Digital Retro

the long version

The late Seventies to the early Nineties was a wholly unique period in the history of computing. Long before Microsoft and Intel ruled the PC world, a multitude of often quaint home computers were battling for supremacy in a melting pot that would shape the IT industry for years to come. Products from established electronics giants clashed with machines which often appeared to have been knocked together in a backyard shed by an eccentric man from Cambridgeshire. Plenty actually were. Compatibility? Forget it! Each of these computers was its own machine and had no intention of talking to amything else. Much like their owners in fact, who passionately defended their machines with a belief verging on the religious. This book tells the story behind 40 classic home computers of an infamous decade, from the dreams and inspiration, through passionate inventors and corporate power struggles, to their final inevitable extinction, and subsequent worship by the nostalgic collectors market. *Digital Retro* is an essential read for anyone who owned a home computer in the Eighties.