Byte Magazine - 23 Years of Computer History

I've been working on this one in the background since I've started moving into the office. But I'm finally ready to share the complete collection of Byte magazine I've been able to put together!

0:00 Intro
1:40 What is Byte?
3:25 Breadth and Depth
5:30 The end of Byte
6:54 Making a Collection
9:15 Protecting a Collection
12:02 Getting to the fun part
12:44 Issue #1
19:45 September 1976
21:56 Scan and Search
23:23 Steve Ciarcia Projects
27:56 First Mention of Linux
31:30 Researching Can Still Be Hard
36:33 The Last Issue

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[TechTangents]

At 30:14 there is a rough jump, that was supposed to be cut but a different tweak I made brought it back and I didn't catch it. There is nothing missing, I just rephrased something better.

[legacyoftheancientsCc]

As a kid I found a stack of Byte magazines in a box sometime in the early 90s in our garage. My mom would get suspicious that I took so long on the bathroom... but I was happily reading those old 80s Bytes sitting on the toilet. Coincidentally my cousin also found a stack of magazines in his dad's shed and also started spending long times in the bathroom... I wonder which 80s tech magazine he was reading.

[chipx]

This is such a fun video. Also, woo, DESQview! Yes, DESQview/X was an X server for DOS, created by Quarterdeck, same company that made QEMM.

My uncle had founded the company, so I grew up on these products. Used to run DESQview/X on a DOS PC as a second head for my Linux machine running next to it, which mostly worked (though DESQview/X only supported X11R5, not R6, so some apps weren't compatible). Got some cool historical artifacts centered around DESQview if you'd ever like to see them.

I remember I was talking to someone about this at the Vintage Computer Festival in Mountain View a few years back when I suddenly realized you were standing right next to me, looking at some BBS setup that was on display. Good times.

[nay]

I spent a lot of time reading and re-reading Byte magazine copies I had in the late 70s and early 80s. Thank you for the walk down memory lane

[dintyshideaway]

I have always found Byte to have information on things no one else really covered. At a time when we were less and less documenting things on paper, it stands alone as the definitive story teller of the personal computer story.

[The_Conspiracy_Analyst]

Steve Ciarcia's column "Circuit Cellar" was TOTALLY AWESOME back in the day. I remember reading it as a kid back in the early 90s and credit it for getting me interested in electronics along with a little book called "Circuits for Surveillance and Communication" that had lots of mini transmitters and stuff, and Forest M Mims series of books. He had totally awesome projects. One of them I remember was building a digital camera FROM SCRATCH. Now, at the time the article was written (mid 80s), camcorders were a hot item and digital cameras were not yet released. Now, getting a CCD, that would be expensive. So what he did was took a certain RAM chip, I think it was a 256K, and decapped it. The die was light sensitive, and it would alter the state of the memory cells based on exposure. He had it all figured out how often it needed to be refreshed and stuff, and put the image into another RAM chip as a buffer, and transmit the bits over a UART or something. Yeah, his stuff was at that level bro, back in the mid 80s.

[MontegaB]

The production quality is through the roof on this episode! Holy smokes, and the content is just so good. I love the picture-in-picture tour. You're killing it dude.

[James_Knott]

I also have a complete set of every paper issue of Byte magazine. I bought the first three issues, in person, from the original publisher, Wayne Green, at the 1975 Radio Society of Ontario convention, in Ottawa Ontario. He made the mistake of putting the magazine in his wife's name and lost it when they split. My first computer was an IMSAI 8080, which I bought in November 1976.
I also subscribed to Popular Electronics for several years, but those are long gone. I also received Circuit Cellar.
I am the original recipient of all the issues of Byte and store them in magazine boxes from Bankers Box, which I bought in an office supply store.
There was a bit of a legal dispute between Micro Soft, as it was called back then, and MITS, about who owned that BASIC since Bill Gates was contracted to write it for MITS. Also, Bill Gates did the work on a Harvard computer, in violation of use policy. As for software piracy, Bill Gates was known for dumpster diving, to dig up other people's software listings.
BTW, I also have every issue of National Geographic, going back to January 1980, properly stored in National Geographic slip cases.

[wmtrader]

Star Trek was very easy to get during the 1970s. 20:01
Star Trek was in reruns during the 1970s and it was available on TV stations across America.

[Dorelaxen]

There's a local antique store that gets stuff like this from time to time. I know the owner, and he knows I collect this sort of stuff, so he'll pick them up when he sees them. Last year I got a bunch of Byte mags from the late 70's, and man, it's absolutely fascinating. The predictions they made were equal parts hilarious (super high density magnetic tape that can hold up to 5 megs of data) to damn near Nostradamus levels of accurate (predicting the internet and online gaming). Such a cool trip back in time.

[clairekholin]

"Oooh! Tron!" exemplifies what the magazines were meant for so well.

[mr.horseshoe]

I absolutely love these retro magazine read throughs. They are truly snapshots of the time and that is something the Internet websites cannot truly duplicate.

[QuaaludeCharlie]

Thank you for your Time and Effort , I have most of them and Some other Computer Mags from that Era in Binders of all things , I hope we can Scan them and Host them in a Server on the Net Long enough for the Curators to snag all the Images . Cheers :) QC

[GodmanchesterGoblin]

I just found this - it was amazing to look back on Byte. I bought most copies from around 1982 or so well into the mid 90s, and all from the local newsagent store in the UK. I especially remember Steve Ciarcia's column of DIY projects and Jerry Pournelle's Chaos Manor column, writing about his experiences with computers from a user's perspective as an author and columnist. And the cover art works - they were amazing - I recognised several in the video, despite not have had any of those magazines for over 25 years (sadly, I needed the space). So thank you, this was just great.

[evensgrey]

I was a kid in the 70's, and Star Trek reruns were EVERYWHERE. Both the original series and the animated series. It was actually more popular ten years after it originally aired than when it first aired, and Star Trek fans made utterly swamped existing science fiction conventions from the first season. (There's a story of one convention in New York City where they eventually gave up trying to collect a membership fee and give a badge of some sort to all the would-be attendees and just let everyone in for free.)

[JaredConnell]

You should do mini segments of things you find in these magazines. You could call them 'byte sized'

[RavenWolfRetroTech]

Wow, what a blast from the past. Growing up in the 70s with, you know 4 TV channels, it is surprising but Star Trek was on after school every day for many years.
I started buying BYTE in the 80s and it was the only magazine I bought specifically for the ads. A tip, the best way to read byte is from the back to front. All the good stuff a poor high school or college student could afford was in the back pages!

[darylcheshire]

I remember Chaos Manor written by Jerry Pournelle. Byte was thick but had a lot of ads.

[marctorres]

In the mid seventies Star Trek was in widespread syndication. It was on everyday after school and 10:30 PM on Saturdays in my area

[AlfredRusselWallace]

I can't believe you scored these. A collection like this is a holy grail for me. In all my years of collecting I've come across a grand total of ONE issue of Byte, and it was torn up and mildewy