[HN Gopher] A Bit About Byte Magazine
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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.
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