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  • Byte (April 1993)

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    Though off of its peak, Byte still had a respectable page count in the early 1990s with the April 1993 issue weighing in at over 300 pages. It had become somewhat less technical by this point but that was the way the market was going. This issue includes:

    News

    • Microbytes – The Casio/Tandy Zoomer pen computer being released to compete with the upcoming Newton from Apple; Microsoft working on combined 32-bit DOS/Windows code-named Chicago; DEC releases Alpha; HP and AMD working together on new chip technology; first simultaneous voice and data transmission carried out over GSM; Next abandons hardware business (of course, Steve Jobs would be back with Apple in a few years); and more.
    • Report From Croatia: Recovery Though Technology – The computer industry was one of the fastest recovering industries in Croatia.
    • First Impressions: Easy Does It with MS-DOS 6.0 – A look at the new features of MS-DOS 6.0 including its compression and memory management features.
    • Photoshop Now Does Windows – Photoshop 2.5 becomes the first version available for Windows.
    • Stylus 800 – An affordable $499 ink-jet printer from Epson.
    • Encarta – Another category of software that has been killed by the Internet…or at least gone online only – the electronic encyclopedia.
    • microWriter – A $729 laser printer from Texas Instruments.
    • AudioMan – An external sound system for Windows from Logitech.
    • What’s New – The Dauphin 5500 Color Pentop; DECpc 325SL notebook; WinBook; VL-Bus desktops from Insight; SiliconCache SCSI caching system; PowerBox and MicroMD 200 external drives for the PowerBook; Diamond 32-bit graphics accelerator; and more.

    Features

    • Fighting Fatware – Dealing with the ever increasing space demands of newer applications including Microsoft Access, Lotus 1-2-3, and others.
    • Putting Fuzzy Logic into Focus – A look at software for developing fuzzy logic applications including FIDE from Aptronix, FuziCalc from FuzziWare, and others.
    • Japanese Leaders in Fuzzy Logic – Japan’s Sendai automated railway system helped lead to an explosion of fuzzy logic applications in Japan.

    State of the Art

    • Visualization Applications – A look at scientific visualization software in engineering, financial analysis, structural biology, and more.
    • Navigating the Data Flood – Software to help you visualize your data.
    • Inside Multidimensional Data – Visualizing data beyond three dimensions.
    • Image Building – The four types of tools for building imagery for visualization of your data.
    • The Difficulty with Data – Handling different data formats, data compression, and other complexities of data visualization.

    Reviews

    • Solutions Focus: Shrink to Fit – On the fly compression software for PC and Macs. Some products available included Double Density, Stacker, SuperStor Pro, and XtraDrive for the PC and Stuffit SpaceSaver, SuperDisk, and TimesTwo for the Mac.
    • Ultraportable PCs: Worth the Trade-Offs? – At the time, “ultraportable” PCs often meant non-backlit, low resolution, black and white screens, limited memory and limited storage among other trade-offs.
    • PowerBook Peripherals – A look at third part expansion options for the PowerBook including ethernet controllers, internal modems, and more.
    • OS/2’s Multimedia Extensions – A look at the multimedia features available for OS/2.
    • Two Ways to Say VL-Bus – A look at two VL-Bus motherboards including the Micronics EISA/VL-Bus System Board and the American Megatrends Enterprise III.
    • Teaching Macs to Fetch – A look at Aldus Fetch 1.0, a multiuser, mixed-media database for cataloging images, animations, movies and sound files.
    • Macs and Windows PCs Share Control – Using Timbuktu to control Macs remotely from a PC.
    • Sam’s C Solution for Solaris – A review of Sparcworks Professional C compiler.
    • A Beefier MKS Toolkit – MKS Toolkit is Unix utilities and a Korn shell command interpreter for DOS and OS/2.
    • Pioneer’s Super CD-ROM Drive – A look at the Pioneer DRM-604X external six disc CD changer. I know that some BBSes used devices like this to provide shareware file downloads.

    Hands On

    • Under The Hood: FDDI Speaks – A look at this then new optical-fiber LAN standard.
    • Some Assembly Required: Processing Magic on the Mac – A detailed look at the workings of the System 7 Process Manager.
    • Software Corner: LAN Remote Control – A look at two PC programs for remotely controlling PCs over a LAN, Control and SlaveIPX.
    • Beyond DOS: Simple MAPI Delivers – Microsoft’s new E-mail API.
    • Ask Byte – Questions answered about dynamic arrays in C and using multiple CD-ROM drives with the Amiga 2000.

