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A Bit About Byte Magazine
- joezydeco 3y agoPrevious discussion/nostalgia for Byte: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21772529 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21772529
- cc101 3y agoI always got a laugh at Byte's motto: "A Small Systems Journal." At about one inch thick, it was anything but small.
- II2II 3y agoI always assumed they the small referred to the systems (i.e. microcomputers) rather than the size of the journal. I doubt the term "personal computer" even existed when Byte was born.
- teh_klev 3y agoIt's an inside joke. Byte at its peak had some issues that were nearly an inch thick and could easily be used as a murder weapon.
- justin66 3y ago> I always assumed they the small referred to the systems (i.e. microcomputers) rather than the size of the journal. That is correct.
- cc101 3y agoAdjectives don't nest. Lists of adjectives all apply to the subject not each other. Each adjectives applies without reference to others.
- sokoloff 3y agoI’d argue that in “dark red paint” that most people would say that dark modifies red rather than paint. (Same/maybe more clear in the phrase “candy apple red paint”)
- DonHopkins 3y agoThat's why God invented Parens. https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1979-08 https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1979-08
- zabzonk 3y agomostly adverts. but i did like it!
- slowmovintarget 3y agoWell compared to Computer Shopper, Byte was small. I recall walking out of the book store with the oversized Computer Shopper, roughly two inches thick, newsprint contents. It was like walking out with a phone book every month. I recall when they went to a smaller format. The world had changed. Sigh.
- TMWNN 3y agoBYTE came close, but not quite as thick as PC Magazine, which hit 800 pages in December 1983 <https://books.google.com/books?id=05wAGZQlo9QC&pg=PP1 https://books.google.com/books?id=05wAGZQlo9QC&pg=PP1>, forcing it to appear every two weeks.
- tpmx 3y agoLiving in Europe (but not in the UK), I have similar nostalgic feelings for the UK magazine Personal Computer World (PCW). The library in the tiny town (5k people) where I grew up somehow had a subscription for PCW in the 80s and 90s. Every month there was a new treasure trove to read. I read it so hard from like 1986 and onwards. (I kind of learned English by reading PCW.) It's pretty obvious that PCW was modelled after Byte. (There's a partial scanned collection here: https://archive.org/details/personalcomputerworld?sort=date https://archive.org/details/personalcomputerworld?sort=date)
- dannyobrien 3y agoI loved PCW -- I ended up writing for it in the early nineties, and was ridiculously proud that I had that chance.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dcminter 3y agoByte and PCW are the two magazines I really miss. I know we have a wealth of information available to us now that we didn't back then so I shouldn't be sad... and yet :'( If someone put out a physical general computing magazine of a similar quality today I'd subscribe in an instant, but I suppose there's just not enough cranks like me to make it viable. Speaking of quality material, any plans to revive NTK?
- tpmx 3y agoThe German Heise publishing house continues to publish the Byte/PCW-sort-of-like magazine "c't". Useful for keeping any German language skills alive if you're into that. Judging from the latest cover it's at a ~00s technical level (on a PCW Magazine scale) - and they are diversifing, now including things like heat pumps and smart thermostats, heh: https://heise.cloudimg.io/v7/_shop-heise-de_/assets/a/6/0/e/a60ebe4a507df409b3474f160780fae107a7c5f6_ct.2023.22.001.150dpi.jpg https://heise.cloudimg.io/v7/_shop-heise-de_/assets/a/6/0/e/...
- tibbydudeza 3y agoI loved this magazine - could not afford a subscription but our uni had it but you could not take it out - many hours spend reading and making photocopies of the articles. The NextCube , Transputer and the wacky Linn CPU.
- slowmovintarget 3y agoAnd a Jerry Pournelle column in every issue.
- tasty_freeze 3y agoOy, how often his column would send me into a rage. He sold himself is just a real user reporting what it was like to use a given machine or bit of software he was reviewing. He was anything but. He'd talk about the frustration with some machine or software and because he was Pournelle, he'd contact the company and the owner or an engineer would drive to Pournelle's house to troubleshoot the problem. Then Pournelle would gush that while things weren't perfect, their support was great. Or some company would give him their $10,000 top end computer system and he'd state that the fact it was given to him didn't affect his opinions about the system, because he really used the system and that it was he, a power user, who was doing the company a favor by shaking the bugs out of their systems. I didn't buy it for a second. Perhaps it is like some podcasts where you like it or dislike it more based on the personalities of the hosts more than the content. Because I have never been a reader of science fiction, I saw Pournelle as just a privileged curmudgeon and wasn't tickled that a famous SF author was sharing his personal life with me.
- TMWNN 3y ago> Or some company would give him their $10,000 top end computer system and he'd state that the fact it was given to him didn't affect his opinions about the system, because he really used the system and that it was he, a power user, who was doing the company a favor by shaking the bugs out of their systems. I didn't buy it for a second. Pournelle was never reluctant to criticize. He discussed the Epson QX-10 because he really wanted to like the bundled Valdocs software, but repeatedly excoriated over several versions its horrible performance. Pournelle was always scathing about copy protection, even if he otherwise liked the software. When discussing CP/M transportables, Pournelle preferred the super-expensive Otrona but rightly said that the Osborne and Kaypro were the Volkswagen better suited for most people in terms of price/performance. Etc., etc.
