus. The last of the black-and- white compacts — the end of the shape Apple had sold since 1984. The battery leaks and the capacitors go; both are routine now.

The compact Mac with a colour Trinitron screen, and the one people are sentimental about: the same footprint Apple had used for nine years, in colour, with a slide-out logic board. Underpowered as sold and famously easy to improve, so most surviving examples have been "Mystic" upgraded with an LC 575 board. Sought after and expensive.

The Macintosh opened up: a 68020, six NuBus slots, colour, and a separate monitor — everything the original Mac deliberately refused. It is the machine that got the Mac into desktop publishing and onto engineers' desks. Large, heavy and endlessly expandable, and the first Mac that could be treated as a workstation.

The most highly regarded of the classic Macs: a 68030 at 25MHz with video built in, three NuBus slots, and a cache slot that lifts it further. It became the standard professional Mac of the turn of the nineties and stayed in use for years. If you want one desktop 68k Mac, this is the usual recommendation.

Apple's speed machine: a 68030 at 40MHz with two dedicated I/O processors and its own peculiar 64-pin SIMMs, sold at a price that earned it the nickname "wicked fast" and a great deal of eye-rolling. The odd memory is the practical problem — it fits nothing else, and finding it is the reason many sit unused.

The cheap colour Mac II: an 030 at 20MHz with video on board and one slot reachable only through an adapter, sold as the affordable way into colour Macintosh. Compromised by design and common as a result, which makes it a sensible first 68030 Mac. The capacitors and the battery both need attention.

The Mac II with a 68030 and an FDHD floppy drive that could read PC discs, which mattered in mixed offices. Otherwise the same six-slot chassis. The interesting one only if you want an 030 in the big case; otherwise the IIci beside it is the better machine.

The pizza-box Mac that put colour into schools: a low, wide case, a 68020, and a Processor Direct Slot that took the Apple IIe card — so a classroom could run its existing Apple II software on the new machine. That card is the historically interesting part. Hobbled by a 16-bit bus and a 10MB memory ceiling.

The LC with a 68030, in the same pizza-box case and with the same 16-bit bus holding it back. Sold in enormous numbers into education, so it is the easiest colour 68k Mac to find. Takes the same IIe card as the LC. Unexciting, cheap, and a perfectly good way to run System 7.

The LC done properly: a 68030 at 25MHz on a full 32-bit bus, which makes it roughly twice the machine the LC II was. It is the best of the pizza-box LCs and the board people put into Color Classics. Common, capable, and the sensible choice of the three.

The compact Mac finished: a megabyte of socketed, expandable RAM and a SCSI port, which finally let a hard disc be attached without a third-party contraption. It stayed on sale for four years, longer than any Mac before it, and it is the compact to have — capable enough to be useful, plentiful enough to be affordable.

Apple's first battery machine, and a lesson in priorities: a superb active- matrix screen and a lead-acid battery in a sixteen-pound case that cost as much as a car deposit. It is not a laptop in any useful sense. The batteries are long dead and the machines will not run without one unless modified, which is the first thing to establish.

A 68040 in the smallest case Apple made — a low, flat box barely bigger than the drive inside it. Cheap, quick for a 68k Mac, and the last hurrah of the line before PowerPC. Popular with people who want a fast 040 that fits on a shelf, and the case is fragile.

The first of the Quadras: a 68040 at 25MHz in an upright case, with built-in Ethernet and video, aimed at the professional market in 1991. Fast enough to do serious Photoshop work at the time, and the machine that established the Quadra name. Handsome, and the 040 heatsink is the giveaway.

The fastest 68k Macintosh Apple ever shipped: a 68040 at 40MHz with an AT&T DSP handling sound, telephony and video capture. The AV features were ahead of their time and barely supported. It is the end of the 68000 line and the machine to have if you want the top of it.

The Plus with an internal drive bay and a single expansion slot, and the first compact Mac with a fan — which is why more of them survive in working order. The slot took accelerators and Ethernet cards, so an SE is often found upgraded. The keyboard and mouse moved to ADB here, which is the connector to check you have.

The best compact Macintosh, and by common consent one of the best Macs ever made: an SE case with the Mac IIx's 68030 and FPU, 32-bit colour capability on an external monitor, and 128MB of addressable memory. Fast, expandable and beautifully compact. Prices reflect all of that, and the analogue board capacitors are the standard restoration job.

The first PowerPC Macintosh, and the transition made visible: a 601 in a cheap pizza-box case running most 68k software through emulation, sometimes slower than the machines it replaced. Historically important as the start of the PowerPC era, and the DOS-compatible version with a 486 card on a riser is the collectable variant.

The middle of the 1994 PowerPC launch, and the machine at the centre of a famous story: its internal codename was "Carl Sagan", who objected, so Apple renamed it "BHA" — for "butt-head astronomer" — and got sued again. A competent three-slot desktop, and the anecdote is most of the appeal.

The top of the first PowerPC range: a 601 at 80MHz in the Quadra 800's tower with three NuBus slots and fast SCSI, sold to publishing and rendering users who needed the speed immediately. The most capable of the launch three and the one that actually justified the transition.

The PowerBook that set the shape of the laptop: Sony built it to Apple's design with the palm rest and the centred trackball that every laptop copied. The cheapest of the launch three and the slowest, with no internal floppy. The historically important one, and the PRAM battery leaks and destroys boards.

The top of the 1991 PowerBook launch: a 68030 with an FPU and an active-matrix screen, which is the difference that matters — the passive screens of its siblings smear, and this one does not. The best of the first generation and the one worth finding with a good display.

The best of the classic PowerBooks: a 33MHz 68030, an FPU, and a superb 4-bit greyscale active-matrix screen. Fast, well built and pleasant to use, and the machine most people mean when they say the early PowerBooks were good. Screen and battery condition decide the price.

Apple's subnotebook: four pounds, no floppy, no ports to speak of, and a docking station that swallowed the whole machine and turned it into a desktop. The Duo Dock is the interesting half of the idea and the harder half to find. Ahead of its time, and awkward without its accessories.

The XL redone in the ST's styling after Jack Tramiel bought Atari — same 64K and the same chipset in a cheaper, lighter case, sold mainly in Europe where the 8-bit line kept selling for years after America lost interest. Function over sentiment: it is an 800XL that costs less and feels it.

128K of banked memory in the XE case, which gave the Atari 8-bit line a second life — a body of European software and demos was written specifically for the extra bank. The most capable stock Atari 8-bit, and the one to have if you want to run the later software rather than the classic cartridges.

The cheap half of Atari's 1979 launch, and a machine designed by people who made arcade games: the ANTIC and CTIA chips give it display list interrupts and hardware sprites that nothing else at the price could touch. Atari fitted a membrane keyboard and a single cartridge slot to keep it out of the 800's way, and that keyboard is the reason most people remember it unkindly.

The cut-down XL: 16K, no built-in BASIC problems but not enough memory for much of the library, and the expectation that you would buy the 1064 expansion. Most people bought an 800XL instead. Same excellent chipset in a smaller case, and the least common of the XL pair.

The proper version of Atari's first computers: a real keyboard, two cartridge slots, user-accessible RAM cards and a cast aluminium RF shield inside that makes it feel like industrial equipment. The custom chips were years ahead — Atari's arcade division designed them — and the machine is beautifully made. The best of the 8-bit Ataris to own, and the one to look for.

The Atari 8-bit that sold: 64K, BASIC in ROM, the good chipset, and a price cut hard during the 1983 price war with Commodore. It is the most common of the line and the one most software assumes, which makes it the sensible starting point. The keyboard and the power supply are the usual weak spots.

Atari's misfire. Handsome, aluminium-trimmed, and incompatible with a slice of the software and hardware people already owned, thanks to changed ROMs and missing ports. It was withdrawn after a few months and replaced by the 600XL and 800XL. Short production, bad reputation and striking industrial design add up to a machine collectors want and users do not.

A 65XE dressed as a console: a detachable keyboard, a light gun and a cartridge bundle, sold in 1987 to compete with the NES using hardware from 1979. It did not work, but the styling is unlike anything else and it is a complete Atari 8-bit computer underneath, keyboard and all. Collected for the look as much as the machine.

The console that created the industry. A 6507 with 128 bytes of RAM and no frame buffer, so the program has to build the picture a scanline at a time in step with the beam — the hardest mainstream machine ever to program, and the reason its best games are feats of engineering. It sold thirty million, caused the 1983 crash, and every collection starts here.

Atari's answer to Intellivision: essentially Atari 400 hardware in a console with notoriously bad non-centring analogue controllers, no backwards compatibility with the 2600 at launch, and a launch into a collapsing market. It lasted two years. The controllers are the reason most surviving examples do not really work, and rebuilt ones are a small industry.

Designed in 1984, shelved during Atari's sale, and finally released in 1986 into a market Nintendo already owned. The MARIA chip does far more sprites than the 2600 and it plays the whole 2600 library, which makes it the most practical classic Atari console. The sound is the weak point — it kept the 2600's TIA — and the library is thin.

Marketed as the first 64-bit console, which was a stretch: five processors, two of them 32-bit RISC, in an architecture so awkward that most developers used the 68000 as the main CPU and left the rest idle. It killed Atari as a hardware company. The Tempest 2000 soundtrack and the sheer strangeness of the design are the reasons to own one.

The first handheld with a colour backlit screen and hardware sprite scaling, designed by ex-Amiga engineers and released in 1989 — technically far beyond the Game Boy it lost to. It is also large, thirsty for six AA cells, and had almost no software. A striking piece of hardware and a clear illustration that the better machine does not win.

Built in under a year by Tramiel's Atari to beat the Amiga to market, and it did: a 68000 with a GEM desktop for well under a thousand dollars in 1985. The MIDI ports fitted as standard are the historically important detail — they made the ST the standard studio sequencer machine for a decade, and Cubase and Notator were written for it. Earliest boards have external power bricks.

The enhanced ST: a blitter for faster graphics, a 4096-colour palette, hardware scrolling and stereo DMA sound. On paper it answers the Amiga properly. In practice a good deal of ST software was written for the plain machine and does not use — or sometimes does not tolerate — the new hardware, which is why the STE has a mixed reputation and a devoted demo scene.

The ST as most people owned it: floppy drive and modulator both built in, 512K, one box. This is the volume machine of the European ST market and the one the games were written against. The internal single-sided drives were later replaced by double-sided; which one is fitted decides what disc images will run.

The 520ST with the RF modulator fitted, so it works on a television rather than needing Atari's monitor. A small change that matters enormously for what the machine could be sold as at home. Otherwise the launch ST: 512K, external floppy, and the same MIDI ports.

The STE with a megabyte fitted — the best of the 16MHz-and-under STs and the one to buy if you want the blitter and the stereo sound with enough memory to use them. Same compatibility caveats as any STE: some early software objects to the new hardware.

