Stories of bygone pc retailers

Derngek

Derngek

Silver Level Poster
Hi,

I'm interested to hear any stories of past pc companies(now defuct) based in the UK that you may heard of or even purchased from. Obviously please don't include the ones that are still in business.



Here's my list,



Evesham vale - My older brother's first pentium based pc, a solid reliable mid range system.

NEC UK- My brother's second pc, first AMD rig that I blew up playing serious sam due to the stock cooler was insuffcient to cool the cpu properly and we ended up having to replace it with an Intel one instead via the guarantee package.

Carrera SSC- My first pentium 4 3.6 (I think) pc. How I wish I had forums like PCS today I would saved myself some money and headache. The pretty looking plastic glossy front pc case pretty much ended up like a gloryfied hot cupboard with vacuum cleaner level noise coming from cpu stock cooler and the less then desirable psu. And it was the second pc I personally blew up, due to my negligence with the lack of dusting. I remembered that they had a high end subsidiary called demonite which looked suspiciously like the alienware desktop range.

Panrix- High end pc company that was based in Leeds Probably one those pc that I would love to get if I had plenty of money to spend back then.

Savrow- bespoke pc company based in Camden, specializing in all things high end, from TVR Chameleon paint job, leather cushioning, custom lazer cut out for your pc case, anything goes with them, providing you have the budget to do so. I rembered back in 2004 some of their diamond desktop range can cost up to £20000+ depending on your specification
 
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Little_Miss_Naughty

Bronze Level Poster
Cube 247 - my first brand new computer when I had just turned 11. Came home from school to find a new gaming computer in the back room. I previously had the hand-me-downs (first was a Patriot, second a HP - both good machines). I was introduced at an early age to computing, then I annoyed so many girls in my IT class 😂.

It had an AMD Athlon X2 2.21GHz, ATI X1600 256mb, 1GB RAM, 320GB HDD, Floppy Disc Drive.

Upgraded it a lot over the years. Ended up with a Phenom II X4 3.4GHz, 4GB RAM, Nvidia GTX 560 Ti.

Was scrapped around 2015 after 9 years of service. Too slow by then and whenever I pulled out the USB stick the front fell off 🤣.

Replaced by a custom Vortex IV in January 2014 from PCS. That still lives on nearly 7 years on. Best computer I’ve had and not a single fault.
 
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TonyCarter

VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
Tandy: my first 'proper' girlfriend worked there, at her dad's shop.

Radioshack (I think Tandy bought this brand)

Apricot: this was my first 'work' PC for writing/compiling COBOL and it had a white on orange VDU (I don't count the IBM AS/400 as that was a mainframe...even though it was miles better than the System 36 mainframe we started on with it's 8" floppies that were prone to bending when you tried to insert them...remember kids, ensure your's isn't floppy when you put it in or your risk breaking something)

Olivetti: this was my 2nd PC...can't remember much else about it, other than it being a white on green VDU
 
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PhilGP

Silver Level Poster
Brands more than Retailers here. Back in the early days you could only by direct from the manufacturers.

Acorn - I had an Atom kit in the early 80's. A bit cheaper if you could build it yourself.
I soldered it all together then had to take it back to Acorn for them to solder it properly. :)

I was planning on buying a ZX80 but my Computer Studies teacher told me to wait a bit because he had heard of a new micro coming out soon. I saved every penny of my pocket money and got the Atom. I could have gone with a ZX81 as it was just released but the Atom won for me.
I see the Acorn vs Sinclair as an early AMD vs Intel.

My friends went for ...
Tandy
Compukit
Commodore
Oric


Tatung - Later I had a Tatung Einstein .... very overlooked but a great micro. Quirky 3" drives (not 3.5") as used Amstrad/Sinclair
 
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roymax

Member
I had an early Commodore Amiga 500, bought in the Tottenham Court Road, cant remember which retailer, I walked up and down the street haggling for the best deal, this was back in 1987 I think. I wanted to play Elite on a better system as I had been playing it on an IBM PC at work, I worked for a company in Bishopsgate that sold IBM PC's at the time.

It was a great machine and enabled me to pursue my passion for gaming, I had it for years and it always worked really well if a bit noisy.

Just for comparison, at that time at work I was selling an IBM PC for roughly £1500, for that you got 4.77MHz processor, 16k RAM & a mono graphics card. Disk drives, monitor, keyboard, sound, serial/parallel ports all extra. When IBM released the 10MHz PC AT a few years later it was £10k!!
 