- OldGuyInTheClub 3y agoI was a devoted Byte subscriber and reader for years. I even bought a poster or two of covers I liked from Robert Tinney. Steve Ciarcia's "Circuit Cellar" was my first read of any issue. Having embarked on an experimental science career by the mid-80s, I was always impressed by how he could present a new, /working/ hardware project every month.
- dang 3y agoRelated threads about Byte Magazine itself (I've omitted submissions of specific articles/issues since there are so many of those): Byte Magazine – Archived Copies on Internet Archive - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35960210 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35960210 - May 2023 (2 comments) Byte Magazine 1975-1995 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34397245 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34397245 - Jan 2023 (98 comments) Ask HN: Is there a modern equivalent of Byte Magazine? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32538743 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32538743 - Aug 2022 (8 comments) Vintage Byte Magazine Library - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28684406 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28684406 - Sept 2021 (94 comments) The BYTE magazine covers by Robert Tinney - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28607038 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28607038 - Sept 2021 (66 comments) BYTE Magazine - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17683184 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17683184 - Aug 2018 (111 comments) Byte Magazine Covers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9299544 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9299544 - March 2015 (1 comment) Byte magazine archives - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6113561 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6113561 - July 2013 (15 comments)
- WalterBright 3y agoA number of other computer mags have vanished without a trace, like MicroCornucopia and PC Tech Journal.
- amelius 3y agoDr. Dobb's magazine.
- tannhaeuser 3y agoWas about to post a link to archived Dr. Dobbs articles [1] (so not without a trace) only to find out that actual content seems to have vanished/nav is broken. Like Dr. Dobbs until 2015, BYTE continued with online-only content until about 2011. What's worth discussing here is infeasibility to publish quality content on Google's web financed by targetted ads working for Google, and Google alone. [1]: https://drdobbs.com/ https://drdobbs.com/
- morninglight 3y agoDr. Dobb's Journal of Computer Calisthenics and Orthodontia "Running Light Without Overbyte" https://archive.org/details/dr_dobbs_journal https://archive.org/details/dr_dobbs_journal .
- 5555624 3y agoMicroCornucopia ceased publication when Dave Thompson got burned out. I think all the issues are available at: https://bitsavers.org/magazines/Micro_Cornucopia/ https://bitsavers.org/magazines/Micro_Cornucopia/
- Narishma 3y agoYou can find all the PC Tech Journal issues here: https://www.pcjs.org/documents/magazines/pctj/ https://www.pcjs.org/documents/magazines/pctj/
- AlbertCory 3y agoThere's a Facebook group devoted to the old computer magazines: https://www.facebook.com/groups/521427671543144 https://www.facebook.com/groups/521427671543144
- justinlloyd 3y agoI loved Byte. I was a subscriber to the bitter end. I learned C from Byte, which lead me to developing a C compiler (also from a Byte article series) in 6502. Along with a number of data structures and algorithms. If Byte were around today, I would happily buy it. Though I could do without the ad-fest it became in later years.
- fuzztester 3y ago>I loved Byte. I was a subscriber to the bitter end. I learned C from Byte, which lead me to developing a C compiler (also from a Byte article series) in 6502. I hope you meant the processor, not the year ;) I loved BYTE too. And congrats on creating a compiler.
- Lt_Riza_Hawkeye 3y agoI assume they meant they wrote it in 6502 assembly
- fuzztester 3y agoHeck yes, I know. I've programmed in it myself, on both the Commodore 64 and the BBC Micro. I liked that instruction set. Those were the days of 8- and 16-bit computers with slow speed and low RAM (compared to today), when people used all kinds of clever tricks to save a byte here or a clock cycle there. Good fun.
- justinlloyd 3y agoWe studied assembly as part of our ancient literature class because so few written examples of languages from that era of humanity still exist to this day. We have had heated discussions over the pronunciation of NOP and BRK. Is it "no-op" or "nope"? Is it "brake" as in to stop? Or "break" as to damage? Should we say "brk" or "berk"?
- fuzztester 3y agoClassic (pun intended)! Welcome back to the future, I mean, forward to the past.
- sizzzzlerz 3y agoI enjoyed the magazine from its initial issues until the mid 80s when I pretty much stopped reading it. I must say that it did have some of the most interesting and attractive cover art of and technical magazines.
- fuzztester 3y agoPC Magazine was good for a while too, before it became ad-enshittified. I particularly liked the Utilities series in it.
- PeterStuer 3y agoI have tons of computer magazines from the 80's and 90's in the attic, including many years of Byte. A monthly trek to a nearby city to grab the mags was part of nerd culture back in the day as it was the near only way to get computer info back in the days before the www.
- zubairq 3y agoBrings back memories. Yeah, byte, pcw and dr Dobbs journal were special.
- DonHopkins 3y agoI really looked forward to each issue of Dr Dobbs Journal, and Creative Computing!