Keatah Posted January 1, 2011 Share Posted January 1, 2011 Yep, I remember that. It seemed to me to have been inspired by Ed Stark's desk in the original Tron. I take it you mean Ed *Dillinger's* desk? His computer program alter-ego was named *Sark*. I still want that desk. It was a pretty cool desk, except for the keyboard. Sorry, iPad et al, but I don't care for the idea of typing on a touch screen image of a keyboard-- and the keyboard on Dillinger's desk was larger than life. But one good thing about "Tron" was that whenever Dillinger was typing something on that keyboard, you could tell that he really *was* typing the commands and responses that he was supposedly typing-- even if it was all for show (i.e., I doubt the desk really worked; it was undoubtedly just a prop, albeit an awesome one). In so many other movies, the characters don't even *try* to pretend to be typing whatever it is they're supposedly typing-- they just bang and flutter their fingers around all over the keyboard. Case in point: Montgomery Scott "typing" the formula for transparent aluminum in "The Voyage Home." Michael Especially on a gui based system. haahahaa Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SeaGtGruff Posted January 1, 2011 Share Posted January 1, 2011 In so many other movies, the characters don't even *try* to pretend to be typing whatever it is they're supposedly typing-- they just bang and flutter their fingers around all over the keyboard. Case in point: Montgomery Scott "typing" the formula for transparent aluminum in "The Voyage Home." Michael Especially on a gui based system. haahahaa Yes, but only because he couldn't get the mouse to respond to his voice commands. Michael Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruce Tomlin Posted January 1, 2011 Share Posted January 1, 2011 Would it help with the bandwidth to post these to a file hosting service, or as individual torrents? Due to the high quality of the scans, you shouldn't have any trouble getting other people to seed them. I would like to see 1976 (7/12 so far) finished, then 1975 (now complete) and 1976 could be put up in two torrents. Of course the big issues didn't happen until late 1977. Maybe it would be better to torrent later ones in half-year sets. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThumpNugget Posted January 1, 2011 Author Share Posted January 1, 2011 Would it help with the bandwidth to post these to a file hosting service, or as individual torrents? Due to the high quality of the scans, you shouldn't have any trouble getting other people to seed them. there are already some mirrors posted earlier in the thread people can use. http://malus.exotica.org.uk/~buzz/byte/ http://24.96.150.90/events/byte/index.html http://24.96.150.75/events/byte/index.html http://76.73.219.7/events/byte/index.html It would probably be a good idea to list these in the original post. Right now it has the posting date for each issue which encourages people to use the corresponding strikequick.com link. Unless someone reads the whole thread, they won't even notice the mirrors (I didn't). Edit: It's also easier to find an issue by going to one of the mirror sites than by looking up a particular post in this (long) thread. Good idea.. I should have done that sooner. All of the mirror links have been added to the main post. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThumpNugget Posted January 1, 2011 Author Share Posted January 1, 2011 Would it help with the bandwidth to post these to a file hosting service, or as individual torrents? Due to the high quality of the scans, you shouldn't have any trouble getting other people to seed them. I would like to see 1976 (7/12 so far) finished, then 1975 (now complete) and 1976 could be put up in two torrents. Of course the big issues didn't happen until late 1977. Maybe it would be better to torrent later ones in half-year sets. I was looking at potential torrent sizes.. 75/76/77 combined would be about 3 gigs in size Total (28 magazines).. Seams somewhat reasonable for a torrent? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Havok69 Posted January 1, 2011 Share Posted January 1, 2011 I was looking at potential torrent sizes.. 75/76/77 combined would be about 3 gigs in size Total (28 magazines).. Seams somewhat reasonable for a torrent? That's nothing - Mame torrents start at 25GB and if you want CHD ones, they're waaaay bigger. Just slap everything in one torrent, and if you really only want one year, just pick and choose what you want out of the torrent when you fire it up. Besides, if you split up torrents, you risk not having a particular one shared, or not shared enough to pull it down with any sort of acceptable rate of download. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
