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  • Byte (January 1980)

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    Byte had already been around for a few years by 1980. It’s page count was already near 300 pages and still ramping up but the introduction of the IBM PC was still more than a year away (along with other popular machines like the Commodore 64). The January 1980 issue includes:

    Foreground

    • Computerize A Home – Automating your home using a Z-80 based computer and X10 controllers (which were pretty new at the time).
    • A Computer Controlled Light Dimmer, Part 1: Design – Building a computer controlled dimmer using AC phase control.
    • A Furnace Watchdog – Monitoring the burner cycles of a gas heater using a homebrew 8080A based computer.
    • Telephone Dialing By Computer – Building a dual-tone multiple-frequency dialing device that interfaces with an ASCII computer terminal. This is basically a computerized dialer where you can select the number to dial from a menu.
    • Analysis of Polynomial Functions With The TI-59 – The second part of a guide to working with polynomial functions on a TI-59 calculator.
    • Alpha Lock For Your ASCII Keyboard – A guide to basically building your own CAPS LOCK key…not a given on keyboards of the time.
    • Relocating 8080 System Software – When upgrading your system, sometimes it was necessary to relocate system software to different memory locations. Here is a guide to do so.
    • Eighteen With A Die, A Learning Game Player – A game that learns as it plays.

    Background

    • Making Color Slides With An Intercolor Microcomputer – Creating slides (which most people use PowerPoint for today) used to be a much more complicated process and also involved photography and transparencies.
    • What Computers Cannot Do – Non-terminating searches and more.
    • Indirect Addressing For The 6502 – The 6502 has thirteen addressing modes but not all modes can be used with all instructions. This article discusses how to implement indirect addressing with jump to subroutines instructions among other things.
    • The Plot Continues – Building a plotter.
    • A Computer-Generated Reminder Message – A BASIC program that will scroll reminder messages with the ability to define one time or periodic events.

    Nucleus

    • Editorial: The Era of Off-the-Shelf Computers Has Arrived – In the early days of personal computing, you mostly had to build your own machines. By 1980, there were a number of off the shelf solutions including various CP/M machines, the TRS-80, Apple II, and others.
    • Letters – Letters from readers about Tic-Tac-Toe, UNIX-style file systems, and more.
    • BYTE News – 32-bit CPU rumored from Intel; 2-inch floppy drive developed in Japan; flat panel terminal displays (plasma) becoming available; 64K EPROMS available by mid-year; and more.
    • Technical Forum – Tips for receiving weather satellite photos and a program for creating mazes.
    • Programming Quickies – A Pascal program for balancing your checkbook, a French/English dictionary written in BASIC, and more.
    • Book Reviews – Reviews of Illustrating BASIC and Implementing Software for Non-Numeric Applications.
    • What’s New? – A brief look at new software including Apple Writer, Dental System I, a C compiler for the 8080 and Z80, a Pascal compiler for the 6800, a Lisp interpreter for the Apple II, and more. Plus new hardware including the AmZ8000 System from AMD, The Discovery Computer System MP Series A multiprocessor S-100 CP/M Computer, the SDK-86 kit with an 8086 processor, the Texas Instruments TI-99/4, a new motherboard for the KIM-1, SYM-1, and AIM-64, and more.

    …and more!


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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!


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