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That eclectic mix of content made BYTE by far my favorite of the early computer magazines. (And I worked for Compute! Magazine.) "Dr. Dobbs" was a close second.

That eclectic mix of content made BYTE by far my favorite of the early computer magazines. (And I worked for Compute! Magazine.) "Dr. Dobbs" was a close second. And "Creative Computing" had the best BASIC games of the S-100 bus era. "Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar" was one of my favorite columns in the early BYTE. I tried to build some of his designs (and maybe one actually worked) and really enjoyed Steve Ciarcia's self-published book. It might seem weird to have this column in a computer magazine, but this was not long after the era of homebuilt computers (in the first year of his store, my dad used to actually offer to build computers when people bought them) so knowing your way around a soldering iron wasn't unusual for 1979 computer hackers.

ghaff 9y ago
I enjoyed Circuit Cellar although mostly vicariously. You were entering a period when doing interesting electronics projects tended to require more dedication and effort than I was really willing to put into it although I played around for a time. You were getting past the time when Heathkits and so forth were really practical, surface-mount was becoming common, etc. but obviously well before the current wave of Arduinos, Raspberry Pis, and so forth.
- ScottBurson 9y ago
  I don't think surface-mount was a thing yet in 1979. I built a Z-80 machine in 1980 -- yes, hand-soldering some of the chips onto the boards -- and I don't recall there being any surface-mounted components. Though I guess I wouldn't be surprised if the IBM PC had some, and that was only a year later.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    Probably right. I was talking more mid-eighties timeframe. (Which Wikipedia confirms is when it became widely-used though IBM first demonstrated in 1960 or so.)
  - robterrell 9y ago
    Yeah, I hand-soldered about 1/4 of BYTE-8 in 1980. I think it was roughly 1982 that most of the computers sold in his store were pre-built.
  - cr0sh 9y ago
    > I don't think surface-mount was a thing yet in 1979. For hobbyists, very unlikely. But there were large package (much larger than even what we consider a "large package" device of today) SMT devices. SMT had been a thing for probably over a decade by 1979. A lot of the miniaturization and SMT stuff that we take for granted today was done for the Apollo Guidance Computer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer There's a picture in that article showing flatpack SMT ICs - note that's from 1966. Of course, that machine was bleeding-edge state-of-the-art for the time period, and anticipated hobbyist machines of the late 1970s. If you're interested in this kind of stuff, it is fascinating to review the history of electronics. Things were pretty much strictly vacuum tube for a long time, but even there were a lot of innovation. When transistors came on the scene, things got weird quickly. A great way I found to explore this, from a "contemporary interested layman hobbyist" perspective - is to go on google books, and look up Popular Science magazine. They have virtually all the issues scanned and available to read. Start from about 1940, and just peruse the issues. Plenty of great articles on interesting technology of the past eras, along with electronics projects and such using the "latest tech" of the period. You'll find some interesting things in there that you likely never knew about. For instance - toward the end of the vacuum tube era, in a "last ditch" effort to keep them relevant, vacuum tubes went "solid state" - if you saw some today, you would think they were large metal-can transistors from the 1960s or 70s, but they were actually miniature metal-can vacuum "tubes" using similar construction and materials as those transistors; they had to be assembled inside a vacuum chamber! Most of them went into a few brands of high-end transistor televisions, but needed some tube components for their power-handling capabilities. So, hybrids developed... That's just the tip-o-the-iceberg!
cr0sh 9y ago
While my early computer experiences came later (my first machine was a TRS-80 Color Computer in 1984, when I was in the 5th grade), Byte Magazine and "Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar" were both things I enjoyed then and later. The same with all the other magazines you mention, including Compute! (for some reason, your name seems familiar to me). I still have most of those magazines from then; and I still peruse them from time to time. One of my favorite issues of Creative Computing was focused on graphics, and it had an article on fractal terrain generation, along with a BASIC code implementation for the Apple IIe and IBM PC. I ended up converting it to run on my Color Computer. As far as Byte Magazine and "Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar" is concerned, I never built any of the circuits described, but I did love to read about them. Once I became an adult, and got my old computers back from my parents (still have 'em, they all work!) - I recalled these articles, and some research led me to the books. I eventually collected all the books (and a few back issues of Byte). Reading thru them brought back memories of being a kid. At one point - I think it was the article about how he automated his home with this custom computer system (probably based around a Z80 or something, I don't recall) controlling a heap of relays to switch circuits in his house - I decided to see if he was still around. I found his email, and sent out a message. He eventually got back in contact with me; I had wondered about his home automation system and his lab, etc. He sent me some recent pictures of his home and workshop. Different of course, but still some of it stayed the same. IIRC, he had replaced the home automation system with something newer, but it was still something he tinkered with on occasion. I don't know what it is - maybe nostalgia or something? - I tend to like to contact these "greats" of the past (and present) to tell them how I have appreciated their work from the past, and how it helped me to become the software engineer I am today. Sometimes, I'm too late, unfortunately. But these men were my heroes and inspiration toward my present career path. I never intended for software engineering to be my career; it was something I kinda fell into. But I have always been programming in some manner or another, ever since getting my first computer.