A megabyte and a double-sided drive as standard, which is what the ST needed to be a working machine rather than a games console: desktop publishing, MIDI sequencing and serious software all assume this specification. The most useful of the classic STs, and common enough to be affordable.

The last Atari computer, and the most interesting: a 68030 with a Motorola 56001 DSP on the board, true colour video and eight-track direct-to-disc recording. It turned into a serious music workstation and still has an active following for exactly that reason. Atari cancelled it within two years to concentrate on the Jaguar. Sought after, and often found heavily upgraded.

The ST as a professional tool: a low desktop box with a detachable keyboard, a blitter in later units, and an internal expansion bay, sold for desktop publishing and music. Calamus and the SLM laser printer turned these into serious typesetting machines in Germany, where the Mega ST had a following the rest of the range never matched.

A 16MHz 68000 with a cache, the STE chipset, VME expansion and SCSI, in the TT's case — the most capable ST-architecture machine Atari made. Aimed at the professional music and publishing users who had stayed loyal, and made in small numbers. Genuinely fast for the family and correspondingly hard to find.

Atari's proper laptop, and one of the rarest machines of the whole ST line — a few hundred were made. Remarkably thin for 1991, with no floppy drive, no backlight and a battery life measured in hours. It is a serious collector's item rather than a usable computer, and complete examples are very scarce.

A portable ST: the whole machine with a mono LCD, a trackball and a floppy drive in a case with a handle, sold to musicians who needed MIDI on the road. Atari famously shipped it with the battery compartment fitted but the batteries left out. Heavy, uncommon, and the screens have usually suffered.

Atari's Unix workstation ambition: a 68030 at 32MHz with fast RAM, VME slots and SCSI, running TOS or ASV. It was expensive, late, and sold in small numbers mainly in Germany. The fastest 68k machine Atari shipped, and the clearest evidence of where the company thought it was going before it stopped making computers.

A pinball company's console, and a genuinely capable one: a Z80 with a decent display and a BASIC cartridge that turned it into a programmable computer, with a peculiar combined joystick, paddle and trigger controller. Sold through Bally's own channels and never widely. A small, devoted following.

A Gundam-branded home computer: Bandai putting a Z80 machine into the Japanese market on the strength of an anime licence, complete with model-kit tie-ins. It failed commercially and is now collected as much for the branding as the hardware. Very uncommon.

A Cambridge-built machine with unusually good high-resolution graphics for 1983 and a well-regarded BASIC, undone by having almost no software and a company that lasted a year. Uncommon and technically more interesting than its obscurity suggests.

The 96K Lynx, and the configuration the machine really needed — the extra memory makes its high-resolution modes usable. Camputers folded in 1984, so production was short and surviving machines are scarce.

The top of a very short line: 128K, and the last Lynx before Camputers went under. Made in tiny numbers, well built, and one of the harder British home computers of the era to find in working order.

A twin-processor Japanese business machine: a Z80 for the work and a second processor handling the display, with a colour graphics capability unusual for 1983. Casio's serious computers are much less known than its calculators and keyboards, which makes this an obscure but genuinely capable machine.

Casio's console, on sale for a few weeks in 1983 before being withdrawn — one of the shortest commercial lives of any games machine. Around a dozen games exist. Its scarcity is the entire attraction, and it is among the harder Japanese consoles to find.

The PV-1000 with a keyboard, sold as a home computer alongside the console and equally briefly. Casio's attempt at both markets at once, abandoned almost immediately. Rare, and mostly of interest to people completing the Japanese console story.

The ColecoVision turned into a full computer — and one of the great disasters of the era. It shipped late, the power supply lived in the printer so the machine would not run without it, and the tape drives could erase their own media with their own magnetic field. Coleco left the computer business. Fascinating, and complete working examples are uncommon.

The console that beat everybody on arcade fidelity: Donkey Kong in the box, a TMS9918 doing proper sprites, and an adapter that played Atari 2600 cartridges — which Atari sued over and lost. It was winning when the 1983 crash killed the entire market. The best of the pre-Nintendo consoles.

Commodore aiming at the low end again and misjudging it: the 264 series had better BASIC and a 121-colour palette but no sprites and no SID, so it could not run C64 software or match it on games. The C16 is the cut-down version with 16K in a dark case. It sold poorly in Britain and well in eastern Europe, where it became a first machine for a generation.

The best-selling computer model ever made, by a margin nobody has approached. The reason is two chips: the VIC-II, with hardware sprites and smooth scrolling, and the SID, a real analogue synthesiser that gave games music people still listen to. Commodore's own chip fabs let them price it at will and starve the competition. Breadbin and later boards differ; the SID revisions sound different, and collectors care which is fitted.

A C64 with the keyboard and ports taken away, sold as a cartridge console in 1990 against the Mega Drive. Almost nothing was written for it, several of the cartridges needed a keyboard the machine did not have, and it was withdrawn quickly. Sold only in Europe and in small numbers, so a famous failure that is now one of the harder Commodore machines to find.

The C64 in the C128's cream wedge case, with the board cost-reduced to fewer, larger chips and — in most examples — the 8580 SID, which sounds cleaner and thinner than the 6581 it replaced. That difference divides opinion sharply among people who care about C64 music. Mechanically the nicest C64 to own and the last version sold.

The rarest of the 264 family: a C16 in a small rubber-keyed case sold almost exclusively in Germany and Hungary, and quickly dropped. Same limitations as the C16 — good BASIC, no sprites, no SID — in a shape that looks like nothing else Commodore made. Wanted mostly for its scarcity and its odd keyboard.

Three computers in one box: a C128 mode with 128K and 80 columns, a hardware C64 mode that is a real 6510 rather than an emulation, and a Z80 for CP/M. Bill Herd's team built it in five months, and it is the most technically ambitious 8-bit Commodore ever shipped. The C64 compatibility is what people actually used, which is both its strength and the reason its own mode has little software.

The C128 in a metal desktop case with the 1571 drive built in and a detachable keyboard — the machine as a professional workstation rather than a home computer. Handsome, heavy, and much the nicest way to use CP/M or 80-column mode. The European metal-cased version is the one to have; it also has a fan, which the later plastic one does not.

The cost-reduced 128D: a plastic case, no fan, and a revised board. Cheaper to make and quieter, and by some way the most common of the two-drive 128s in America. The missing fan is the reason to keep an eye on temperatures, and the plastic case is the reason the metal one is more sought after.

Commodore's forgotten Japanese-market games machine, sold briefly in 1982 with cartridge software, 2K of memory and no way to expand. Its real significance is architectural: it is the direct ancestor of the C64, sharing the VIC-II and SID, and C64 cartridges will run on it. Very few were made and it is among the rarest Commodore machines of any kind.

The top of the 264 series, and Commodore's strangest product: a home computer with a word processor, spreadsheet, database and graphics package burned into ROM, aimed at a business buyer who was never going to want a machine with no sprites and a joystick port of its own design. It flopped comprehensively. The built-in software makes it genuinely interesting to use.

The first colour portable computer: a C64 with a five-inch screen and a 1541 drive built into a metal case with a carrying handle, and no tape port, which cut it off from most of the software people owned. Heavy, expensive and impractical, and consequently a striking object and a genuine collector's piece.

The first computer of any kind to sell a million. Commodore aimed it at ordinary shops rather than computer dealers, put William Shatner in the adverts, and undercut everything — with 5K of memory and a 22-column display that made most software a compromise. It is the machine that proved the mass market existed, and the one the C64 was built to replace a year later.

The Amiga that mattered commercially: the 1000's architecture in a one-piece wedge at a price a family would pay, and consequently the machine that owned European home computing between 1988 and 1992. The games written for it — Lemmings, Sensible Soccer, Speedball — defined a generation. Check the battery-backed clock on any accelerator and the electrolytics; both leak and eat boards.

The A500 with Kickstart 2.0 and the ECS chipset, and a battery-backed clock on the motherboard that has destroyed a very large proportion of them — the leaking cell is the single most common Amiga fault there is. The newer ROM broke a handful of older games, which was resented at the time. A good unleaked board is worth finding.

A cost-reduced A500 in a compact case with an IDE header and a PCMCIA slot, and no numeric keypad — Commodore's attempt at a cheap console-like Amiga that pleased almost nobody. The IDE and PCMCIA are genuinely useful now, which has quietly turned it into a good machine for modern storage adaptations. Same surface-mount capacitor problems as the rest of the late line.

The original Amiga, and the machine that showed everybody what a home computer could be: pre-emptive multitasking, four-channel sampled sound and a custom chipset doing graphics in hardware, in 1985, while the PC world argued about CGA. Jay Miner's design. It boots from a Kickstart disc rather than ROM, the case is signed inside by the team, and it is the most collectable Amiga.

The AGA Amiga most people wanted: 256 colours from a 16-million palette, a 68EC020, IDE, PCMCIA and a proper trapdoor for accelerators, in the A500's shape. It arrived in 1992 just as Commodore ran out of money and the PC took the games market, so it never had the software the hardware deserved. The most upgraded and most actively used classic Amiga today.

A British marketing exercise: an A2000 sold with two floppy drives instead of a hard disc and a bundle of software, at a price aimed at the home rather than the studio. Electrically an A2000, so it takes the same Zorro cards and accelerators. Sold only in the UK, which makes it an uncommon variant of a common machine.

The Amiga as a workstation: a big desktop case with Zorro II slots and PC bridgeboard options, which is how the Amiga got into television studios. The Video Toaster ran in one of these and changed what a small production company could do. Slow by 1987 standards without an accelerator, but the expansion is the whole point and there is a great deal of it about.

The best-engineered Amiga: a 68030 at 25MHz, a proper SCSI controller, Zorro III, and a display enhancer that let it drive an ordinary VGA monitor — which no other Amiga of the period could do. Designed properly rather than to a price, and made in small numbers before Commodore's finances collapsed. The connoisseur's Amiga.

The top of the AGA line: an 030 or 040 in a desktop case with Zorro III, sold into video and rendering work where the Toaster and LightWave lived. It is the most capable Amiga Commodore shipped and the last desktop before the company folded in 1994. The Buster chip and the clock battery are the two things to check.

The first 32-bit CD games console sold anywhere, and Commodore's last product. AGA hardware with a CD drive and a pad, launched in 1993 to reasonable European sales before the company went under and left the platform stranded months later. The expansion port takes a module that turns it back into a computer. Wanted both as a console and as the end of Commodore.

Commodore's attempt at the living room: an A500 in a black hi-fi case with a CD-ROM drive, a remote control and no keyboard, launched in 1991 as a multimedia player before there was any content to play. It failed completely. Interesting as an early CD-ROM machine and as the idea Philips and Apple were also getting wrong at the same moment.

Commodore building somebody else's architecture: a straightforward XT clone sold through the dealer network that was shifting C64s, mostly into European small businesses. Unremarkable as a PC and interesting as a company decision — the firm that made its own chips buying in Intel's. Common in Germany, scarce elsewhere.

