Does anyone know of a similar archive for Personal Computer World which was (sort of) the UK equivalent to Byte? The Internet Archive has a quite a few but is also missing a lot too.
Byte Magazine 1975-1995
21–30 of 101 posts
Re: Byte Magazine 1975-1995
#22Interesting juxtaposition to today, I bought Byte MOSTLY for the ads. The computer scene was changing so fast in the 80's that the ads were interesting and wanted.
The ads are still fascinating. Makes you appreciate 32G of RAM when you see 16K on sale! for $150
Someone should compare the price drops in RAM.
Prices dropped quickly back then.
More recently, I bought a 16GB MacBook Pro in 2013. 10 years later I would expect my next to be 64GB.
Re: Byte Magazine 1975-1995
#23I remember the Smalltalk edition blowing my mind: https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Byte/80s/Byte-1981-08....
My fav was Lossless Data Compression, a really well written article describing how the algorithms behind PKZIP worked; Huffman & LZW coding.
https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Byte/90s/1991/Byte-199... (page 309)
Re: Byte Magazine 1975-1995
#24Does anyone know of a similar archive for Personal Computer World which was (sort of) the UK equivalent to Byte? The Internet Archive has a quite a few but is also missing a lot too.
Same (amazing) site: https://worldradiohistory.com/Personal_Computer_World.htm Also: https://archive.org/details/PersonalComputerWorldMagazine/PC...
Wow - great site indeed. Many thanks!
Re: Byte Magazine 1975-1995
#25Something that fascinated me back in the day (and something that I have not seen mentioned, whenever BYTE comes up here), when I as a teenager read BYTE (initially borrowed from the local Danish municipal library) was the transcripts from BIX [1]. It offered a tantalising view into the world of BBS (and what would come later through Usenet etc), before such things were widely accessible. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/…
Usenet and the pro-Internet/ARPANET in general was more of a parallel Unix-centric universe than something that came later.
BIX, like Compuserve/Delphi/etc., was one of the big commercial services--though possibly more hacker-oriented than some--which was also somewhat separate from the TRS-80 in the bedroom hobbyist BBSs (though some of the PC-based BBSs also became fairly large and commercial latterly).
Re: Byte Magazine 1975-1995
#26I randomly clicked 2 issues, and there were articles on AI and neural net implementations - 35 years ago!
Backpropagation was popularised and named in 1986 (though it was likely a rediscovery, with prior art going back to the 60's), so neural nets got a new wave of interest around then coinciding with home computers fast enough to at least achieve mildly interesting results.
Re: Byte Magazine 1975-1995
#27Interesting juxtaposition to today, I bought Byte MOSTLY for the ads. The computer scene was changing so fast in the 80's that the ads were interesting and wanted.
Hell, in its prime Computer Shopper was a GIANT magazine of just ads, that you paid for. I remember ordering computer parts over the phone, delivered COD, because I was 12, and didn't have a credit card or a checking account.
That surfaced a memory… Mom buying one of those from Sam's Club and me pouring over it at home.
If you're not familiar with Computer Shopper, imagine something the size of a 2 x 2 grid of phonebooks and just as thick. They were impressively sized.
Re: Byte Magazine 1975-1995
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
The ads are still fascinating. Makes you appreciate 32G of RAM when you see 16K on sale! for $150
Someone should compare the price drops in RAM. Prices dropped quickly back then. More recently, I bought a 16GB MacBook Pro in 2013. 10 years later I would expect my next to be 64GB.
For a while we ran out of useful stuff to do with more RAM. We tried to fill the gap with micro-service development but the pain/ego ratio is not as good as having one big app chunking up the whole place. I assume the new AI stuff will pick up the slack and we'll soon have much more RAM hooked up to our NPUs than to our CPUs.
Re: Byte Magazine 1975-1995
#29I randomly clicked 2 issues, and there were articles on AI and neural net implementations - 35 years ago!
Yeah, AI is a perennial topic and neural nets are an old school approach. When I was in school (not really that long ago) the NN textbook taught as an old fashioned approach that never produced good results, and the professor (from the EE department) would occasionally remark that we are seeing a resurgence of this technique and you never know, it could become popular again. I think at that point it already producing impressive results, but none of us were fully aware of where it was going.
Re: Byte Magazine 1975-1995
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hell, in its prime Computer Shopper was a GIANT magazine of just ads, that you paid for. I remember ordering computer parts over the phone, delivered COD, because I was 12, and didn't have a credit card or a checking account.
Computer Shopper had LOTS of ads, but it was not just ads. I loved it, but preferred Byte and PC Magazine. I remember the Gateway 2000 ads. Crazy.
In the early days (80's) it was primarily just ads and some reviews. Later they moved to mixing in some non-advertising content.