The new British Minstrel with Winchester drive

This machine and advert is such a spectacular throw-back that it had to be included. 

It's for the "New" British Minstrel, as produced by the oddly-named Hotel Microsystems Limited of London - a name that was apparently odd enough that the company had renamed itself as HM Systems by 1984. 

It appears to be largely based on the [@North Star] Horizon, with which it claims compatibility in a number of areas.

That's the same Horizon that was launched back in 1977 and, whilst still available at least until 1982, was of the old-style "big box and switch" design, where video generally was an add-in card and adverts required some dimly-lit setup that had nothing to do with computers. 

At least in the Minstrel's case, the Mediaeval viol has at least some relevance to the name of the computer, unlike Altos's [=byte_1978-08_019|1978 advert for the computer-as-family-silver holder] or [=ad3_003|Pearcom's 1981 oil lamp]. 

Its retail price of £2,445 was about [[2445|1983]] in [[now]].

It's vaguely possible that Hotel Microsystems had been spun out of Guestel - an importer of machines like the original IBM PC - which had a specialist arm offering business microcomputer systems for hotels which was sold off in 1983[source: "City plugs Tycom gap", PCN, June 16th 1984, p. 4].

