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Archive of BYTE magazine, starting with issue #1 in 1975

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Re: Archive of BYTE magazine, starting with issue #1 in 1975

#61

Post by SilentM68 »

le-mark wrote: post #47
gramie wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From 1988-91, I was a volunteer teacher in Africa. I lived in a hut without running water or electricity, and I had a subscription to Byte. There was also almost nothing to read, so when my monthly issue of Byte appeared (2-3 months later than most people would receive it), I devoured that thing. I would read it literally cover to cover, including all those ads, several times. I wasn't (then) working in IT, so a lot…

lol greetings fellow Basic pencil coder! I used to also write basic programs by hand because I didn’t have a computer. Pournelle original claim to fame was as one of the authors of “Strategy of Technology“ which was very influential in the 70s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy_of_Technology

Yea, I hear Ya! I wrote BASIC programs by hand, as well at home while in high school for the same reason :)

Re: Archive of BYTE magazine, starting with issue #1 in 1975

#62

Post by andrewl »

Byte was great. For years it was the highlight of my month. And I thought the cover art was amazing. The Smalltalk hot air balloon logo came from the cover of the August 1981 issue, which was devoted entirely to Smalltalk.

Robert Tinney, who painted many of the covers, died in February:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46982354

Re: Archive of BYTE magazine, starting with issue #1 in 1975

#63

Post by MegaDeKay »

rigonkulous wrote: post #55

As a young hacker in the 70's and 80's, magazines were my primary source of docs. I lived in a remote community where such technology was really, really foreign at first. My relatives lived in other parts of the state, some very remote, some in the city. I had a HAM-/CB-enthusiastic hacker uncle I'd regularly visit in one end of the state (outback) and plenty of relatives in the major city and countryside where I liv…

You nailed it with BYTE & Radio Electronics.

Steve Ciarcia was incredibly influential to young me. His projects were wild. I only built one of his designs: an 8052AH-BASIC microcontroller board that I still have in the basement. He did more "mainstream" stuff like the series of articles on building your very own 8088-based PC compatible (a huge effort back in the day). But then he'd do crazy stuff like an 8051-based board that calculated the Mandelbrot set networked to a PC, and the more of the boards that you built and connected to the network, the faster the computation of the result.

Radio Electronics was gold for articles on cable & satellite TV descramblers. The only problem was that too often, the parts list would have one inductor that was basically made of Pure Unobtainium where I lived :-(

Re: Archive of BYTE magazine, starting with issue #1 in 1975

#64

Post by rigonkulous »

MegaDeKay wrote: post #63
rigonkulous wrote: post #55

As a young hacker in the 70's and 80's, magazines were my primary source of docs. I lived in a remote community where such technology was really, really foreign at first. My relatives lived in other parts of the state, some very remote, some in the city. I had a HAM-/CB-enthusiastic hacker uncle I'd regularly visit in one end of the state (outback) and plenty of relatives in the major city and countryside where I liv…

You nailed it with BYTE & Radio Electronics. Steve Ciarcia was incredibly influential to young me. His projects were wild. I only built one of his designs: an 8052AH-BASIC microcontroller board that I still have in the basement. He did more "mainstream" stuff like the series of articles on building your very own 8088-based PC compatible (a huge effort back in the day). But then he'd do crazy stuff like an 8051-based…

Oh, it was really gold, totally agree with you. I remember Steve's amazing stuff .. also, Circuit Cellar cannot go unmentioned in this thread too of course, that is for sure essential reading for the budding hacker needing a break from the ML-wash, imho.

It was also where I first started learning about synthesizers, which is another subject my uncle and I would get burned fingers about - him building the oscillator and me doing the filter and so on .. but there were other magazines of that ilk, I thing Radio Electronics transitioned to "Electronics Magazine" in my market in those days (Australia), or so it seems through the fog of time ..

