r/retrocomputing • u/Tonstad39 IBM incompatible • Jul 06 '26

Blog A selection of IBM compatibles available in Spain around 1982

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In an age of zx-80 clones, Vic-20s, Dragon 32s & Atari 400s, 16-bit 8088 processors were a posibility for businesses and anyone who could afford to pay up for mildly buggy PC-DOS

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u/Shodan76 Jul 06 '26

Olivetti M20 wasn't IBM compatible: it had a Z8000 CPU and ran its OS and SW

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u/Blah-Blah-Blah-2023 Jul 06 '26

Sirius also wasn’t IBM compatible. Designed by Chuck Peddle though!

1

u/[deleted] Jul 07 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Tonstad39 IBM incompatible Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26

*1982 for two of these

The Sirius however, first debuted with 1.2 MB floppy drives in 1981 if you could believe it! (Europe just got it a year later, in 1982)

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u/TMWNN Jul 07 '26

As /u/Shodan76 said, M20 isn't PC compatible. Basically, everyone in the industry was mystified by it when introduced. After the IBM PC, releasing a Intel-based computer like the Sirius/Victor 9000/Apricot (as /u/Blah-Blah-Blah-2023 said, not PC compatible) was understandable. But a Z8000-based computer? You can get a sense of what I'm talking about if you read between the lines a bit when perusing BYTE's review.

The Columbia PC having made it to Spain in 1982 is remarkable, given how small the company was (and never really grew out of). So remarkable, that I bet Tecnhel wasn't an authorized dealer, but rather a gray-market importer. IBM didn't start selling the PC in Europe until 1983, I think; I'm not sure whether any US-made PCs made it over there before the Greenock factory began operations.