The PC 10 with a hard disc, which in 1985 was the difference between a curiosity and a working office machine. Same XT architecture and the same European dealer market. The 20MB drive is usually the part that has died, and a working original is worth keeping running.

The most capable PC Commodore sold: a 286 at 12MHz with VGA on the board, aimed at business buyers in 1989. By this point Commodore's PC line was an afterthought beside the Amiga and it sold accordingly. Worth having as the high-water mark of a line most people do not know existed.

A PC 10 successor built around the NEC V20 — a pin-compatible 8088 replacement that runs meaningfully faster — sold as a budget XT-class machine in 1988 when the world had moved to 286s. The V20 is the interesting part; almost nothing else about it is. Uncommon simply because nobody wanted an XT by then.

Commodore's small PC: an 8088 with the power supply in an external brick and video on the board, in a case barely larger than a keyboard. It is a neat piece of packaging aimed squarely at Amstrad's PC1512 on price, and it was sold almost entirely in Germany. The compact case is the reason to want one.

The PET with the proper full-travel keyboard and 32K, sold into European business and education. The 3000 series is where the PET became a usable working machine rather than an impressive novelty, and the metal case means survivors are usually in better condition than their plastic contemporaries. The screen is the part that has usually gone soft.

BASIC 4.0 and a 12-inch screen: the PET as most people who used one for work remember it. The new ROMs added proper disc commands, which mattered once Commodore's own drives were widespread. The most common of the big PETs and the one to start with — plentiful enough to be affordable and complete enough to be useful.

The 80-column PET, and the reason the machine stayed on accountants' desks into the mid-eighties: a full-width business display when almost everything else offered forty characters. Same BASIC 4.0 as the 4032 with a different video circuit. WordPro and Commodore's own business software were written for this screen.

The last of the PET line: an 8032 rebuilt around 128K of banked memory in a low-profile case with a detachable keyboard, sold in 1984 when the C64 was already Commodore's whole business. Very few were made for Europe and almost none for America, which makes it the rare one — the end of a family that had run for seven years.

A commercial failure worth having. Commodore's B series was meant to succeed the PET in business with a 6509, bank-switched memory and a proper 80-column display; it arrived with almost no software, was cancelled, and the remaining stock was dumped. Interesting as the machine that occupies the gap between the PET and the C128, and genuinely uncommon.

One of the three machines that started personal computing in 1977, and the one built like office equipment: a metal case with the screen, keyboard and tape drive all in it, ready to work out of the box. The original chiclet keyboard is dreadful and is what marks an early machine. Sold hard into schools and laboratories, where a great many stayed in service for a decade.

A budget 486 notebook from 1992, sold in volume when the laptop stopped being exotic. Unremarkable by design, which is its interest: it marks the point at which portable computing became an ordinary purchase rather than a statement. Plentiful and cheap.

Compaq's first desktop, and the machine that established the pattern for the next decade: take IBM's architecture and make it faster. An 8086 at 8MHz when IBM was selling a 4.77MHz 8088, with a proper set of slots. It is where the clone makers stopped following and started leading.

Compaq's AT-class desktop, quicker than IBM's own 5170 and available sooner in the configurations businesses wanted. Nothing surprising in it — that was the point. Solidly built, common enough to find, and a good example of the clone market having simply overtaken the originator on execution.

The machine that broke IBM's grip. Compaq shipped a 386 in 1986, a full year before IBM, and the industry realised the standard no longer belonged to IBM at all — from here on it belonged to Intel and Microsoft. Arguably the single most consequential PC clone ever made.

The 386SX version, bringing 386 instructions to a mid-range price on a 16-bit bus. Compaq's build quality applied to a mass-market part, which makes it a pleasant, unexciting machine and a common one. A good period DOS box.

Compaq at the top of the market again: a 486DX at 25MHz in 1989, aimed at workstation buyers and priced accordingly. Well made, heavy, and quick enough to be worth running. EISA options on some configurations are the detail to look for.

A Pentium II business desktop from the end of the story: Compaq by 1998 was the largest PC maker in the world and shipping machines like this by the million into corporate estates. Interesting less as hardware than as the endpoint — the year before the Digital acquisition and the merger with HP that ended the name.

The machine that made "notebook" a category: Compaq put a full PC with a hard disc into something the size of a hardback in 1989, and the industry followed within a year. Small, well made and genuinely portable in a way nothing before it was. An important laptop and an uncommon one.

The LTE developed properly: a 386SL designed for battery use, a decent screen and a case that still looks modern. These sold heavily to business travellers and are the notebook most people picture when they think of the early nineties. Batteries are dead; everything else usually works.

The machine that created the clone industry. Compaq reverse-engineered IBM's BIOS cleanly, put the result in a sewing-machine-sized case with a handle, and sold $111 million of them in the first year — the fastest start in American business history at the time. Everything that followed in the PC market follows from this. Heavy, superbly made, and historically about as important as a PC gets.

The Portable III chassis with a 386DX, which in 1988 made it one of the fastest computers you could buy at any size, let alone one with a handle. The plasma screen again, and the same heat. Expensive when new and consequently uncommon now.

The last of the line that made Compaq's name. The original 1983 Portable was the first successful IBM clone and the machine that proved BIOS could be legally reverse-engineered; by 1991 the same lunchbox shape held a 486DX at 33MHz, which is a remarkable amount of computer to carry by a handle. Heavy, superbly engineered, and the end of an idea — laptops had already made the luggable obsolete.

Lighter, smaller and 286-powered: Compaq's second-generation luggable, and much the most pleasant of the family to actually handle. It arrived before IBM had a credible portable of its own and sold well into business. A good example is a genuinely usable AT-class machine.

The luggable reinvented: a slim case with a gas-plasma screen that folds down over the keyboard, and an expansion box on the back for ISA cards. The orange plasma display is the reason people want one — it is beautiful and nothing else looks like it. It also runs extremely hot.

The Portable with an internal hard disc, which in 1983 meant a 10MB drive shock-mounted in a machine designed to be carried — not an obvious combination. It made the luggable a genuine desktop replacement. Same excellent build as the Portable, and the drive is usually what has failed.

Compaq's move into the home: a consumer brand with sound, a modem and software preloaded, sold through high-street retail rather than dealers. It worked, and Presario became one of the biggest-selling PC names of the nineties. The start of the era when a PC was bought in a shop like a television.

Compaq's price-war machine. Faced with mail-order clones undercutting it in 1992, Compaq built a deliberately cheap line and won the fight — this is the machine that took the company to number one and squeezed the smaller builders out. Ordinary hardware with a significant commercial story behind it.

Compaq's first real laptop: a 286 with a removable battery and a detachable keyboard, and among the first portables with a VGA-capable display. It weighs fourteen pounds, which was light for 1988. The battery and the screen are the two things that decide whether one is worth having.

A British kit computer from 1979, derived from the Ohio Scientific Superboard and sold through Practical Electronics as a magazine project. You built it yourself from a bag of parts. It taught a generation of British engineers to solder, and surviving examples reflect whoever built them.

A Czechoslovak Spectrum clone, built in Slovakia because the real thing was effectively unobtainable behind the Iron Curtain. Better keyboard than a Sinclair, 80K of memory, and a whole domestic software scene that grew around it. Essential to understanding eastern European computing.

The later Didaktik, closer to Spectrum compatibility and widely used in Czech and Slovak schools. These machines are how a generation in Czechoslovakia met computing, and the local software written for them is a body of work that exists nowhere else.

A Welsh-built CoCo relative: the same 6809 and broadly compatible hardware, made in Port Talbot and sold as a British machine with a proper keyboard and a parallel printer port the Tandy lacked. It failed commercially in 1984, but the 6809 and the Welsh manufacturing make it a distinctive collectable.

The Dragon 32 with 64K, a serial port and OS-9 available — which turns it from a games machine into something that runs a real operating system. The better of the two and the one the surviving Dragon community mostly uses.

The Dragon 64 built under licence in New Orleans by Tano, for the American market, after the British company's troubles began. Very few were made before Tano gave up, which makes it substantially rarer than the Welsh machines and a genuine curiosity.

A new machine, not an old one: a 2023 handheld built around a genuine Intel 8088 with CGA and an XT-compatible architecture, in a small clamshell. It exists because people wanted to run 1981 software on 1981 silicon in something pocketable, and it answers a question the period never got round to asking.

A 2023 handheld built on the ALi M6117 — a 386SX core still made for embedded controllers — with a small screen and a thumb keyboard. It runs DOS games on real hardware in the palm of your hand, and belongs in a collection as the modern end of a story that starts with the 5150.

Not a survivor but a new build: a 2024 handheld that puts an ALi M6117 — a 386SX core still made for embedded use — into a seven-inch clamshell with OPL3 sound and a real ISA slot. It exists because DOS gaming did not stop having an audience, and it answers a question the period never did: what a 386 laptop would have been if the parts had been this small. A modern curiosity that belongs beside the originals.

EACA's own design rather than a clone: a Z80 machine with colour, sound and a proper keyboard, sold in Britain and Germany where it acquired a following that outlasted the company — EACA collapsed in 1983. The German scene kept it alive and there is more software than there should be.

A Hong Kong-built TRS-80 Model I clone, sold across Europe where Tandy's own distribution was thin, with a built-in cassette deck the original lacked. One of the first Far Eastern clones of an American computer and a small landmark for that reason.

A Soviet home computer built around the K1801VM1, a single-chip implementation of the PDP-11 instruction set — so this is a DEC minicomputer architecture in a home machine, which nothing in the West ever was. That alone makes it one of the most interesting machines of the period.

A Polish Spectrum-compatible built for schools, with a CP/M mode and a network interface for a classroom cluster — considerably more ambitious than a straight clone. Made in Wrocław in modest numbers and central to Polish educational computing.

A cheap console sold under about forty different brand names worldwide, which makes identifying and collecting the family a study in itself. Released in 1982 into the crash, with a small library of games that are mostly close relatives of arcade titles. Interesting mainly as a rebadging phenomenon.

A Hungarian-designed British machine, delayed so long that its own name changed twice before release — Elan, then Flan, then Enterprise. Two custom chips, 672 colours and a wedge case with a built-in joystick. It arrived in 1985 into a market that had already chosen, and is now collected in Hungary in particular.

Japan's best-selling console before the Famicom, and an unusual design: most of the hardware lives in the cartridge rather than the console, so the base unit is little more than a case with controllers. Historically important in Japan and very seldom seen elsewhere.

Epoch's follow-up, with the processing properly in the console and a decent colour palette, released in 1984 straight into the Famicom's dominance. It sold poorly and disappeared. Uncommon, and the Lady Cassette Vision variant is rarer still.

