I’m not sure if Byte was the first computer magazine but I think of it as the original computer magazine. It was around before home computers were even a thing. Nevertheless, Byte was covering “small systems” or microcomputers used by businesses and hobbyists starting in 1975. The October 1979 issue includes:

Foreground

• Tracing Your Own Roots – A type-in program to aid you in your genealogical research.

• Power Helps Analyze Electric Bills – A type-in BASIC program to help you analyze your power bill.

• Self-Refreshing LED Graphics Displays – A guide to building LED displays of various sizes including a 4×4 LED matrix.

• Interfacing The S-100 Bus With The Intel 8255 – The Intel 8255 is a programmable peripheral interface chip that could be used, for example, to interface to a printer.

• The XYZ Phenomenon: Stereoscopic Plotting by Computer – A way to print 3D images.

• Curve Fitting With Your Computer – Curve fitting multiple variable data tables.

• Space Game – A BASIC type-in Space War type game that will run on 8080 based machines like the MIPS Altair.

• Easy To Use Hashing Function – A tutorial on hashing and an assembly hashing function.

Background

• Picking Up The Pieces – A guide to recovering from floppy disk errors.

• Variables Whose Values Are Strings – A couple of methods for storing strings.

• IBM Compatible Disk Drives – The IBM PC was still in the future. IBM compatible in this case refers to the IBM 33FD 8-inch floppy drive which was originally create for the IBM 3740 Data Entry System.

• The TRS-80 Speaks – A guide to using BASIC to control the Speech Synthesizer Module for the TRS-80.

• Low Level Program Optimization – How to reduce the space required and execution time of your programs.

• Some Laws of Personal Computing – Defining the personal computer experience.

• Budget Building On A Bare Board – Building a budget machine in 1979 meant starting with a bare circuit board and adding all the parts yourself.

Nucleus

• Editorial – Designing a board for a 6809 processor.

• Letters – Letters from readers about light based communication, mapping phone companies, converting hexadecimal to ASCII, and more.

• Technical Forum – Implementing a finite state machine.

• BYTE News – A look at the future of the S-100 bus and competition from Apple, Radio Shack, Commodore, etc.; a new image sensor using a photo diode array; a new online service called The Source, automobile makers researching computer controlled cards; and more.

• Book Reviews – Reviews of Practical Microcomputer Programming: The Intel 8080, Practical Microcomputer Programming: The M6800, and Practical Microcomputer Programming: The Z80.

• Programming Quickies – An assembly program for handling ASCII strings.

• What’s New – An alphanumeric calculator from Sharp, an encryption device for the TRS-80, an 8085 card, CAT acoustically coupled modem, Apple II Disassembler, Super BASIC for 6800 computers, and much more.

…and more!