The microprocessor of an 8‐bit PC system is used as a central control unit for the acquisition and evaluation of data from quasi‐elastic light scattering experiments. Data are sampled with a width of 8 bits under control of the CPU. This limits the minimum sample time to 20 &mgr;s. Shorter sample times would need a direct memory access channel. The 8‐bit CPU can address a 64‐kbyte RAM without additional paging. Up to 49 000 sample points can be measured without interruption. After storage, a correlation function or a power spectrum can be calculated from such a primary data set. Furthermore access is provided to the primary data for stability control, statistical tests, and for comparison of different evaluation methods for the same experiment. A detailed analysis of the signal (histogram) and of the effect of overflows is possible and shows that the number of pulses but not the number of overflows determines the error in the result. The correlation function can be computed with reasonable accuracy from data with a mean pulse rate greater than one, the power spectrum needs a three times higher pulse rate for convergence. The statistical accuracy of the results from 49 000 sample points is of the order of a few percent. Additional averages are necessary to improve their quality. The hardware extensions for the PC system are inexpensive. The main disadvantage of the present system is the high minimum sampling time of 20 &mgr;s and the fact that the correlogram or the power spectrum cannot be computed on‐line as it can be done with hardware correlators or spectrum analyzers. These shortcomings and the storage size restrictions can be removed with a faster 16/32‐bit CPU.