https://www.goto10retro.com/p/a-bit-about-byte-magazine-the-premier [https] Goto 10: The Newsletter for Atari Enthusiasts Subscribe Sign in Share this post [https] A Bit About Byte Magazine: The Premier Technical Journal of Its Time www.goto10retro.com Copy link Facebook Email Notes Other A Bit About Byte Magazine: The Premier Technical Journal of Its Time Was this worth reading for Atari users? [https] Paul Lefebvre Sep 29, 2023 3 Share this post [https] A Bit About Byte Magazine: The Premier Technical Journal of Its Time www.goto10retro.com Copy link Facebook Email Notes Other 2 Share Byte, The Small Systems Journal, was started in 1975 with the dawn of the microcomputer revolution and quickly became a leading computer magazine, known for a wide variety of technical articles and commentary. I would have been far too young to read the early issues, but even when the 80s rolled around, I was not a big reader of Byte magazine. Its articles were just too technical and advanced for my young self. It also didn't really have that much in the way of Atari coverage. However, in March 1986 they published my favorite issue of Byte ever, the one with the Atari 1040ST on the cover: [https] My dog-eared copy of Byte, March 1986 purchased in 1986. 1986 was a gangbuster year for Atari and it was also the best year for Byte magazine's Atari coverage. In January they published a product preview of the Atari 520ST, in March one for the 1040ST. They published a review of the 520ST in June. The ST made the cover again (along with the Amiga and Mac) in September. In 1986 they actually started including ST news! There were also occasional ST-related articles (Atari ST Software Development in September) and some of the columns regularly mentioned the ST. Bruce Webster did a 68000 Wars series in his column, comparing the ST, Amiga and Mac. Jerry Pournelle would often mention the ST in his Chaos Manor column. Plus when they added BIX 1 summaries, they included an Atari ST section. Back in 1986, I actually bought quite a few issues of Byte at the newsstand because of this ($3.50 cover price back then, about $10 today). Join 2100+ other Atari Enthusiasts on the Goto 10 mailing list. It's free! [ ] Subscribe Today I have a decent-sized collection of Byte magazines, including the entire 1986 year. I also have the entire 1985 year and other random issues between 1979 and 1983 which all together totals 42 issues. [https][https][https] My Byte Magazine Collection Even if Byte was generally not a great source of Atari content, if you were into computers at all, it could be interesting. Each issue of Byte had a theme, which many of the articles would touch on in some way. But this also meant that if you didn't like the theme, you might not like most of the issue's content. Even today, I find some issues engrossing and others I just skip through pretty quickly. I often enjoyed Byte's reviews. They seemed to review a lot of oddball computers that I'd never heard of. Reviews were also almost always notoriously late. For example, the Atari 520ST review was published a year after it was released! Same with the Amiga review, which was published in October 1986, about a year after it was released and over a year after they had their first preview of in in August 1985. The columnists also had lead times that were several months. Byte was not a place to get breaking news! Looking at 1985 for example, there was a review of the Atari 800XL in March. What was I saying about late? The 800XL came out in fall of 1983! It was a good review, mentioning BASIC XL and Action!, two great languages. Also in March, they had a blurb in the news section about the newly announced ST series. [https] Atari ST mentioned in What's New As I re-read these, I noticed that their reviews of computers did also not do a great job of quoting comparable prices, though. For example, the Atari 800XL review quotes a price of $1200 for a system with two disk drives and a monitor. That might have been its price in 1983, but it certainly was not its price in 1985. Of course, keeping up with rapid price changes in the 80s was difficult. But why quote two drives and a monitor for an 800XL? Most people would be using a TV. Byte didn't always quote prices like that. For example, the Amiga review quotes a price of $1300, which was the base price with one drive and no monitor. I can see one drive, but you really needed a monitor to use the Amiga. The Atari 520ST review quotes a price of $1000 for a system with one drive and a color monitor, which