epobirs Posted January 2, 2011 Share Posted January 2, 2011 Would it help with the bandwidth to post these to a file hosting service, or as individual torrents? Due to the high quality of the scans, you shouldn't have any trouble getting other people to seed them. I would like to see 1976 (7/12 so far) finished, then 1975 (now complete) and 1976 could be put up in two torrents. Of course the big issues didn't happen until late 1977. Maybe it would be better to torrent later ones in half-year sets. I was looking at potential torrent sizes.. 75/76/77 combined would be about 3 gigs in size Total (28 magazines).. Seams somewhat reasonable for a torrent? Any worthy torrent client allows the user to select individual files to download or not download. Just put up the whole kit and kaboodle (has kaboodle ever been seen without the presence of kit?) and let people make their own choices. The most separation that should be needed is perhaps decades, once they've been filled in more. 70s, 80s, 90s, you get the idea. The 80s will be the biggest since it is the only complete decade and the height of advertising volume. So maybe two for the 80s. Personally, I'm good with just the one. I've seeded some as large as 40+GB on Demonoid. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
epobirs Posted January 2, 2011 Share Posted January 2, 2011 Yep, I remember that. It seemed to me to have been inspired by Ed Stark's desk in the original Tron. I take it you mean Ed *Dillinger's* desk? His computer program alter-ego was named *Sark*. I still want that desk. It was a pretty cool desk, except for the keyboard. Sorry, iPad et al, but I don't care for the idea of typing on a touch screen image of a keyboard-- and the keyboard on Dillinger's desk was larger than life. But one good thing about "Tron" was that whenever Dillinger was typing something on that keyboard, you could tell that he really *was* typing the commands and responses that he was supposedly typing-- even if it was all for show (i.e., I doubt the desk really worked; it was undoubtedly just a prop, albeit an awesome one). In so many other movies, the characters don't even *try* to pretend to be typing whatever it is they're supposedly typing-- they just bang and flutter their fingers around all over the keyboard. Case in point: Montgomery Scott "typing" the formula for transparent aluminum in "The Voyage Home." Michael D'oh! The only thing I can imagine is I somehow connected to the 'Eureka' character Nathan Stark played by Ed Quinn. Which might make sense if I watched that show more and didn't need to go to IMDB. It doesn't have to be exactly that desk. Remember the era when that was created. Though keyboard feel was a big topic for discussion back then, a touchscreen keyboard was so out of left field then as to defy criticism. (Maybe it was mounted on a springy surface with simulated clicks like the Blackberry Storm. Heh.) When I saw that movie in the theater all I had for comparison was my Atari 800 at home. Wasn't no GUI on home systems then. That would just be a software upgrade provided the processing power was there. OTOH, that scene in STIV always kind of annoyed me. It seemed pretty insulting to the character that he was so surprised at what the era's technology was offering and lacked. He was obviously comfortable with a QWERTY keyboard, which seemed remarkable for a character not due to be born until centuries later. We already had pretty good voice recognition then in expensive systems and it became inexpensive a few years later. The real problem was that talking at length to a computer is really a drag. Try using the speech recognition bundled with most systems today to dictate a four page document. Even with 100% accuracy, most people will still find it far less fatiguing to type it instead, especially if they can type faster than they can speak. Speech recognition is terrific in its place but I'd hate to have a desktop with that as the primary input. (Unless you're just a figurehead and the MCP is really running the show.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruce Tomlin Posted January 2, 2011 Share Posted January 2, 2011 Just slap everything in one torrent, and if you really only want one year, just pick and choose what you want out of the torrent when you fire it up. Besides, if you split up torrents, you risk not having a particular one shared, or not shared enough to pull it down with any sort of acceptable rate of download. The problem is that he's a long way from any definition of "everything" right now. I'd rather not see torrents with random collections of issues, where you have to have a cheat sheet to know where each issue is. I suppose it's possible to update a torrent to include more files, but then the new torrent file has to get redistributed. And right now my Byte folder is at around 7 gigs. 1975+1976 will probably be only about 1.3 gigabytes, but extraplolating just from the single 1982 issue that has been scanned so far (373 megs) we're talking over 4 gigabytes per year for the later years. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThumpNugget Posted January 2, 2011 Author Share Posted January 2, 2011 I would not want to make torrents of the magazines in random order.. The only reason for torrent at all at this point is for bandwidth reasons. With the mirror sites I think we are OK with the current method but I will work on some of the older issues so that there is a set to torrent if the time comes... At the current rate (I am halfway through the billing cycle) it looks like I will right at a terabyte in transfers this month... I have been doing anywhere from 200-300 gigs. My account was moved from 1.5 TB a month to "unlimited" which means at some point they will trickle my pipe down to nothing.. I don't know if this is done on a daily or a monthly tracking but there was a spike of around 130 gig this month... the last two days have been around 50 gig a day.. With the mirrors now listed up on the main page hopefully that will with all the new people doing the up-front big grabs... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThumpNugget Posted January 2, 2011 Author Share Posted January 2, 2011 BYTE Vol 07-11 1982-11 Graphics - 636 Pages 427,638,145 bytes BYTE Vol 07-11 from November 1982... A crappy cover but a big big issue with lots of good stuff! I wish I had grabbed this one a bit earlier as it has a really nice TRON article that goes through the creation of the computer models and such.. There is an (non Chris Crawford) Atari article on using the color registers for animation. A couple of games from a recent contest are in this issue, almost makes it feel like a compute! magazine An interview with the creator of the 6502.. this is an all day read The BYTElines has some interesting fodder including tidbits on the "new" commodore 65000 processor and The quote of the month per BYTE: Eight Things Your Computer Won't Do: 1) A computer won't save you money. 2) A computer won't make your organization run right. 3) A computer won't solve every problem. 4) A computer won't run itself. 5) A computer won't always be right. 6) A computer won't protect itself. 7) A computer won't meet all its own needs. A computer won't become obsolete. Features The Third NCGA and the Future of Computer Graphics Tronic Imagery Build the Circuit Cellar MPX-16 Computer System, Part 1 Problem Solving wIth Logo Build a Video Digitizer Computer Animation with Color Registers Victor Victorious: The Victor 9000 Computer An Interview with Chuck Peddle JETSET The Game of Rat and Dragon An Introduction to the Human Applications Standard Computer Interface, Part 2: Implementing the HASCI Concept A Short History of the Keyboard User's Column: Terminals, Keyboards, and How Software Piracy Will Bring Profits to Its Victims Inexpensive Transducers for the TRS-80 A Graphics Primer Interactive 3-D Graphics for the Apple II Microvec: The Other Type of Video Display Reviews The Graphics Magician Cambridge Development Lab's HighResolution Video Graphics System Executive Briefing System Colonial Data Services' SB-80 Nucleus Editorial: Deus ex Machina of the Technological Age Letters Software Received Ask BYTE Event Queue Clubs and Newsletters BYTELINES Books Received What's New? Unclassified Ads BOMB, BOMB Results Reader Service Download it here: BYTE Vol 07-11 1982-11 Graphics Cover Index 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruce Tomlin Posted January 3, 2011 Share Posted January 3, 2011 Wow. Look at page 139. It'a a floppy disk jukebox changer. Holy crap. Page 444, a VIC-20 cartridge with 40/80 column video in it. Page 557, a VIC-20 cartridge with a 2716/2732 EPROM programmer. Page 562, a 16x16 LED array to display what a CPU is doing. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
epobirs Posted January 3, 2011 Share Posted January 3, 2011 Just slap everything in one torrent, and if you really only want one year, just pick and choose what you want out of the torrent when you fire it up. Besides, if you split up torrents, you risk not having a particular one shared, or not shared enough to pull it down with any sort of acceptable rate of download. The problem is that he's a long way from any definition of "everything" right now. I'd rather not see torrents with random collections of issues, where you have to have a cheat sheet to know where each issue is. I suppose it's possible to update a torrent to include more files, but then the new torrent file has to get redistributed. And right now my Byte folder is at around 7 gigs. 1975+1976 will probably be only about 1.3 gigabytes, but extrapolating just from the single 1982 issue that has been scanned so far (373 megs) we're talking over 4 gigabytes per year for the later