Arguably the first true notebook computer: a full keyboard, a four-line LCD, a microcassette drive and a printer all in something the size of an A4 pad, with fifty hours of battery life, in 1982. It defined what portable computing could be and remains an impressive object.

Epson's CP/M laptop, with a tilting LCD and a bay for a microcassette, genuinely portable in 1984 and capable of real work. The "Geneva" was sold to writers and engineers and is among the more usable of the very early portables.

A French machine built by ex-Texas Instruments engineers around TI's own TMS7020, with wireless infrared keyboard and joysticks in 1984 — years before that was ordinary — and a speech synthesiser as standard. Technically adventurous, commercially unsuccessful, and unlike anything else of its generation.

An arcade company's home computer, and a genuinely clever one: the character set is redefinable, which gave it pseudo-graphics well beyond its specification, and software came on "ROM PACs" in eight-track cassette shells. Sold well in Australia and the Netherlands. Unusual and well regarded.

The first programmable home console, and almost nobody remembers it. Fairchild got there in 1976 — a year before the Atari 2600 — with the first microprocessor console, interchangeable cartridges, and the first pause button. It also had the first joystick with a twist-and-plunge action. Comprehensively out-marketed by Atari, and now a significant and uncommon first.

An Apple II clone good enough that Apple sued and won, in a case that established copyright in ROM code — one of the most consequential lawsuits in software history. Franklin's machine had more memory and a better keyboard than the machine it copied. Collected for the legal history as much as the hardware.

The FM-7 line at its peak: 4096 colours displayable, hardware graphics assistance and a built-in drive, aimed squarely at the Japanese home gaming market against NEC and Sharp. The AV models are the ones the good FM software was written for.

The first personal computer sold with a CD-ROM drive as standard, in 1989 — two years before it was ordinary anywhere else. A 386 with hardware sprites and 26,000 colours, running Fujitsu's own graphical system, and the platform that got Japanese developers thinking about CD games. Genuinely ahead of its time.

The FM Towns as a console: the first 32-bit CD games machine sold to consumers, in 1993, running the Towns software library from a small white box. It lost to the PlayStation completely. Historically important as a first, and uncommon outside Japan.

The cost-reduced FM-8 that became a major Japanese home platform: a 6809 with good graphics and a large software library, and one of the three machines Japanese developers targeted through the mid-eighties. Almost unknown in the West and central to Japanese computing there.

Fujitsu's first computer, and an early adopter of bubble memory as an option — a technology that promised to replace both RAM and discs and then quietly lost. A 6809 machine at a time when almost everyone else used a Z80 or a 6502, which makes it architecturally interesting.

Fujitsu's business machine of the early eighties, with 6809 and optional 8088 boards so it could run both worlds. That dual-processor arrangement is the interesting part and a common Japanese answer to the arrival of the PC standard. Uncommon.

The only home console with its own vector display — a built-in monochrome CRT drawing lines rather than pixels, so the graphics are razor sharp and glow the way arcade Asteroids did. Plastic screen overlays supplied the colour. Released in 1982 and killed by the crash, and quite unlike anything else ever sold for the home.

A fully rugged notebook from the Toughbook years: magnesium alloy case and chassis, every port sealed under its own plug, rubber bumpers on all four corners, IP54 and MIL-STD-810F. What set it apart was the screen — 14.1 inches, or a 15-inch SXGA+, where the rugged class stopped at 13.3 — in a case 1.8 inches thick. Built for fire, police and utility fleets rather than for people.

The first clamshell laptop ever made, and one of the most significant computers in the collection of any museum: a magnesium case, a bright electroluminescent display, bubble memory instead of a disc, and a price around eight thousand dollars in 1982. NASA flew them on the Space Shuttle. Extremely rare and extremely important.

GRiD invented the clamshell laptop: the 1982 Compass was the first, it flew on the Space Shuttle, and it cost as much as a car. The GRiDCASE carried that into a rugged magnesium case built for the military and for field engineers, which is why so many survive. Genuinely important design history rather than another beige portable, and the reason every laptop since opens the way it does.

The machine that nearly became the BBC Micro: developed at Newbury Labs and a serious contender for the BBC contract before Acorn won it. A single-line vacuum-fluorescent display on the AD model, CP/M capability, and a design aimed at being expanded rather than played with. Historically interesting for the contract it lost.

Heathkit applying its famous kit-building discipline to computers: an 8080 system with an octal front panel, superb documentation and manuals that actually taught electronics. Heathkit kits were built by people who wanted to understand the machine, and it shows in the survivors.

The all-in-one Heathkit: terminal, computer and disc drive in one case, running Z80 and HDOS or CP/M. Sold as a kit or assembled, and widely used by engineers and radio amateurs. The documentation remains the best of any machine of the era.

One of the first Japanese home computers, from Hitachi, built on a 6800 when almost everything else used a Z80 or 6502. Level 3 added colour graphics. Very much a domestic Japanese machine of the early market and rarely seen at all outside it.

The original IBM PC, and the machine whose architecture the industry still runs on. IBM built it in a year from bought-in parts and published the technical reference, including the BIOS listing — which let Compaq and everyone after it build compatibles and took the standard out of IBM's hands. Cassette port, five slots, and a keyboard that outlasts everything. The foundation of the whole platform.

The PC Convertible: IBM's first laptop, a clamshell with two 3.5-inch drives and an LCD that hinged back, in 1986. Slow, expensive, and it lost to Toshiba and Compaq almost immediately. Its real legacy is the 3.5-inch drive, which IBM's adoption made the standard. Uncommon, and the snap-on modules are the parts that go missing.

The XT/286: an AT-class 286 board in an XT case, and — because it runs zero wait state memory — genuinely faster than the 6MHz PC/AT it sat below in the price list. IBM quietly withdrew it. That accidental superiority is the whole story, and it makes the 5162 an interesting oddity rather than just another 286.

The machine that set the shape of every PC since: the AT introduced the 16-bit ISA slot, the 84-key layout that became the enhanced keyboard, the 1.2MB floppy and the battery-backed CMOS clock. Its 80286 brought protected mode to the desk, though DOS never used it. Built like a safe, with a front keylock and a power supply that will outlive its owner. The type 1 board at 6MHz is the earlier and scarcer of the two.

The XT: a hard disc as standard, eight slots and 640K addressable, which is the configuration DOS software assumed for the rest of the decade. It is the practical original PC — the 5150 is more historic, the XT is more usable — and the machine most period expansion cards were designed around. Full-height drives and a power supply that will run forever.

IBM's home computer, and one of its famous failures: cartridge slots, an infrared "Chiclet" keyboard nobody could type on, and a price that made no sense beside a Commodore 64. IBM replaced the keyboard and cut the price, then killed it after a year. Worth having as the moment IBM discovered it did not understand the home market.

IBM's answer to the Compaq Portable, two years late: XT internals in a luggable case with a nine-inch amber screen and a fold-up keyboard. Thirty pounds of it. It sold poorly against Compaq's own machine, which makes it markedly less common than the desktop XT, and it is a striking object.

The first PS/1: an all-in-one 286 with the power supply in the monitor, sold in high-street shops with software in ROM and a modem fitted, aimed at the home buyer IBM had failed to reach with the PCjr. Simple, sealed, and unexpandable by design. The monitor is part of the machine, so a complete one matters.

IBM's attempt at the home market after the PCjr: an all-in-one PS/1 with the power supply in the monitor and the machine designed to be set up by someone who had never opened a computer. Sold through high-street shops with software preloaded and a modem on the board. Interesting as industrial design and as a commercial lesson — IBM could not make a consumer machine cheaply enough — and the integration makes a working monitor part of the collection.

The bottom of the PS/2 range: an 8086 in a one-piece case with the monitor built in, sold overwhelmingly into schools. The Model 25 is where a great many people first met the PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports, and its MCGA video is a peculiarity — 256 colours at 320×200 but no proper text modes beyond CGA's. Heavy, tough, and common.

The Model 30 given a 286, keeping the ISA slots that the expensive PS/2s did not have. That combination — an AT-class processor with ordinary slots in the PS/2 case — makes it arguably the most practical machine in the whole range, and it sold accordingly into small business.

The cheap end of the PS/2 launch, and the one that gave the game away: the Model 30 kept ordinary ISA slots while its expensive siblings carried Micro Channel. That makes it the practical PS/2 to own — period cards just work — and a neat illustration of IBM hedging its own bet. It also introduced the PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports that outlived everything else about the range, and the moulded case that defined IBM's look for years.

A 386SX desktop from IBM's cost-reduced second wave, with ISA slots rather than Micro Channel — by 1991 IBM had conceded the argument. Unremarkable hardware in the PS/2's excellent case, and easy to keep running precisely because it takes ordinary cards.

The desktop Micro Channel machine from the 1987 launch, and the one that made IBM's case for the new bus: a 286 at 10MHz with everything integrated and tool-free access inside — the PS/2 chassis design is genuinely excellent and opens without a screwdriver. Needs its reference diskette to configure, which is the standard MCA obstacle.

A desktop Micro Channel machine built around the 386SX, the cut-down chip that gave 386 instructions on a 16-bit bus. That combination made it IBM's volume business PS/2 and a common OS/2 workstation, so surviving examples often carry period software and adapters. The 55 SX is the easiest way into Micro Channel: small enough to shelve, plentiful enough to be affordable, and it takes the same reference-diskette configuration dance as its larger relatives.

The floor-standing 286 of the launch range: Micro Channel, room for full- length cards and a pair of drives, sold as a departmental server or a heavy workstation. Enormously well built and enormously heavy. Less common than the desktops simply because fewer people needed a tower.

The desktop 386DX PS/2, and the machine IBM sold as the serious Micro Channel workstation — an 80 in a box that fits on a desk. Cache options and processor complex cards make it more upgradeable than most of the range. A good one is the best-balanced MCA machine to own.

The top of IBM's 1987 PS/2 range and the flagship for Micro Channel, the proprietary 32-bit bus IBM hoped would take the clone makers' oxygen away. It did not, but the Model 80 is where the argument was made: a 386DX tower built to a standard nobody else could match on price. Handsome, immensely heavy, and awkward to feed, since MCA cards need their reference diskette to configure and those are now harder to find than the machines.

The Altair done properly: better engineered, better supported, and the machine that made the S-100 bus a real standard. It is also the computer on the desk in WarGames, which is how most people know it. A serious and quite common early S-100 machine.

The computer that spoke Forth instead of BASIC, from two ex-Sinclair engineers. Forth is faster and more compact than interpreted BASIC and almost nobody wanted to learn it, so the Ace sold a few thousand and the company folded within a year. That failure makes it one of the most sought-after British home computers there is.

The Kaypro developed: double-sided drives and a better keyboard, in the same indestructible metal case. These were sold hard to writers and small businesses and turn up more often than almost any other CP/M machine, usually still working.

