[HN Gopher] A Bit About Byte Magazine ___________________________________________________________________ A Bit About Byte Magazine Author : zdw Score : 36 points Date : 2023-09-29 17:19 UTC (1 days ago) (HTM) web link (www.goto10retro.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.goto10retro.com) | fuzztester wrote: | PC Magazine was good for a while too, before it became ad- | enshittified. | | I particularly liked the Utilities series in it. | tpmx wrote: | Living 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) | dannyobrien wrote: | I loved PCW -- I ended up writing for it in the early nineties, | and was ridiculously proud that I had that chance. | jen20 wrote: | Likewise for me with PC Plus, which enabled (via their | "Super{Disk,CD}") access to professional programming tools | and Linux distributions in the days before internet access | with sufficient bandwidth to download them was widespread. | | Sadly it took a turn towards being consumer-focused in the | early 2000s and then died. | dcminter wrote: | Byte 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 wrote: | The 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/... | dcminter wrote: | Thanks for the tip. I'm sort of background-aware of it, | but as I don't read or speak German and online | translation lacks a certain flavour, it's not really an | option for me. Good to note that there are a few hanging | on in other markets - and it certainly had a good | reputation. | | One that I found that was a "close but no cigar" | incidentally was the Pi magazine "The MagPi"1 - but it's | a bit thin both physically and in content. I may yet | subscribe, though, just in the hope of demonstrating a | market exists! | | 1 https://magpi.raspberrypi.com/ | tpmx wrote: | I agree about the MagPi; it's close. I think it would | work great as eh, toilet reading material though. Lots of | small stories/projects. | dcminter wrote: | A friend of mine refers to that as "shiterature" :D | [deleted] | Angostura wrote: | I worked in VNU House during the late 89s on another mag. | Always wanted to work on PCW never made it, but at least I | got to go to press conferences with Kewney, Tebbut et al. | | Are you one of the moving forces behind NTK? If so, thank you | for brightening my Fridays for so long. | joezydeco wrote: | Previous discussion/nostalgia for Byte: | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21772529 | AlbertCory wrote: | There's a Facebook group devoted to the old computer magazines: | | https://www.facebook.com/groups/521427671543144 | cc101 wrote: | I always got a laugh at Byte's motto: "A Small Systems Journal." | At about one inch thick, it was anything but small. | II2II wrote: | I 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 wrote: | It'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 wrote: | > I always assumed they the small referred to the systems | (i.e. microcomputers) rather than the size of the journal. | | That is correct. | slowmovintarget wrote: | Well 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. | zabzonk wrote: | mostly adverts. but i did like it! | TMWNN wrote: | _BYTE_ 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>, | forcing it to appear every two weeks. | justinlloyd wrote: | 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. 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 wrote: | >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. | sizzzzlerz wrote: | I 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. | dang wrote: | Related 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 - May 2023 (2 | comments) | | _Byte Magazine 1975-1995_ - | 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 - Aug 2022 (8 | comments) | | _Vintage Byte Magazine Library_ - | 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 - Sept 2021 (66 | comments) | | _BYTE Magazine_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17683184 | - Aug 2018 (111 comments) | | _Byte Magazine Covers_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9299544 - March 2015 (1 | comment) | | _Byte magazine archives_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6113561 - July 2013 (15 | comments) | tibbydudeza wrote: | I 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. | abecedarius wrote: | I don't remember the Linn, have a pointer? Search turned this | up, which sounds wacky (written in Forth) but it ran on an | 8088: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linn_9000 | tibbydudeza wrote: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rekursiv | slowmovintarget wrote: | And a Jerry Pournelle column in every issue. | tibbydudeza wrote: | Also the dude (remember he had quite a hairdo) who built his | own hardware - soldering and board level type of stuff. | tasty_freeze wrote: | Oy, 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 wrote: | > 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. | Stratoscope wrote: | The one time I met Jerry Pournelle was when we peed | together. | | I was in the men's room at the West Coast Computer Faire, | and Jerry walked up to the urinal next to me. We made some | small talk (not Smalltalk!) while we did our business, and | I quickly realized he was drunk as a skunk. | | There was a moment of panic when I thought to myself, | "Please, let his aim hold true!" | | It did, and we both left unscathed and unsplashed. | WalterBright wrote: | A number of other computer mags have vanished without a trace, | like MicroCornucopia and PC Tech Journal. | amelius wrote: | Dr. Dobb's magazine. | tannhaeuser wrote: | Was 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/ | OldGuyInTheClub wrote: | I 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. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-09-30 23:00 UTC)