years. The early 80s are the largest by far. Jerry has reflected on how they had to struggle for more content so as to not have ridiculous numbers of pages that were solely ads. Plus, certain writers were more popular with advertisers who would pay extra to have their material appear within the range of the Chaos Manor column or certain other places. By the end of the 80s and the 90s the size of each issue was less like a phone book, and getting pretty thin in the last years. Plus, as mentioned previously, the 80s is the only start to finish decade in the lot. Once a torrent is started, it can live on long after the creator has stopped seeding. Unless the tracker deletes it, it will continue long after newer editions have made it obsolete. But so what? Someone who downloads the first one and finds another with a couple more years filled in, so long as the files are the same, can use what he has already to immediately seed that portion of the newer torrent while downloading the material that is new to him. I do this with great regularity for the weekly comics collections that include many of the individual issues I've already downloaded. I'd just expect the title to reflect the incomplete nature of the set and the text description to be update to link to the newer version as it is created. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted January 3, 2011 Share Posted January 3, 2011 I believe this should be one large consistent torrent. Spreading it among several will only make things confusing and a general pain to collect missing issues. With one large torrent, you can select what you want. AND it will be easier to seed! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
exobuzz Posted January 3, 2011 Share Posted January 3, 2011 (edited) Thumpnugget: just wondering how your download stats are for the last day or two? since ive been on the front page ive noticed a significant increase in traffic. perhaps we should rotate the mirrors, or i could maybe script something to do it (byte.exotica.org.uk that redirects). you mentioned your download limits and switching to unlimited - previously i got around 300kb/second+ downloading, and last issue i got 50kb/second which took a while - if your hosting provider does that to give unlimited, i wonder if its not a good upgrade Edited January 3, 2011 by exobuzz Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThumpNugget Posted January 3, 2011 Author Share Posted January 3, 2011 Thumpnugget: just wondering how your download stats are for the last day or two? since ive been on the front page ive noticed a significant increase in traffic. perhaps we should rotate the mirrors, or i could maybe script something to do it (byte.exotica.org.uk that redirects). you mentioned your download limits and switching to unlimited - previously i got around 300kb/second+ downloading, and last issue i got 50kb/second which took a while - if your hosting provider does that to give unlimited, i wonder if its not a good upgrade Hey there.. I did not switch to unlimited - the ISP switched me to unlimited and no longer offers a set max. I assume they can offer unlimited since they can just slow down the transfer rate as the demand rises. We haev a lot more people downloading the mags and the magazine yesterday was a large issue.. I imagine that was major reason for the slowdown. As far as overall bandwidth yesterday was not too bad - about 26 gigs copmared to 63 gigs the day before and 52 gig the day before that (I put up the new magazine late yesterday so I am interested in tomorrows numbers). If the mirrors are getting hit to hard I can pull them out of the main listing.. I don't know where the new people are coming from and they seem content not to tell us Could just be the chatter bumping up the thread more people are finding the thread though it seems that about 80% of the visitors are not registered users... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted January 3, 2011 Share Posted January 3, 2011 I think the scanner is going bad, there are some single pixel red and/or yellow lines in some of the color advertisements. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