The Osborne beaten at its own game: a CP/M luggable in a painted metal case with a proper nine-inch screen — big enough to actually use, which the Osborne's five-inch was not — and a pile of bundled software. It took the portable CP/M market and is robust enough that many still work.

Sweden's own computer, and the machine that taught Swedish schools: a Z80 with a well-regarded BASIC, sold by Luxor and adopted nationally in education. Almost unknown outside Scandinavia and central to computing history within it.

The ABC 80's successor, with high-resolution graphics and disc drives, sold into Swedish offices and laboratories. Luxor's machines dominated Sweden the way Acorn's dominated British schools, and this is the professional one.

Magnavox's console, and unusual for having a full membrane keyboard — the idea being that it would teach as well as entertain. Its "Master Strategy" series combined cartridges with board games, which nothing else attempted. It did well in Europe as the Videopac and lost America to Atari.

A bright red French home computer, built by Matra and Hachette from the Tandy MC-10 design and sold with an educational bent — the colour and the French keyboard are what make it memorable. Nothing else looks like it, which is most of the reason people want one.

Mattel's console, and the first to seriously challenge Atari: better graphics, a synthesised voice module, and a disc controller with a numeric keypad and overlays that people either loved or loathed. The advertising campaign comparing it directly to the 2600 was among the first of its kind. Sold three million and defined the first console war.

A beautifully made British machine: a brushed aluminium case, a proper keyboard, a Z80 and a TMS9918, from a company that had made ZX81 expansions. It looks and feels far more expensive than it was and had almost no software. The build quality alone makes it worth having.

The Spectrum's would-be successor, from Miles Gordon Technology in 1989: a 6MHz Z80, 256K, proper graphics modes, a six-channel sound chip and a Spectrum emulation mode. It arrived four years too late into a 16-bit market and the company failed twice. Beloved by a small, active community and genuinely good hardware.

The machine that started it all. The January 1975 Popular Electronics cover created the personal computer industry, the Homebrew Computer Club formed around it, and Microsoft's first product was a BASIC written for it. Front panel switches and lights, no keyboard, no screen. Among the most historically valuable computers there is.

Yamaha's MSX, and the reason MSX matters to musicians: it takes the SFG FM synthesiser module and a real music keyboard, turning it into a genuine DX-era synthesiser with sequencing. Used seriously in studios. The module and keyboard are what make it valuable, and they are often missing.

Korea's contribution to MSX. Daewoo built MSX machines for the Korean domestic market and for export to Europe under several names, and the Korean MSX scene produced its own software. An unusual branch of the standard's history.

Goldstar — later LG — building MSX for Korea and export. Korean MSX machines are a distinct and under-documented part of the standard's story, and this is one of the more commonly encountered of them.

Panasonic's cost-cutting masterstroke: an MSX2 at a price that undercut every rival and effectively took the Japanese MSX2 market. It is why MSX2 sold at all in volume, and it is the common Japanese MSX2 as a direct result.

The FS-A1 with a disc drive built in — the configuration most MSX2 software actually needs, since the good MSX2 titles came on disc. The practical Panasonic MSX2 and easy enough to find.

The top turbo R and the final MSX machine of all: the A1ST's hardware with MIDI in and out, more memory and Panasonic's best finish. Made in small numbers for the Japanese market in 1991 and now the most sought-after MSX there is.

The last MSX ever made, and only Panasonic made it: the R800, a much faster processor developed for the machine, alongside a Z80 for compatibility, with a MIDI interface and a PCM sound chip. Japan only, expensive, and the end of a standard that ran nine years.

An MSX2+: the Japan-only final revision of the standard, adding 19,268-colour modes, hardware horizontal scrolling and the MSX-MUSIC FM chip as standard. The scrolling is what makes late MSX2+ games look startlingly good. Never sold outside Japan.

A Sony MSX2 with a disc drive built in, and the generation where the standard got serious: 128K of video memory, 512 colours, hardware scrolling and a sprite engine that made Konami's MSX2 games genuinely impressive. The F1 machines are well regarded.

The last of Sony's F1 MSX2 line, with the improved video chip and a disc drive. A late, well-developed MSX2 and one of the better machines for running the MSX2 library, which is the strongest part of the whole standard.

Sony's top MSX2: a full expansion-slot chassis with two drives and 256K, aimed at professional and development use rather than the living room. The most capable Japanese MSX2 Sony made and a serious collector's machine.

JVC's MSX for the British market — the GB suffix says so. JVC's involvement was brief and the machines are correspondingly scarce here. Standard MSX1 hardware in a maker's case you would not otherwise associate with computers.

Sony's first HitBit, and the machine that made MSX look desirable: proper industrial design, a personal database in ROM with battery-backed memory to keep it, and Sony's build quality throughout. The HitBit line is the one MSX collectors generally want.

A HitBit sold with a cartridge slot arrangement and styling aimed at the Japanese domestic market. Sony's MSX1 machines are consistently the best- finished of the standard, and this is a good example of it. Less common in Europe than the 501P.

The European HitBit, and among the most widely sold MSX1 machines in Britain, the Netherlands and Spain: 64K, a good keyboard, a cassette port and Sony's finish. If you want one MSX1 that is easy to find in Europe and pleasant to use, it is usually this.

One of the first MSX machines in Europe, and a good illustration of what the standard was for: Microsoft and ASCII specified the hardware so that any maker's cartridge ran on any maker's machine — the thing the Japanese market had been missing. Toshiba's launch model, well built, with a full-travel keyboard.

Toshiba's second-generation MSX1, with 64K and a built-in word processor in ROM. Sold in Europe as MSX was making its short-lived push against the Spectrum and C64. Solid, unexciting, and a straightforward way into the MSX1 library.

Mitsubishi's MSX1, sold mainly in Japan. Another of the large industrial names that the MSX standard drew in for a couple of years. Ordinary specification, uncommon outside its home market.

Philips's MSX2 for Europe, and the machine the European MSX2 scene was built on: a proper keyboard, a 3.5-inch drive, RGB output and 128K. Widely sold in the Netherlands and Spain. The best MSX2 to own if you are in Europe.

Sanyo's MSX1, notable in the family for the light-pen port that some Sanyo models carried — a Sanyo speciality that no other MSX maker pursued. Otherwise standard hardware.

Spectravideo's MSX machine, from the company whose earlier SV-328 had been the template the MSX standard was built from. That lineage is the interesting part: the SVI-728 is the standardised version of the machine that inspired the standard.

Canon's MSX1, sold in Britain and Europe with 64K. Canon was one of the many Japanese makers the standard brought into computing briefly before they went back to cameras and printers. Uncommon in the UK and a tidy machine.

Philips's first MSX, and the machine that pushed the standard hardest in the Netherlands — where MSX did better than anywhere outside Japan. 32K, a solid case, and Philips's European distribution behind it.

The MSX1 most European households actually had: 64K, a decent keyboard, and Philips selling it through every high street in the Benelux. Common, reliable and the obvious first MSX1. The keyboard membrane is the usual repair.

Philips's earlier European MSX2, with a single-sided drive that is the one practical limitation — some later disc software assumes double-sided. Otherwise a solid MSX2 and common in the Benelux.

A British Z80 kit from 1977, sold as a bare board with a keyboard, and one of the first computers a British hobbyist could actually buy and build. Fairly demanding to assemble. Historically significant in Britain and now genuinely rare.

The Nascom 1 developed: a 4MHz Z80, Microsoft BASIC in ROM and a proper expansion bus, still sold as a kit. It became the standard British hobbyist machine before the Spectrum and it is the more usable of the two. Often found in a homebuilt case, which is part of the charm.

The smallest console of its generation and one of the cleverest: an 8-bit HuC6280 with 16-bit video, on credit-card-sized HuCards, and in Japan it outsold the Famicom for a period. Developed with Hudson Soft. The Western TurboGrafx-16 rebadge failed; the Japanese machine and its shooter library are what collectors want.

The PC Engine and its CD-ROM add-on built into one unit — and the CD-ROM² was the first CD add-on for any console, in 1988, years before Sega's. The Duo is the tidy way to have both. The capacitors in the CD section fail as a matter of course, so a recapped unit is the one to buy.

NEC's rushed answer to the Mega Drive: extra video hardware and memory bolted onto the PC Engine, released in 1989 with five exclusive games and abandoned. One of the shortest-lived consoles ever sold. Expensive, scarce, and mostly of interest as a case study in panicking mid-generation.

NEC's home machine, sold beside the business PC-8001 with cartridge slots and a chiclet keyboard, and nicknamed PaPa-Com. Weaker than its stablemate on purpose and consequently not much loved at the time. Interesting now as the cheap end of the Japanese market and as a machine rarely seen outside it.

The PC-6001 line with a 3.5-inch quick-disk drive built in and a speech synthesiser — NEC experimenting with what a home computer should include. Odd, specific to Japan, and uncommon. The quick-disk media is the difficulty.

The machine that started Japanese personal computing: NEC's first complete computer, a Z80 with BASIC in ROM, released in 1979 and an immediate success that established the PC-8000 line and NEC's dominance of the Japanese market for a decade. Historically to Japan roughly what the Apple II was to America.

NEC's serious 8-bit machine and the backbone of Japanese computing in the early eighties: high-resolution colour graphics, expansion slots, and the platform a great deal of Japanese software — including the early visual novel and RPG canon — was written for first. The Japanese equivalent of the BBC Micro's standing, with a much larger market.

A late PC-88 with a faster clock, the improved FM sound, and the platform at its most developed — by 1986 NEC had been iterating this line for five years. The best of the 8-bit PC-88s for running the whole library, and pleasant to use.

The revision that mattered: the mkII SR fixed the earlier machine's graphics limitations and became the de facto standard Japanese 8-bit platform, to the point where later software simply requires an SR or better. If you want one PC-88 to run the library, it is this one or later.

The machine that owned Japan. NEC's 16-bit line took a commanding share of the Japanese market and held it for fifteen years, on the strength of hardware text rendering for Japanese characters that PC clones could not match. Almost entirely unknown in the West and one of the most commercially successful computer architectures ever.

The V30-based PC-98 that put the platform into offices in volume: 5.25-inch drives, the standard 640×400 display, and enough speed to be the machine a great deal of PC-98 software targets. A sensible entry point into the architecture, and much easier to find than the earlier models.

The PC-98 in its Windows era: a 486 with the Multi-Canvas graphics that gave the platform proper 256-colour modes, sold as NEC defended its position against DOS/V clones. This is the generation that runs both the Japanese gaming canon and Windows 95, which makes it the practical PC-98 to own.

The Famicom redesigned to be sold in a country that had stopped buying consoles: a grey box styled like a video recorder, with a front loading slot and a lockout chip to control who could publish. It worked, and Nintendo owned the next decade. The loading mechanism is the notorious weak point — the pin connector wears and needs replacing.

