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Vintage Byte Magazine Library

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Re: Vintage Byte Magazine Library

#81

Post by Sunspark »

tomcam wrote: post #67
Sunspark wrote: post #51

I miss those days so much. 80s computer magazines were exciting. The web is great, but it doesn't have the anticipation of waiting for the next issue and then sitting down to dig into it with focused attention to see what was fresh and new and to be wowed by all the things you couldn't afford. A 20 megabyte hard drive for ONLY $1000? That's a good price! Unimaginable luxury, I only had floppy disks into the 1990s. I…

The September 1983 issue of COMPUTE! was my introduction to programming. Still have it, and just showed it to my kid, who didn't understand its appeal at all. I later became a columnist, and it was an amazing experience.

What was it like being a columnist in the 80s? Did everyone work from home and hold meetings over the telephone, or did they have a shared office space?

Re: Vintage Byte Magazine Library

#82

Post by Sunspark »

dhosek wrote: post #52
Sunspark wrote: post #51

I miss those days so much. 80s computer magazines were exciting. The web is great, but it doesn't have the anticipation of waiting for the next issue and then sitting down to dig into it with focused attention to see what was fresh and new and to be wowed by all the things you couldn't afford. A 20 megabyte hard drive for ONLY $1000? That's a good price! Unimaginable luxury, I only had floppy disks into the 1990s. I…

I remember how shocking it was when SoftTalk came out. It didn't have program listings in it!

That's why the T-800 Terminator's code was from Nibble magazine. SoftTalk didn't want to create Skynet.

Re: Vintage Byte Magazine Library

#83

Post by georgeecollins »

cpr wrote: post #2

Nostalgia! Was an early editor/writer for Byte in the very early days (first few issues), though had to back off due to school load (in college at the time). Carl Helmers and Dan Fylstra (founder of VisiCorp (publisher of VisiCalc), friend from high school days in San Diego) and I were all working at Intermetrics in Cambridge, and got together to start Byte, visiting Wayne and Virginia Green (big ham radio publisher…

Thank you! As a boy you inspired me and set me on a great career.

Re: Vintage Byte Magazine Library

#84

Post by georgeecollins »

EarlKing wrote: post #40

This is well timed. I was actually going over the Internet Archive's collection just the other day. It's a bit sad to watch the decline in quality as you move through the volumes. Somewhere around 1985 - 1986 BYTE shifted towards becoming just another magazine hocking hardware/software. It got so bad that some issues started to look like a rip-off of Ziff-Davis's PC Magazine. Around that point I'm betting a lot of BY…

Dr Dobb's was good too. It never had the magic for me that Byte did, but I remember it being interesting.

Re: Vintage Byte Magazine Library

#85

Post by watersb »

cpr wrote: post #2

Nostalgia! Was an early editor/writer for Byte in the very early days (first few issues), though had to back off due to school load (in college at the time). Carl Helmers and Dan Fylstra (founder of VisiCorp (publisher of VisiCalc), friend from high school days in San Diego) and I were all working at Intermetrics in Cambridge, and got together to start Byte, visiting Wayne and Virginia Green (big ham radio publisher…

I learned a huge amount, just reading BYTE cover to cover in seventh grade. I still treasure those, although now I enjoy them on a tablet computer.

It's how I got into this. Such great times. Thanks.

Re: Vintage Byte Magazine Library

#88

Post by jqcoffey »

cpr wrote: post #2

Nostalgia! Was an early editor/writer for Byte in the very early days (first few issues), though had to back off due to school load (in college at the time). Carl Helmers and Dan Fylstra (founder of VisiCorp (publisher of VisiCalc), friend from high school days in San Diego) and I were all working at Intermetrics in Cambridge, and got together to start Byte, visiting Wayne and Virginia Green (big ham radio publisher…

I know we’re a small community overall, but I’m really (probably naively) surprised that a publication like Byte is no longer viable.

The Linux whatever’s, PC whatever’s and Mac whatever’s, and even Communications of ACM and the equivalents just aren’t the same thing.

Re: Vintage Byte Magazine Library

#89

Post by password4321 »

I recently discovered Dr. Dobb's Developer Library DVD 6: https://archive.org/details/DDJDVD6

articles from Dr. Dobb's Journal from January 1988 through December 2008, articles from C/C++ Users Journal from January 1990 through February 2006, articles from SysAdmin from January 1992 through August 2007, and articles from The Perl Journal from Spring 1996 through April 2005

--

Unfortunately the source code included is only (often partial) listings that were printed in the magazine, I couldn't find the entire projects that were made available via the 'electronic Resource Center' (which I believe was an ftp site that was never archived).

--

Edit: The Internet Archive also has scans of Dr. Dobb's Journal from 1976-1987: https://archive.org/details/dr_dobbs_journal

Re: Vintage Byte Magazine Library

#90

Post by dhosek »

Sunspark wrote: post #82
dhosek wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember how shocking it was when SoftTalk came out. It didn't have program listings in it!

That's why the T-800 Terminator's code was from Nibble magazine. SoftTalk didn't want to create Skynet.

There was an article published in Nibble that I desperately wanted to read¹ back around 1982ish, but the only library near me that carried it was a few suburbs away. I remember calling the library to make sure they had the issue on hand and the library thinking that I was joking. 13-year-old me patiently explained to her that a nibble was half a byte which didn't really help my case.²

1. If I recall correctly, it provided a way to use a 100ohm dual pot joystick from Radio Shack with the Apple ][ which expected 150ohm pots on its paddle/joystick inputs.

2. And because you're probably dying to know, it turns out that the issue in question had gone missing, so I never did learn how to make that joystick work with an Apple ][, but then I also didn't have the money to buy one anyway.

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