A Bit About Byte Magazine

[dang]

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)

[tpmx]

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]

I loved PCW -- I ended up writing for it in the early nineties, and was ridiculously proud that I had that chance.

[justinlloyd]

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]

>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.

[OldGuyInTheClub]

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.

[tibbydudeza]

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.

[slowmovintarget]

And a Jerry Pournelle column in every issue.

[abecedarius]

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

[WalterBright]

A number of other computer mags have vanished without a trace, like MicroCornucopia and PC Tech Journal.

[Narishma]

You can find all the PC Tech Journal issues here:

https://www.pcjs.org/documents/magazines/pctj/

[amelius]

Dr. Dobb's magazine.

[5555624]

MicroCornucopia ceased publication when Dave Thompson got burned out. I think all the issues are available at: https://bitsavers.org/magazines/Micro_Cornucopia/

[AlbertCory]

There's a Facebook group devoted to the old computer magazines:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/521427671543144

[sizzzzlerz]

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.

[cc101]

I always got a laugh at Byte's motto: "A Small Systems Journal." At about one inch thick, it was anything but small.

[II2II]

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.

[slowmovintarget]

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.

[TMWNN]

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.

[zabzonk]

mostly adverts. but i did like it!

[PeterStuer]

I 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]

Brings back memories. Yeah, byte, pcw and dr Dobbs journal were special.

[DonHopkins]

I really looked forward to each issue of Dr Dobbs Journal, and Creative Computing!

[joezydeco]

Previous discussion/nostalgia for Byte:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21772529

[fuzztester]

PC Magazine was good for a while too, before it became ad-enshittified.

I particularly liked the Utilities series in it.