The Japanese original: a red-and-white console with hardwired controllers, an expansion port on the front, and cartridges that could carry their own mapper chips — which is why late Famicom games look far beyond what the 1983 hardware should manage. It rebuilt the games industry after the American crash. The Disk System add-on is the collector's target.

Gunpei Yokoi's calculator-parts handhelds, and the start of Nintendo as a games company: a single LCD with a fixed printed image, one game, and a battery life measured in months. Sold forty million. The clamshell models introduced the two-screen layout that became the DS twenty years later, and the D-pad was invented here.

Yokoi's lateral thinking made concrete: a deliberately cheap monochrome screen and an eight-bit processor, chosen so the batteries would last thirty hours and the thing could be sold at a price children could reach. It beat far better handheld hardware comprehensively and sold over a hundred million. The screens develop vertical line faults.

The Japanese Super Nintendo, and one of the great console designs: a custom 65816 core, Mode 7 scaling and rotation, and a Sony-designed SPC700 sound chip that gave it the best audio of its generation by a wide margin. The cartridge coprocessors — SuperFX and the rest — pushed it years past its own specification.

The same machine as the Super Famicom in a different case: boxier and grey in America, closer to the Japanese design in Europe, with cartridge slots shaped to keep the regions apart. The library is among the strongest of any console ever. The plastic yellows badly, and unyellowed examples command a premium.

Nintendo's stereoscopic headset: two scanning red LED arrays giving genuine 3D in 1995, on a stand you had to lean into. It sold badly, caused headaches, and was withdrawn within a year — the last product Gunpei Yokoi led at Nintendo. Fascinating, uncomfortable, and the ribbon cables in the displays fail with age.

A complete computer on one bare board for under three hundred dollars in 1979 — processor, keyboard, video and BASIC, with no case at all. Ohio Scientific's design was copied in Britain as the Compukit UK101. You supplied the box, which is why no two look alike.

Olivetti's version of the Kyocera design that also became the TRS-80 Model 100 and the NEC PC-8201 — with one improvement nobody else made: the screen tilts. Same excellent keyboard and battery life. The tilting display makes it the nicest of the family to use.

Olivetti going its own way with the Zilog Z8001, a 16-bit processor that was not Intel's — released in 1982, just as the industry was settling on the 8088. Beautifully made and commercially doomed by the choice. The most interesting Olivetti of the period for exactly that reason.

The portable version of Olivetti's M24, and a demonstration that European industrial design was a generation ahead of the American boxes. The M24 family ran a full 16-bit 8086 on a 16-bit bus while IBM was still selling the 8088, so it was genuinely faster than the machine it copied. The M21 folds that into a luggable with a nine-inch amber screen and a detachable keyboard. AT&T sold the same machines in America under its own name.

Olivetti's answer to the IBM PC and a better machine than it: a full 16-bit 8086 on a 16-bit bus, so genuinely faster than the 8088 original, with Olivetti's industrial design throughout. Sold in America as the AT&T PC 6300 and very successful in Europe.

Opus Supplies had made disc drives and expansions for the BBC Micro before moving into PC clones as the British education market shifted. The PC II is an XT-class machine sold on price through the computer press. Almost none were kept, which is precisely what makes a survivor interesting.

A 10MHz XT-class machine — "turbo" meaning faster than IBM's 4.77MHz, which was the whole selling point of the clone trade in 1988. Opus assembled these from bought-in boards for the British market. A representative machine from the anonymous middle of the industry.

Opus's 286 at 12MHz, sold into British small business and education at the end of the eighties. The interest is documentary rather than technical: this is what most of Britain's first PCs actually were, and hardly any of them were kept.

A British-badged 386SX from Opus Supplies, who had made disc drives and expansions for the BBC Micro before the PC clone market swallowed the trade. Machines like this were assembled from Taiwanese boards and sold on the back pages of the computer press, and almost none were kept. That is the whole interest: a survivor from the anonymous end of the market, where most of Britain actually bought its first PC.

Britain's other 1983 home computer, and the one that got closest to the Spectrum on price while offering a proper keyboard and the AY sound chip Sinclair left out. Let down by a buggy ROM and unreliable tape loading, both of which the Atmos fixed. It sold well in France, which is where the platform survived.

The Oric-1 corrected: a fixed ROM, reliable tape loading and a proper black- and -red case with real keys. Too late for Britain, where Oric collapsed, but it became a genuinely popular machine in France and has an active French following to this day.

The last Oric, made in France after the British company failed: a redesigned machine with cartridge slots, a Minitel interface and a business bent. Very few were made and it is among the rarest of the British-designed home computers, French-built though it is.

The first commercially successful portable computer: a complete CP/M machine with two drives and a five-inch screen in a sewing-machine case, bundled with more software than it cost. Adam Osborne then announced its successor early, sales of this stopped dead, and the company failed — the origin of the phrase "the Osborne effect".

The machine that killed the company: announced while the Osborne 1 was still selling, which stopped those sales before this could ship. Better in every way — a seven-inch screen, more memory, a proper case — and a permanent business school lesson about pre-announcement.

Philips's own home computer, using mini-cassette tapes rather than compact cassettes and sold mainly in the Netherlands and Germany. Notable for the Teletext display option, a very Philips preoccupation. An unusual machine from a company better known for making everybody else's components.

The Odyssey² as Europe knew it, and here it was a real success — the Videopac was a genuine rival to the Atari VCS in Britain, France and the Netherlands, with a distinct European catalogue of games in numbered boxes. The keyboard and the numbered cartridge library are the collectable parts.

The Videopac+ added a second graphics processor giving proper backgrounds behind the sprites, and could overlay the two — a real technical step, released in 1983 just as the console market collapsed. Sold only in Europe and briefly. Backwards compatible, scarce, and the enhanced games are worth seeing.

Bulgaria's Oric Atmos clone, sold as a home machine while the 82 served schools and offices. That a Bulgarian state factory chose to copy an Oric is itself a curious detail of the period. Uncommon outside eastern Europe.

Bulgaria's Apple II clone, made in Pravets and exported across the Eastern bloc. Bulgaria was the Comecon countries' computer factory, and these machines are how Apple II software reached the other side of the Iron Curtain. Solidly built and historically fascinating.

The first computer sold with a case, a keyboard and a power supply as one product — before the 1977 trio, from Processor Technology, with walnut side panels and Lee Felsenstein's design. It is arguably the first personal computer in the modern sense and is now a serious collector's item.

The machine that computerised British schools before Acorn: Research Machines built serious, robust Z80 systems for education from 1977, and a great many British children met a computer in a maths room through one of these. Heavy, modular and built to survive teenagers.

The networked classroom machine: Research Machines built the 480Z to work as a cluster over its own network with a shared disc, which is how British schools actually ran computer rooms in the early eighties. That networking is the interesting part and it long predates it being ordinary.

The PC-186 was Research Machines going its own way: an 80186 machine that ran MS-DOS but was not PC compatible, networked for the classroom, and consequently the machine on which a great many British children first used Windows. Ubiquitous in British schools and now surprisingly hard to find.

An all-in-one MiSTer, built around the Terasic DE10-Nano FPGA board that the project otherwise expects you to assemble yourself from a stack of separate parts. RMC's carrier gives it the ports the stack never had -- controllers, video, storage and expansion on one board in one case. What it is at any moment is whichever core is loaded, so it is catalogued here as the hardware it is rather than as the machines it becomes.

A late East German machine, more capable than the KC 85 and intended for schools, arriving in 1989 — which is to say, just as the state that commissioned it ceased to exist. Very few were made, and the timing makes it a poignant collectable.

The DDR's school computer: a modular grey box with expansion slots, built by Robotron for East German education and industry. The KC 85 line has an active following in Germany and the machines are well documented — unusually so for eastern bloc hardware.

East Germany's home computer, from the Robotron combine, running on the U880 — the DDR's own unlicensed Z80 copy. Built to a shortage economy's constraints and sold at prices that put it beyond most families. A significant object in the history of computing behind the Wall.

Clive Sinclair's first computer: a £40 single-board kit with a calculator keypad and a seven-segment display, sold by Science of Cambridge in 1978. It is barely a computer and it is where Sinclair's whole computing business began — the direct ancestor of the ZX80. Historically important and often found badly built.

A Master System in your hands, with a backlit colour screen in 1990 — a real advantage over the Game Boy that six AA batteries and three hours of life largely cancelled. The screen capacitors fail on essentially every unit, so a working original display is now the exception. Recapped ones are the norm.

The Japanese machine that became the Master System everywhere else: the SG-1000 architecture with a much better custom video chip and more memory. It lost to the Famicom in Japan but the hardware was strong enough to carry Sega abroad. The FM sound unit that plugs into it is the part collectors want.

Sega's Mark III restyled for the West, and a genuine success in Europe and Brazil where Nintendo was weaker — in Britain it was a real rival to the NES. Sharper graphics than the Nintendo and a much thinner library. The card slot beside the cartridge port and the built-in game vary by revision, and collectors care which.

The cost-reduced Master System: no card slot, no reset button, no power light, and Alex Kidd or Sonic built into the ROM. Cheap, plentiful, and the version most European children actually owned. The missing card slot is the one real functional loss.

The console that made Sega a household name and gave Nintendo its first real fight. A 68000 with a Z80 for sound, the Yamaha FM chip that gives it that distinctive rasp, and a marketing campaign built on being the machine your parents disapproved of. Model 1 revisions differ audibly — the early high- definition-graphics units are the ones audio people hunt.

The cost-reduced Mega Drive: smaller, cheaper, a different sound circuit that many think worse, and mono headphone output dropped. It is the common version and the one most Mega CD and 32X setups were built around. Fine for playing, less prized for listening.

A portable Mega Drive that plays the full cartridge library on a backlit screen — a genuinely remarkable idea, released in North America only in 1995 as Sega was losing control of its own product line. Six AA cells last about two hours. Uncommon, expensive, and the best demonstration of Sega's late- period cleverness and chaos together.

A Mega Drive for very young children: a storybook whose pages the console reads as you turn them, with a stylus pad. Sold in enormous numbers in Japan and largely ignored in the West. Charming, unlike anything else, and the books are harder to find than the hardware.

Two SH-2 processors, two video chips, and an architecture so hard to program that most developers never got near its capability — which is a large part of why Sega lost the generation to the PlayStation. Superb 2D hardware, so the fighting and shooting libraries are outstanding. The internal battery and the optical drive are the two failure points.

The SG-1000 with a keyboard: Sega selling the same hardware as a home computer, with BASIC on cartridge and a chiclet keyboard. It sold notably well in New Zealand and Australia, which is where most surviving examples come from. An odd hybrid and the only Sega-branded home computer.

Sega's first home console, released in Japan on the same day as the Famicom and comprehensively beaten by it. A Z80 with a TMS9918 — respectable 1983 hardware, and the architecture that became the Master System. Worth having as the start of Sega's console line and as the machine that lost the fight that set up the next decade.