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TonyCarter

VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
The youth of today, don't seem to realise how 'obtainable' a decent PC is nowadays.

The first 'business PC' I bought was a Mac SE/30 in late 1990. That cost me £4k (equivalent to about £8k now I guess)...but it did mean I could start contracting and charge £100/week for bringing my own machine/software onto projects (for DTP)...as the Mac rental company were charging 3 times that.

I remember playing Star Wars on it in glorious 340p monochrome.

starwars.png


starwarsfloppy.jpeg
 
Bhuna50

Bhuna50

Author Level
Prior to having a Commodore 64, we went for an all in one. Sharp MZ80K.

ae715f68fbea4d2c34768a2219d390cf.jpg



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
AgentCooper

AgentCooper

At Least I Have Chicken
Moderator
Don't remember where he bought it from, but I've fond childhood memories of sitting on a chair next to my dad, watching him on his BBC Micro trying to (unsuccessfully) match his ship's rotation to that of a space station in order to dock with it.

DSC_4134-BBC-Micro-left-facing.png

220px-BBC_Micro_Elite_screenshot.png
 
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Gavras

Master Poster
Sort of a dual flow of machines.

Amstrad 128 - bought Wolverhampton (possibly curry’s).
Amiga - bought Elgin Computer shop.

a bunch of PC’s 286 and 386 (mainly used for assembly language & machine code stuff)

Then bought my first ‘gaming PC’ (486) from Tiny PC (bought Lincoln - luckily no problems)

then went Evesham for 2 PC’s (first pentium and windows 95) (bought Darlington)

then Mesh for one system (bought Cambridge and still using surround speakers)

then Cyberpower for last system to my current PC specialist one.

in between those I was building others for daughter and relations.

this resulted in a odd garage setup - one side mechanics car stuff for modding cars, other side electronic workshop lol.

Possibly because it’s recent but PC Specialist buy has been smoothest and also one with most forum support pre purchase.
 
SpyderTracks

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
Our very first home PC was from TinyPC back in the mid 90's with windows 95, they didn't last very long and were never particularly good.
 
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roymax

Member
AgentCooper said:
Don't remember where he bought it from, but I've fond childhood memories of sitting on a chair next to my dad, watching him on his BBC Micro trying to (unsuccessfully) match his ship's rotation to that of a space station in order to dock with it.

View attachment 20098
View attachment 20099
Click to expand...
You had to grind through missions to afford a docking computer, after that docking was easy and no more crashes, although you did have to listen to the music which never changed ;)
 
Derngek

Derngek

Silver Level Poster
Wow this is a trip down memory lane.

Beloved BBC micro with their famous BEEP and the clicky keyboard. I remembered playing Imogen, what a good game that was back then.

Then the Spectrum ZX3 great times with jet set willy

Amiga 500, that chequered bouncing ball and Shadow of the beast showcase, pure gold. It was surely a great era for point and click adventure games.
 
AgentCooper

AgentCooper

At Least I Have Chicken
Moderator
roymax said:
You had to grind through missions to afford a docking computer, after that docking was easy and no more crashes, although you did have to listen to the music which never changed ;)
Click to expand...
He did get there eventually. I think I just enjoyed watching him fail because it made him swear, something that he never normally did on front of me :D
 
AgentCooper

AgentCooper

At Least I Have Chicken
Moderator
Derngek said:
Wow this is a trip down memory lane.

Beloved BBC micro with their famous BEEP and the clicky keyboard. I remembered playing Imogen, what a good game that was back then.

Then the Spectrum ZX3 great times with jet set willy

Amiga 500, that chequered bouncing ball and Shadow of the beast showcase, pure gold. It was surely a great era for point and click adventure games.
Click to expand...
The ball game... are you referring to Rock and Roll?

hqdefault.jpg
 
Derngek

Derngek

Silver Level Poster
AgentCooper said:
The ball game... are you referring to Rock and Roll?

View attachment 20103
Click to expand...
No, though I'm going to check that game out that game along with marble madness playthrough on youtube. It was the red and white bouncing chequered ball on screen from one of the Amiga demo units in the shop to untice potential customers. First time I saw that was in one of the independant stores in Tottanham court road. I was definitely sold on it for sure

 
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