I can come clean and say that I have all of these magazines safely .PDF'ed for the sailboat somewhere, I do know that for sure anyway, lol ..

Re: Archive of BYTE magazine, starting with issue #1 in 1975

#65

Post by mlhpdx »

The two characterizations of people in the introduction are timeless?

> A person with a primary interest in software will oftentimes be the person who purchases a kit computer because the kit minimizes the amount of hardware knowledge the person is required to have.

That’s how I came into my first computer - built from a kit in 7th grade.

And, yeah, I understand more about hardware than I did back then, but it’s all about the software to me still… okay, maybe some electronics and mechanics, too.

Re: Archive of BYTE magazine, starting with issue #1 in 1975

#66

Post by dugmartin »

Its hard to express what it was like in the early/mid-80s (before I had my drivers licence) to bike a few miles to the bookstore at the start of every month and see all the new computer magazine covers for that month. It was so exciting.

I didn't have much money so I stuck with Micro Cornucopia as it had the biggest signal to noise ratio (and before that Rainbow Magazine). I did pickup Computer Shopper later when I started building/rebuilding my mini-tower every few months.

While I'm glad I have the world's information one web page away now I feel like something has been lost.

Re: Archive of BYTE magazine, starting with issue #1 in 1975

#67

Post by mlhpdx »

le-mark wrote: post #47
gramie wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From 1988-91, I was a volunteer teacher in Africa. I lived in a hut without running water or electricity, and I had a subscription to Byte. There was also almost nothing to read, so when my monthly issue of Byte appeared (2-3 months later than most people would receive it), I devoured that thing. I would read it literally cover to cover, including all those ads, several times. I wasn't (then) working in IT, so a lot…

lol greetings fellow Basic pencil coder! I used to also write basic programs by hand because I didn’t have a computer. Pournelle original claim to fame was as one of the authors of “Strategy of Technology“ which was very influential in the 70s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy_of_Technology

My people. My first paid programming was hand translating a BASIC app to C. I did it on the same paper the original was printed on (green/white continuous feed). When I thought I had it right I went to my mom’s work in the middle of the night to type it in and check it. Over the course of a summer I made it work.

The money went to buying my first computer (kit).

Re: Archive of BYTE magazine, starting with issue #1 in 1975

#68

Post by [deleted] »

PaulHoule wrote: post #56
haunter wrote: post #7

Two things always stood out for me about Byte 1, It's a massive book like magazine if you ever hold one in your hand. Usually more than 300 pages sometimes up to 500, it's not like today's print media at all. I'm not even sure huge magazines like this exist anymore. 2, The amount of ads are insane. Like 1:3 ratio of article:ads if not more. Most of the times the lead articles are interrupted by 3 pages of ads after e…

Looking at it today what I notice is that the ads and the content were disjoint. The ads were heavily for high-end microcomputers often running CP/M and the S-100 bus often in multiprocessor and multiuser configurations often with exotic graphic systems for the time, like you see these guys https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cromemco [1] prominently. That stuff was barely talked about in the editorial which was much more…

[deleted]

Re: Archive of BYTE magazine, starting with issue #1 in 1975

#70

Post by [deleted] »

PaulHoule wrote: post #56
haunter wrote: post #7

Two things always stood out for me about Byte 1, It's a massive book like magazine if you ever hold one in your hand. Usually more than 300 pages sometimes up to 500, it's not like today's print media at all. I'm not even sure huge magazines like this exist anymore. 2, The amount of ads are insane. Like 1:3 ratio of article:ads if not more. Most of the times the lead articles are interrupted by 3 pages of ads after e…

Looking at it today what I notice is that the ads and the content were disjoint. The ads were heavily for high-end microcomputers often running CP/M and the S-100 bus often in multiprocessor and multiuser configurations often with exotic graphic systems for the time, like you see these guys https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cromemco [1] prominently. That stuff was barely talked about in the editorial which was much more…

[deleted]
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