The MZ-80K developed: better BASIC, a proper keyboard and a green screen, in the same all-in-one case. Sold in Britain as well as Japan, so it is one of the few Sharp MZ machines that turns up in Europe. Still loads its language from tape.

The professional MZ: a 4MHz Z80, graphics options and an electrically-ejecting cassette deck, in a striking black case. Aimed at business and technical users and priced there. The best-looking machine Sharp made in the period, and much less common than the 80K or 80A.

Sharp's first computer, sold as a kit: the screen, keyboard and cassette deck in one white case, with no BASIC in ROM at all — the language loads from tape, which meant Sharp's machines could run several. That "clean computer" approach is the family's distinguishing idea and it makes the MZ line unusually flexible for its date.

Sharp's colour MZ, and cheap enough to sell in Europe against the Spectrum and C64 — with a plotter-printer option that could be built into the case, which is the detail everybody remembers. No graphics modes, only character cells, which limited its games. The plotter version is the collectable one.

The MZ-700 with real bitmap graphics and a 640×200 mode, sold mainly in Europe where Sharp was pushing hard against the established home machines. It is the most capable of the 8-bit MZ line and takes the same built-in plotter. Uncommon and genuinely interesting.

The last and best MZ: a 6MHz Z80, 256-colour capability, four-voice FM sound and a genuinely sophisticated architecture, in 1985 — the high-water mark of Z80 design by anybody. Sold only in Japan and only briefly, because the market had moved to 16 bits. A serious enthusiast's machine.

The first true pocket computer: a BASIC-programmable machine the size of a cheque book, sold in 1980 and rebadged by Tandy as the TRS-80 Pocket Computer. A one-line display and a QWERTY keyboard you press with a fingernail. It started a whole category, and engineers and surveyors used them seriously for years.

The pocket computer that got taken seriously: a faster processor, a 26-character dot-matrix display that could do graphics, and an expansion bus that took a four-colour plotter-printer. Widely used in engineering and education. The plotter cradle is the accessory worth finding, and the machines are well built.

A Sharp laptop from the era when the category was still being defined: a NEC V40, an LCD, and Japanese domestic distribution. Uncommon outside Japan and poorly documented in English, which is much of the appeal for anyone collecting early portables seriously.

A configuration variant of Sharp's 4500-series laptop, differing in storage and memory. Interesting mainly to anyone pursuing the family properly — these machines were sold in small numbers and surviving documentation is thin.

The later 4500-series Sharp portable, with a larger display than the 4501. Part of a Japanese laptop line that never had a Western equivalent and is consequently hard to research and harder to find complete.

One of the first laptop-shaped computers of any kind: a 1983 clamshell with a bubble memory cartridge instead of a disc drive and a thermal printer that clipped on the back. Not PC compatible in any useful sense despite the 8088. Bubble memory alone makes it a significant curiosity.

Sharp's luggable PC: an 8086 with a backlit LCD that flips up, and a printer module available for the back. Better looking and better specified than most 1985 portables and comparatively rare, Sharp never having had much of the Western PC market.

Sharp's other line, from its television division rather than its computer one: a Z80 machine with superimposition over a TV picture, sold in a striking red case. Strong in Japan for games and known for its FM sound. Entirely separate from the MZ family despite the same maker.

The X1 developed with higher resolution, more colours and better sound, and the version most X1 software expects. A well-regarded Japanese gaming platform of the mid-eighties that never left the country. The red-and-black styling is distinctive and the machines are handsome.

The Japanese home computer as arcade machine: twin 68000-era architecture built to run Capcom and Konami conversions that are, in several cases, better than the coin-op originals. Manga-styled tower case in two halves, 65,536 colours, and the machine Final Fantasy and Metal Gear were developed on. Legendary, and expensive — the power supplies fail without exception.

Sinclair's business machine, and one of the great might-have-beens. A 68008 with proper multitasking, a genuinely advanced BASIC, and Psion's office software — announced before it worked, shipped with a dongle hanging out of the back, and hobbled by the Microdrive tape loops nobody could make reliable. Linus Torvalds learned on one. It killed Sinclair's credibility in business and is now a serious collector's machine.

The first computer in Britain to cost under a hundred pounds. Sinclair got there by leaving things out: the processor generates the video itself, so the screen goes blank whenever the machine computes, and there is 1K of memory and a touch-sensitive membrane keyboard. Crude by any measure and enormously important — it put a computer in ordinary British homes a year before anyone else tried. The white case yellows badly.

The ZX80 reduced to one ULA and sold by mail order in kit or built form, and the machine that made home computing a mass British hobby — around a million and a half were sold. 1K of RAM, a wobbly 16K expansion that crashed if you breathed on it, and a display that flickers when it thinks. The black wedge is one of the most recognisable objects in computing.

The cheap Spectrum, and the one that shows what Sinclair's colour machine was really for: 16K was not enough for the games that made the platform, and most buyers either upgraded or replaced it within a year. Surviving unmodified 16K Issue 1 and 2 boards are the interesting ones — a genuinely original example is considerably scarcer than the 48K it sat beside.

The machine that defined British gaming. Colour, sound and 48K for £175 in 1982, and a software industry — Ultimate, Ocean, Imagine — that grew up around it in bedrooms. The rubber keys and the attribute-clash colour are as famous as anything about it. Issue numbers matter to collectors, the early boards being both rarer and more failure-prone, and the ULA is the part that dies.

128K, banked memory, and the AY sound chip that finally gave the Spectrum real music — the difference in a game's soundtrack between 48K and 128K is startling. Developed with Investrónica for the Spanish market and sold in Britain with an external heatsink so large it was nicknamed the toastrack. The last machine Sinclair sold under his own control, and uncommon in that form.

Amstrad's first Spectrum after buying the name: the 128 with a tape deck built in, a grey case and a proper keyboard. Cheaper to make and much easier to live with, and it kept the AY sound. Purists dislike the Amstrad-era machines; practically, this is the easiest classic Spectrum to actually use, and the integrated Datacorder is the part that needs its belt.

The +3 board with the disc drive replaced by a tape deck, in the +2's black case. That means it carries the +3's revised ROM and its compatibility problems without the drive that justified them, which is why it is the least loved Spectrum. Easily confused with the +2 and worth telling apart: the black case and the +2A badge are the tell.

The last Spectrum. A +2A with the power and video circuitry revised after Amstrad moved production, and the final machine to carry the name before the line was discontinued in 1990. Externally identical to a +2A, so the board markings are the only way to be sure which one is in front of you. The end of eight years and five million machines.

The Spectrum with a 3-inch disc drive — Amstrad's own drive, from the CPC — and the most capable machine of the line. The ROM changes for the disc interface broke compatibility with a slice of the earlier software, which is the trade. Comparatively uncommon, and the drive and its perishing belt are the reason most surviving examples do not work.

Sinclair's attempt to make the Spectrum look serious: an injected-moulded case with proper moulded keys, a reset button and a bigger footprint, wrapped round an unchanged 48K board. Widely disliked at the time for the keyboard's vagueness, but it is the same machine underneath and considerably nicer to type on than the rubber mat. The last Spectrum Sinclair designed before selling the company.

An arcade board sold for the home. SNK's Advanced Entertainment System runs the same cartridges as its MVS coin-ops, so the games are arcade-perfect because they are the arcade version — and the cartridges cost several hundred dollars each when new. The most extravagant console of its era and still among the most expensive to collect.

The Neo Geo made affordable by putting the games on CD instead of enormous cartridges, at the cost of loading times that became infamous — up to a minute between rounds of a fighting game. The library is largely the same as the cartridge system's for a fraction of the price, which is exactly why it exists.

The console that took gaming mainstream and ended Sega and Nintendo's duopoly. Cheap CD media, hardware built for 3D from the start, and a developer relationship that let smaller studios ship. It sold over a hundred million. The early SCPH-1001 boards have the RCA audio output that audiophiles prefer, and the laser sled is the usual failure.

The best-selling games console ever made, at over 155 million. The Emotion Engine was genuinely strange to program, but the machine's real advantage was playing PlayStation discs and DVD films — in many households it was the first DVD player. The fat and slim models differ in expansion and reliability.

Sony's most ambitious and most troubled console: the Cell processor was a supercomputer part in a games machine, so hard to program that early titles ran worse than on cheaper rivals. The early "fat" units played PS2 discs and ran Linux, both of which were later removed, and they are also the ones that die of solder failure.

The PlayStation shrunk to a third of the size for its final years, with the optional LCD screen that turned it into a portable of sorts. Plays the whole library. Common, cheap, and the screen accessory is the part worth finding.

Sony's handheld: a widescreen LCD far beyond anything portable at the time, with games on proprietary UMD discs and a media player built in. Technically it beat the Nintendo DS comprehensively and lost on software. The homebrew scene that grew around its firmware exploits is much of its lasting reputation.

Sony's first serious computer: a Z80 CP/M machine notable for adopting the 3.5-inch floppy drive Sony itself had invented, years before the rest of the industry. Its genlock ability made it the standard machine for broadcast video titling, which is where most working examples spent their lives.

The PictureBook: a tiny wide-screen subnotebook with a swivelling camera built into the lid, in 1998 — a webcam-equipped ultraportable a decade before that was ordinary. Impractically small keyboard, remarkable object. One of the most distinctive laptops ever sold.

The laptop that changed what laptops looked like: a magnesium alloy subnotebook under three pounds, in a purple-grey finish nobody else would have attempted. It made Sony's reputation in portables overnight and is the ancestor of every thin-and-light since. Genuinely beautiful, and the hinges are the weak point.

The first VAIO desktop, and Sony entering the PC market it had stayed out of: a Pentium tower styled and finished to Sony's own standards rather than the beige industry norm. It marks the point at which a PC was allowed to be an object rather than a box.

The 505 line refined: thinner again, with the tapered wedge profile and the finish Sony had by then made its signature. Sold as a premium executive machine at a price to match. Among the best-looking laptops of the nineties and increasingly collected as industrial design.

A compact Japanese Z80 machine with a TMS9918, sold in Britain by Computer Games Ltd and in Czechoslovakia — where, unexpectedly, it became a significant platform with its own software scene. That eastern European afterlife is the interesting part of an otherwise minor machine.

The machine the MSX standard was built from: Spectravideo's design was close enough to what Microsoft and ASCII were specifying that the SV-318 is effectively the MSX prototype sold as a product. A rubber-keyed home machine with a built-in joystick nub. Historically important for what it became.

The SV-318's business sibling, with a proper keyboard, 80K and a numeric keypad — and the better machine by a wide margin. Sold with CP/M and disc options. Together with the 318 it is the direct ancestor of the whole MSX standard, which is a considerable thing for a machine so little known.

Tandon's 386SX, and the interesting one: the PAC line used removable hard disc cartridges — a Tandon speciality — so the whole drive could be locked in a drawer at night. That security idea was ahead of its time and is what makes the machine worth having.