ghaff 9y ago

I enjoyed Circuit Cellar although mostly vicariously. You were entering a period when doing interesting electronics projects tended to require more dedication and effort than I was really willing to put into it although I played around for a time. You were getting past the time when Heathkits and so forth were really practical, surface-mount was becoming common, etc. but obviously well before the current wave of Arduinos, Raspberry Pis, and so forth.

ScottBurson 9y ago
I don't think surface-mount was a thing yet in 1979. I built a Z-80 machine in 1980 -- yes, hand-soldering some of the chips onto the boards -- and I don't recall there being any surface-mounted components. Though I guess I wouldn't be surprised if the IBM PC had some, and that was only a year later.
- ghaff 9y ago
  Probably right. I was talking more mid-eighties timeframe. (Which Wikipedia confirms is when it became widely-used though IBM first demonstrated in 1960 or so.)
- robterrell 9y ago
  Yeah, I hand-soldered about 1/4 of BYTE-8 in 1980. I think it was roughly 1982 that most of the computers sold in his store were pre-built.
- cr0sh 9y ago
  > I don't think surface-mount was a thing yet in 1979. For hobbyists, very unlikely. But there were large package (much larger than even what we consider a "large package" device of today) SMT devices. SMT had been a thing for probably over a decade by 1979. A lot of the miniaturization and SMT stuff that we take for granted today was done for the Apollo Guidance Computer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer There's a picture in that article showing flatpack SMT ICs - note that's from 1966. Of course, that machine was bleeding-edge state-of-the-art for the time period, and anticipated hobbyist machines of the late 1970s. If you're interested in this kind of stuff, it is fascinating to review the history of electronics. Things were pretty much strictly vacuum tube for a long time, but even there were a lot of innovation. When transistors came on the scene, things got weird quickly. A great way I found to explore this, from a "contemporary interested layman hobbyist" perspective - is to go on google books, and look up Popular Science magazine. They have virtually all the issues scanned and available to read. Start from about 1940, and just peruse the issues. Plenty of great articles on interesting technology of the past eras, along with electronics projects and such using the "latest tech" of the period. You'll find some interesting things in there that you likely never knew about. For instance - toward the end of the vacuum tube era, in a "last ditch" effort to keep them relevant, vacuum tubes went "solid state" - if you saw some today, you would think they were large metal-can transistors from the 1960s or 70s, but they were actually miniature metal-can vacuum "tubes" using similar construction and materials as those transistors; they had to be assembled inside a vacuum chamber! Most of them went into a few brands of high-end transistor televisions, but needed some tube components for their power-handling capabilities. So, hybrids developed... That's just the tip-o-the-iceberg!

cr0sh 9y ago

While my early computer experiences came later (my first machine was a TRS-80 Color Computer in 1984, when I was in the 5th grade), Byte Magazine and "Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar" were both things I enjoyed then and later. The same with all the other magazines you mention, including Compute! (for some reason, your name seems familiar to me). I still have most of those magazines from then; and I still peruse them from time to time. One of my favorite issues of Creative Computing was focused on graphics, and it had an article on fractal terrain generation, along with a BASIC code implementation for the Apple IIe and IBM PC. I ended up converting it to run on my Color Computer. As far as Byte Magazine and "Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar" is concerned, I never built any of the circuits described, but I did love to read about them. Once I became an adult, and got my old computers back from my parents (still have 'em, they all work!) - I recalled these articles, and some research led me to the books. I eventually collected all the books (and a few back issues of Byte). Reading thru them brought back memories of being a kid. At one point - I think it was the article about how he automated his home with this custom computer system (probably based around a Z80 or something, I don't recall) controlling a heap of relays to switch circuits in his house - I decided to see if he was still around. I found his email, and sent out a message. He eventually got back in contact with me; I had wondered about his home automation system and his lab, etc. He sent me some recent pictures of his home and workshop. Different of course, but still some of it stayed the same. IIRC, he had replaced the home automation system with something newer, but it was still something he tinkered with on occasion. I don't know what it is - maybe nostalgia or something? - I tend to like to contact these "greats" of the past (and present) to tell them how I have appreciated their work from the past, and how it helped me to become the software engineer I am today. Sometimes, I'm too late, unfortunately. But these men were my heroes and inspiration toward my present career path. I never intended for software engineering to be my career; it was something I kinda fell into. But I have always been programming in some manner or another, ever since getting my first computer.