Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Byte Magazine 1975-1995

worldradiohistory.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 101 posts

Re: Byte Magazine 1975-1995

#51

Post by UI_at_80x24 »

The single best inspiration for me to become a 'hacker' of sorts was BYTE.

Back in the DOS5/Win3.11 days there was an article about modifying command.com & io.sys so that you could customize the files that were used to load the system.

config.sys & autoexec.bat became (on my system) ipl.sys & ipl.bat (Inital Program Load)

It made the system immune to any virus* [except TSRs] (keeping a dummy config.sys & autoexec.bat let me see programs that tried to modify those files, and generally scored a TONNE of cool points in my mind. It also taught me about "security through obscurity".

This taught me that _MY_ hardware was mine to modify how I wanted. It gave me an incredible sense of power, and capability.

* = well at the time I thought it did. =)

Re: Byte Magazine 1975-1995

#52

Post by janandonly »

dark-star wrote: post #44
simplegeek wrote: post #14

Thank you for making these available. What's the alternative for "Byte" magazine today? Where do you go to read similar stuff?

In Germany, c't and ix by "heise Verlag" are still pretty popular. That's the same "heise" where the somewhat-famous h2testw (for testing counterfeit USB sticks etc.), windows-offlineupdate (wsusoffline.net, now not very useful anymore) and umbpci (for those who remember the DOS days ;-) came from

I can second this. In Holland, we get a translated C'T which is the only high-quality general “computer magazine” still existing.

Re: Byte Magazine 1975-1995

#53

Post by fastaguy88 »

amacbride wrote: post #15

I loved Jerry Pournelle’s “Chaos Manor” columns, and Steve Ciarcia’s “Circuit Cellar” — it was nice to have both software and hardware represented. The articles on the Inmos Transputer were fascinating, and sparked my interest in parallel and distributed computing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transputer

Jerry Pournelle's column was very entertaining and well written, but it taught me an important lesson. I knew something about the computers of the day (perhaps more than Pournelle), and I often found him giving bizarre, if not incorrect, advice (and sometimes, when he had a problem, he would just call his bud Bill Gates). Reading the column, it was clear he was the expert, even when he was not. So I learned that it is important to distinguish between good writing as entertainment, and good writing as expertise.

Re: Byte Magazine 1975-1995

#54

Post by mc32 »

We're getting there:

>Could a Computer Take Over?

>Ed Rush, 1977

"Just how ridiculous IS the idea of a computer deciding to take over the world and be its dictator? Upon hearing this question, most people who are not computer oriented will laugh and say "That's only in science fiction stories." They will be much more likely to complain about "becoming a number," with everyone from the grocery store to the government wanting their number instead of their name.

Those who are more familiar with computers will laugh off the concept and charge it to paranoia due to ignorance. "A computer is little more than a lot of wires conducting currents here and there," they will say. "Besides, if it-gets uppity you can always pull the plug."

However, that group of people who are both computer knowledgeable and fans of the art form known as science fiction, but more properly called speculative fiction, might ask "Can you always pull the plug? Could a computer really seize the reins of government? And if so, how ?" In trying to answer these last questions, let us first speculate on the capabilities the computer itself would have to have. "

Re: Byte Magazine 1975-1995

#55

Post by daneel_w »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #12
daneel_w wrote: post #2

Computer magazine/book art from the 70s and 80s is almost an artistic style of its own. I love browsing old issues of Byte, COMPUTE!'s Gazette etc. just to see the imaginative graphical work.

I don't know why but the aesthetics kind of reminds of the soviet space program propaganda posters. Probably because they are of the same time period but not sure.

To me there's a sense of pioneering in the pictures.

Re: Byte Magazine 1975-1995

#56

Post by antx »

Karunamon wrote: post #27
brk wrote: post #10

Earlier 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.

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.

I spent a good chunk of my money back then buying the monthly issues, drooling over them. Unfortunatelly, it seems not many archivists have kept the 1990s editions... or didn't care to share them to the public, at least. I would have liked to get a copy in some kind of digital format.

Re: Byte Magazine 1975-1995

#57

Post by dingosity »

I think about how the "computing world" has changed over the last 40 years. When I was a kid, everything was new. Every couple months a new type of computer, CPU or peripheral was released: Commodore 64, inexpensive floppy drive, affordable 4-color plotter, (this crazy thing called) a mouse, etc. BYTE captured the crazy zeitgeist of the age. The content was a crazy mix of how-to articles and what-to-buy product reviews (and the 1/9 page ads in the back.) The covers by Tinny were always witty and well executed. You can't judge a book by it's cover, but Tinny covers definitely grabbed your attention. When they replaced his covers with pictures of products it was definitely an indication times were changing.

The first BYTE issue I remember was the one with the Star Trek cover (December 77) -- I had just recently seen a Spock ASCII art print out at the local academic computing center and burned most of my DEC-10 time playing the Star Trek game online. TREK and computing and BYTE magazine were all linked in my mind. We were living in the future, no doubt about it...

Re: Byte Magazine 1975-1995

#58

Post by ngc248 »

I love these old magazines. Byte, Omni, Computer Gaming World, Oh Boy's life. Magazines used to be so amazing, until they got hijacked by ads. The ads earlier were actually helpful, But post 2000s the ads were well just a nuisance.

Re: Byte Magazine 1975-1995

#59

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

klelatti wrote: post #3

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.

I used to buy PCW religiously every month, starting with the 1st issue which had the NASCOM-1 (kit computer) on the cover, which was my first computer.

I'm not sure you can really compare PCW to BYTE. From what I recall PCW didn't really get into the more abstract computing topics that BYTE did - it was more more focused on products.

Another good magazine from same era was Dr. Dobb's Journal.

Shame that all these geeky magazines have disappeared.

It's interesting watching some of the old c.1980 BBC computer education TV shows that have been uploaded to YouTube. It's funny watching them trying to earnestly explain to TV viewers the difference between a 16-bit computer with a 16-bit bus vs one with an 8-bit bus, etc... I guess back then there was a thought that the general public would be brought up to speed on the nuances of such things!

Re: Byte Magazine 1975-1995

#60

Post by ghaff »

jmclnx wrote: post #39
ghaff wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

IIRC, BIX morphed into IRC.

As far as I know, BIX just shut down.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte_Information_Exchange

Post reply on HN