Tandon's AT-class machine, from the drive maker that supplied half the industry — including IBM. A 286 sold hard on price into British business through the mid-eighties. Well built, since Tandon knew how to make mechanical things, and the drives fitted are usually its own.

The PCA at 12MHz, which by 1988 was what a business buyer expected of a 286. Tandon's British operation sold a great many of these before the company left the computer trade to concentrate on storage. Solid and unglamorous.

A PC/XT clone from the company that made the floppy and hard drives inside half the industry's machines, including IBM's own. Tandon selling complete computers was vertical integration in action, and the PCX was sold hard into the British market on price. Worth having as a well-built example of the first clone wave, and as a reminder that the component supplier often knew more about building the machine than the brand on the front did.

The Color Computer, and an oddity in Tandy's Z80-based catalogue: a 6809, the best 8-bit processor anybody made, with Microsoft BASIC and a cartridge slot. The 6809 is why OS-9 — a genuine multitasking, multi-user operating system — ran on a home computer in 1980.

The CoCo cost-reduced into a smaller case with a better keyboard. The most common of the three and the one most CoCo software targets. Same 6809 and the same OS-9 capability, which is where the interest lies.

The CoCo done properly: 128K expandable to 512K, a 640×192 sixteen-colour mode and a proper memory management unit, which made OS-9 Level II genuinely usable. The best of the family by a wide margin and the one worth seeking out.

Tandy's cheapest computer: 4K, a chiclet keyboard and a 6803, sold against the Sinclair machines in 1983 and dropped within a year. Very limited, and consequently a footnote — but a cheap and cheerful one with a small and determined following.

The last of the Z80 TRS-80 desktops: 128K, an 80×24 display and CP/M compatibility, which finally gave the line access to the wider business software catalogue. Runs Model III software too, so it is the most capable machine of the family.

The machine journalists actually used. A full-size keyboard, an eight-line LCD, a built-in modem and twenty hours from four AA cells, in 1983 — reporters filed copy from anywhere for a decade, and it is the last product Bill Gates wrote code for personally. One of the genuinely great portable designs.

The Model 100 slimmed down and cost-reduced, with the same keyboard and the same extraordinary battery life. Functionally near-identical and rather nicer to carry. Both are still used by writers, which is a remarkable thing to say about a machine from 1986.

One of the three machines that started personal computing in 1977, and the one sold through a chain of high-street shops — Radio Shack had three thousand of them, which is how the TRS-80 outsold the Apple II early on. Notoriously radiated so much interference that the FCC took an interest. The expansion interface is the part that goes missing.

Tandy's business machine, and a completely different design from the Model I: a 4MHz Z80, an 8-inch floppy drive and a metal case, aimed at accountants rather than hobbyists. Expensive when new, heavy, and the 8-inch media is now the real obstacle to using one.

The Model I's problems fixed: everything in one case, the interference dealt with, lower case as standard and disc drives that fit inside. It is the practical classic TRS-80 and the one most of the software library assumes. Very well built.

Tangerine's expandable 6502 board, sold bare and grown by adding cards on a rack — a hobbyist system rather than a product. Tangerine's people went on to found Oric. Interesting as a British modular machine and as the company's first step.

A British-designed, Taiwanese-built CP/M machine with disc drives built in, aimed at small business and at software developers — a good deal of Spectrum and CPC software was actually written on Einsteins, which is its real claim. Well made and uncommon.

A handheld BASIC computer aimed at engineers, with a 31-character display and battery-backed memory that kept your program for months. Its Hexbus peripheral system was meant to connect printers and drives; the drive never shipped, so the machine could never save to tape or disc. A capable orphan.

The first 16-bit home computer, in 1979, and hobbled by nearly every decision around it: a calculator keyboard, a locked-down cartridge system, and a 16-bit processor talking to memory through an 8-bit path that threw away most of its advantage. Sold poorly and was quickly replaced. Rare, and the more interesting of the pair for it.

The TI-99/4 with a real keyboard, and the machine that fought Commodore in the 1983 price war — and lost so badly that TI left the home computer business after writing off hundreds of millions. Genuinely good sound and speech synthesis. Its failure is what let the C64 take the market outright.

The machine of the French "plan informatique pour tous", which put computers into every French school in 1985 — so this is the machine a generation of French children learned on, much as the BBC Micro was in Britain. Light pen rather than joystick, and enormous domestic significance.

The MO5 developed, with more memory, better graphics and a proper keyboard, in 1986. Sold in France and, as the Olivetti Prodest PC128, in Italy. The best of the MO line and a good deal less common than the MO5.

Thomson's first home computer and the start of the French national platform: a 6809 with a cartridge slot and a light pen, and a membrane keyboard that nobody defends. Historically important in France and awkward to use.

The TO7 with more memory and a better keyboard, and the version that went into French schools alongside the MO5. The most commonly encountered Thomson and the practical one of the early pair.

The most capable Thomson: 256K, improved graphics modes and a built-in disc controller, aimed at the French home and education markets in 1986. If you want a Thomson that is genuinely pleasant to use, this is it.

Thomson's business machine: a TO-series computer with a built-in 3.5-inch drive and bundled office software, sold at a price that met neither the home nor the professional market convincingly. Uncommon, and interesting as the top of a national platform.

A toy company's home computer, built around the TMS9995 — a faster relative of the TI-99/4A's processor — and sold in Japan as the Pyuuta. Cartridge software, a peculiar graphical BASIC, and enough oddity to be worth having. Sold in small numbers in America and Britain.

Toshiba's entry into the Japanese home computer market: a Z80 machine with cartridge and cassette, sold against NEC and Sharp and never really challenging either. Notable mostly as one of the many Japanese 8-bit architectures that MSX was created to replace.

The Pasopia developed with better graphics and sound, and the last of the line before Toshiba moved to MSX and then to PCs. A capable Japanese 8-bit that almost nobody outside Japan has handled.

Toshiba's cheap laptop: DOS in ROM so it would boot with no drive at all, one floppy, and a price that put a portable PC within reach of an individual rather than a company. Light, simple and reliable, and the ROM DOS is the detail that makes it pleasant to use now.

Widely regarded as the first mass-market laptop: a battery-powered, 3.5-inch floppy, PC-compatible clamshell that Toshiba sold in Europe in 1985 when IBM had nothing comparable. It created Toshiba's portable business, which led the market for a decade. A significant machine.

The T1000 line with a hard disc and a faster processor — the point at which a laptop stopped being a machine you carried your files to and became one you kept them on. Well built, common enough to find, and the batteries are always dead.

Toshiba's desktop-replacement portable: a 286 with a gas-plasma screen and a hard disc, in a case that folds flat and weighs a good deal. The orange plasma display is the reason to want it; it is also the reason it needs mains power.

The T3100 with a faster 286 and ISA expansion slots inside — a portable you could put a card in, which was unusual and useful. Plasma screen again. Heavy, capable, and among the better-built luggables of the period.

The top of Toshiba's plasma-screen line: a 386DX at 20MHz with expansion slots, sold as a transportable workstation in 1988. About as much computer as could then be carried, with the same gorgeous orange display and the same complete dependence on a wall socket.

Chuck Peddle's machine — the man who designed the 6502 and the PET — and technically far better than the IBM PC it competed with: variable-speed drives holding twice the data, a high-resolution display, and superb sound. It was not PC compatible, so it lost. A brilliant machine and a clear lesson about standards.

Hungary's home computer, made by Videoton for the domestic market and schools. Hungary had an unusually lively computing culture for a Comecon country, and the TVC is its home-grown machine. Rare outside Hungary.

VTech's console, sold in Europe and Australasia under a dozen names, and unusual for using a 6502 when almost every console of the period used a Z80 or an 8048. A keyboard overlay turned it into a BASIC computer. Uncommon, and the Australian Dick Smith Wizzard badge is the one most often seen.

VTech's cheapest home computer: 4K, a monochrome display and a chiclet keyboard, sold to undercut the Sinclair machines. VTech went on to make children's educational toys for decades, and these early Lasers are where that business started.

The Apple II clone that survived the lawsuits: VTech wrote its own ROM cleanly enough that Apple could not stop it, and the Laser 128 was sold in American department stores for years — a fully compatible IIc-class machine with an expansion slot the real IIc lacked. The most successful Apple clone ever.

The colour version of VTech's entry machine, sold in Britain and Australia as the Laser 200 and in America as the VZ-200 — one machine under a great many names, which is the VTech pattern. A small, cheap, unambitious computer with a surprisingly durable Australian following.

The Laser 200 with more memory, sold across Europe and Australasia under several badges. The extra RAM is the whole difference. Common in Australia, where the VZ series was genuinely popular, and scarce almost everywhere else.

The top of VTech's small Z80 line: more memory again and a better keyboard, sold as the VZ-300 in Australia where it had a real user base and a magazine of its own. The most usable of the family.

VTech moving upmarket: better graphics and a proper keyboard, aimed at the Amstrad and Spectrum end of the market rather than the very bottom. Sold in small numbers and now the obscure member of an already obscure family.

A 64K VTech with high-resolution graphics and a full keyboard in a wedge case, sold mainly in Europe. It is a competent machine that arrived with no software and no reputation. Uncommon and better than its standing suggests.

The top of VTech's own-design line, with 128K and disc options. By this point VTech's computer business was being overtaken by the machines it had tried to undercut, and the 700 sold very little. The rarest of the Lasers.

VTech's Apple II clone, and a good one: mostly compatible, faster, with better graphics modes than the machine it copied and a detachable keyboard. Sold as the Laser 3000 and the BASIS-like Apple alternatives were legally contentious throughout. An interesting clone rather than a slavish one.

An all-in-one PC with the monitor built in, a NEC V40, and no expansion slots at all — Zenith aiming at first-time buyers in 1987 and misjudging what they wanted. It failed. The sealed, slotless design makes it an interesting dead end.

The laptop that won the US Air Force's enormous 1988 procurement, which is why so many exist and why so many are marked with military inventory numbers. A good, ordinary 8088 laptop with an extraordinary sales history.

A dual-processor machine with both an 8088 and an 8085, so it ran CP/M-85 and MS-DOS software — Zenith hedging in 1982 on which standard would win. Not PC compatible. Well built, and the S-100 slots make it expandable in ways a PC was not.

Zenith's PC compatible, and the machine that won it enormous US government contracts — Zenith Data Systems supplied the American federal government and military in bulk through the eighties. Solidly built, and surviving examples often carry government asset tags.

A luggable PC with twin floppy drives and an LCD that folds down over the keyboard, sold heavily to the US government. One of the more usable portables of 1985 and much less common in Europe than in America.

Zenith's 386 desktop, sold into the government and corporate contracts the company specialised in. Unremarkable hardware, notable as the top of a line from a maker that was for a while the largest supplier of PCs to the US federal government.