seems the most reasonable. The IBM PC AT review also quotes only a single drive in one of the prices and no monitor. Similarly, in the March 1986 issue when they tout the 1040ST as the first computer under $1000 for a megabyte of RAM, they are using the $1000 list price for the system with a monochrome monitor. But in their graph, they quote the original Commodore 64 price of $595, which did not include a disk drive or monitor! If they had done the same for the 520ST and quote its price without a disk drive or monitor, it would have also been less than $1 per kilobyte! None of these are remotely comparable! I suppose it had to do with different people doing the reviews, but it seems like the editorial staff could have updated the price charts better, especially with the long lead times. Anyway, enough of my price ranting. Byte was a thick magazine. Each issue was large, with 400 to 500 pages. There were plenty of in-depth articles, but at least half of the magazine was ads. I'm not complaining, everyone liked computer ads back then. Taking a look at some of the older, issues shows a much nerdier magazine. Apparently, McGraw-Hill bought Byte in 1979 and the style started changing after that. The earliest issue I have is. The final published issue of Byte was July 1998, but I had long since stopped reading it. It remained around in online form for a while longer. You can find most issues of Byte in the Internet Archive. Speaking of that, for Atari users, someone put together a PDF of all the Atari-related Byte content. The PDF is over 700 pages and starts with a news blurb from April 1979 and ends with the last Atari content being a news item with a first impression of the Falcon030 in February 1993. Byte Magazine - Atari Articles Share Below are some highlights of some of my favorite articles and reviews. Some of these will likely turn into more in-depth Goto 10 posts. * Atari 800XL Review: Rather late as mentioned above, but nice info on BASIC XL and Action! languages. * Atari 520ST Product Preview: Given Byte's lead time, they probably started this review as soon as they could buy one (August 1985) and were not given access to one early by Atari. * Atari 520ST Review: It took a year for this review and it was barely different than the product preview from January. * Atari 1040ST Product Preview: Be sure to read my annotated commentary of this article. * Commodore Amiga Product Preview: Commodore's marketing was on point here. This review appeared in August 1985. The Amiga had only just been introduced to the world in late July. Clearly Byte got a very early peek at the Amiga in order to meet their extensive magazine lead time. * Commodore Amiga Review: So strange that it took over a year for this to appear. * Chaos Manor was also a great read. Written by noted sci-fi author Jerry Pournelle, Chaos Manor was a lengthy monthly diary about technology and how he used it. I've read a lot of his sci-fi books and love his writing style. * Bruce Webster (original author of Sundog: The Frozen Legacy for the Apple II) started writing a column, According to Webster, in July 1985 that I also always enjoyed. * Mindset computer: Apparently there was some Atari connections to this unique computer that seems to have some specs much like an ST. * AT&T Unix computer: Remember, every Mac today is essentially a UNIX computer! Did you enjoy Byte magazine back in the day? What were some of your favorite articles? Leave a comment 1 BIX was the Byte Information Exchange, an online network run byte Byte. Access to the network had an initial fee and then, like all network access back then, you paid an hourly amount to use it. 3 Share this post [https] A Bit About Byte Magazine: The Premier Technical Journal of Its Time www.goto10retro.com Copy link Facebook Email Notes Other 2 Share Previous 2 Comments [https] [ ] Share this discussion [https] A Bit About Byte Magazine: The Premier Technical Journal of Its Time www.goto10retro.com Copy link Facebook Email Notes Other Miesiu 17 hrs agoLiked by Paul Lefebvre Good to now about publishing about ATARI in BYTE. I could [https] find in the past - several platforms but none about ATARI. Expand full comment Reply Share Michael Malak Sep 29Liked by Paul Lefebvre The complete collection of BYTE magazines can be downloaded [https] from https://archive.org/details/BYTE-MAGAZINE-COMPLETE using https://jdownloader.org/ Expand full comment Reply Share Top New Community No posts Ready for more? 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