    Opinons

    • User’s Column: What’s Hot, What’s Not – The personal computer, OS/2, CD-ROM drives and more. Includes a discussion of the Gateway 2000 4DX2-66V which was my first PC (after my Commodore 64 anyway).
    • Book and CD-ROM Reviews: Markets as Virtual Reality – Reviews of The Death of Money, Windows 3.1 Insider, and Practical Ray Tracing in C.
    • Editorial: Fatware Strategies – The computer industry’s price war makes writing more memory and storage hungry software easier.
    • Letters – Letters from readers about the Amiga 3000T and Amiga 4000, OS/2 2.0, network adapters, and more.

    …and more!


    Computer Arcana DOS 📎and tagged

  • PC Magazine (August 1982)

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    The IBM PC was a year old when this issue of Pc Magazine was on the stands. Going by page count, which was over 225 pages for this issue, there was already a ton of advertising behind PC products. The August 1982 issue of PC Magazine includes:

    PC Interview

    • An Interview with VisiCalc Entrepreneur Daniel Fylstra – A look at the history of VisiCalc and VisiCorp.

    Business

    • The More PCs the Merrier – IBM offers discounts on very large purchases (in the hundres or thousands of units).

    Events

    • NCC Roundup – A look at what was to be seen at the National Computer Conference in Houston, Texas.
    • Of Camesl and Tents – A look back at the past five years of the NCC and personal computing.

    Finance

    • How Much Are You Really Worth? – Calculating your net worth with a PC and spreadsheet.

    Software

    • Calc Wars – Testing SuperCalc and comparing it to VisiCalc.
    • The Challenger: Multiplan – A review of Multiplan, Microsoft’s new spreadsheet program.

    Marketplace

    • Mega Forces Unite – Sears introduces 45 new business centers with the IBM PC as the lead item.

    Operating Systems

    • The Bithood Question – 8- vs. 16- vs. 32-bit CPUs.
    • IBM Updates DOS to 1.10 – DOS 1.10 added features such as the ability to handle dual-sided 320K disk drives, improved disk I/O speed, improved copy and dir commands, and more.

    PC profile

    • The Computer that’s Literally for the Birds – How one ornithologist uses a custom database program and VisiCalc to keep track of bird data.

    Communications

    • PC-Talk – A free communications program for the PC.

    Books

    • A Tool for the Layperson – A review of the book IBM Personal Computer: An Introduction to Programming and Applications.

    Product Reports

    • PC Reviews the Smith-Corona TP-1 Printer – A letter quality daisy wheel printer for about $700.

    PC Lab

    • PC Takes a Look at IBM’s Pascal Compiler – A review of this early Pascal compiler for the PC.

    Follow-Up

    • EasyWriter Resurrected – A look at this improved version of the EasyWriter word processor.
    • New Software Submission Guidelines from IBM – Highlights of IBM’s new software submission guidelines for those that want to try to have their software sold by IBM.

    At Home

    • The Computer Workstead – Working at home with your PC.

    Book Exerpt

    • VisiCalc and Your Stock Portfolio – An excerpt from VisiCalc Home and Office Companion.

    Age of Altair

    • The Grand and Glorious Crusade – One in a series of articles about the history of the Altair computer.

    Columns

    • David Bunnell – The software publishing jungle.
    • Zero Base Thinking – How e-mail systems help to keep things from falling through the cracks.
    • Jean Yates & Dr. Rebecca Thomas – An idea for a low-cost dedicated VisiCalc machine.

    Departments

    • Letters to PC – Letters from readers about adding a customer service card, copy protected software, IBM employee sales, adding a an MP1 B51 drive to the PC, speeding up disk drive access, and more.
    • PCommuniques – Keeping your PC cool; reduced price 64K expansion board; Zork released for the PC; electronic greeting cards; King James Bible released on disk; successor to the PC may have 8087 math coprocessor; four new computers announced that are software compatible with the PC; and more.
    • User-to-User – A look at the bugs fixed in the V1.05 update to BASICA, BASIC programming tips, PASCAL tips, printing with the NEC Spinwriter 3530, and more.
    • Book Briefs – A look at new books including A User Guide to the UNIX System and Introduction to WordStar.
    • New on the Market – A brief look at new PC related products including 64K-256K memory boards from Micro Match, the Intel 8087 Chip, the DataSouth DS180 dot matrix printer, a joystick from TG Products, the Move-It communications program, and more.
    • PC Tutor – Using an autoexec.bat file, solving double character problems with The Source and the IBM Asynchronous Communications Support program, and more.

    …and more!


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