exobuzz Posted January 4, 2011 Share Posted January 4, 2011 Hey there.. I did not switch to unlimited - the ISP switched me to unlimited and no longer offers a set max. I assume they can offer unlimited since they can just slow down the transfer rate as the demand rises. We haev a lot more people downloading the mags and the magazine yesterday was a large issue.. I imagine that was major reason for the slowdown. As far as overall bandwidth yesterday was not too bad - about 26 gigs copmared to 63 gigs the day before and 52 gig the day before that (I put up the new magazine late yesterday so I am interested in tomorrows numbers). If the mirrors are getting hit to hard I can pull them out of the main listing.. Sorry my mistake. Seems they are slowing it down though my traffic was 32gb yesterday for byte magazine, and although over a month that would be around 900gb which is ok, I would like to try and balance it bit more (I have a 2tb limit, and other projects currently use a little more than 1 tb). Would you be happy if i set up a random redirector that could be linked from the first post that would choose a mirror ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Samir Posted January 4, 2011 Share Posted January 4, 2011 As far as overall bandwidth yesterday was not too bad - about 26 gigs copmared to 63 gigs the day before and 52 gig the day before that (I put up the new magazine late yesterday so I am interested in tomorrows numbers). If the mirrors are getting hit to hard I can pull them out of the main listing..My mirrors must be fine. I haven't visited the site where the server is at since before Christmas, but I know if it gets hit too hard it would crash, so it must be okay. I haven't updated the servers with the newest scans, but will be doing that once I get back to the site. I should also be able to get the jpg mirror online. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bacon Posted January 5, 2011 Share Posted January 5, 2011 I don't know where the new people are coming from and they seem content not to tell us Could just be the chatter bumping up the thread more people are finding the thread though it seems that about 80% of the visitors are not registered users... I'm one of the new people. I registered here yesterday just so I could say hi and thanks for doing this great service for the whole retrocomputing community. I'm fairly active in the Commodore 8-bit community since several years but I have a general interest in all classic computers, especially the 8-bitters from the 70s and 80s. I've been looking for PDFs of Byte Magazine for a long time and a Google search a few weeks ago brought me here. I'm particularly interested in the early days of homebrew systems and kit computers so having access to Byte issues from the mid to late 70s is a dream come true. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
welash Posted January 5, 2011 Share Posted January 5, 2011 I don't know where the new people are coming from and they seem content not to tell us Could just be the chatter bumping up the thread more people are finding the thread though it seems that about 80% of the visitors are not registered users... I'm one of the new people. I registered here yesterday just so I could say hi and thanks for doing this great service for the whole retrocomputing community. I'm fairly active in the Commodore 8-bit community since several years but I have a general interest in all classic computers, especially the 8-bitters from the 70s and 80s. I've been looking for PDFs of Byte Magazine for a long time and a Google search a few weeks ago brought me here. I'm particularly interested in the early days of homebrew systems and kit computers so having access to Byte issues from the mid to late 70s is a dream come true. I'm also a newbie. I saw a posting mentioning this site on www.dangerousprototypes.com which I believe is a fairly popular site, so maybe that is part of the influx. I've always regretted throwing out my old issues of Byte, thanks for letting me re-live those simpler days. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Junosix Posted January 5, 2011 Share Posted January 5, 2011 Brilliant work, that Shiraz Shivji interview from the March 1986 issue is fascinating, and was interesting to read exactly why MIDI was introduced - they realised the onboard sound was weak because not everyone needed sound and stuck MIDI on as an upgrade path, fair enough thinking really! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThumpNugget Posted January 7, 2011 Author Share Posted January 7, 2011 BYTE Vol 04-04 1979-04 Low Level Programming - 284 Pages 175,694,903 bytes BYTE Vol 04-04 from April 1979... A very int3eresting issue but I am late for work so I don't have time to write a paragraph here you will just have to trust me.. Where else can you find an article on doing encryption using a calculator?? hah! Foreground THE TOY STORE BEGINS AT HOME SIMULATING PHYSICAL SYSTEM SOURCES OF NUMERICAL ERROR MARSPORT: The Three-Dimensional Celestial Mechanics Simulation for the HP 67/97 STANDARD DATA ENCRYPTION ALGORITHM, Part 2: Implementing the Algorithm QUEUING THEORY, Part 1: Queue Representation THE POWER OF THE HP-67 PROGRAMMABLE CALCULATOR Background CROSS-POLLINATING THE APPLE II SMART MEMORY, Part 1 A SIMULATED VIEW OF THE GALAXY CR YPTOGRAPHY IN THE FIELD, Part 2: Using the Pocket Calculator LIFE CAN BE EASY AN EASY WAY TO CALCULATE SINES AND COSINES AN INTRODUCTION TO MICROPROGRAMMING A DIGITAL ALPHANUMERIC DISPLAY MICROCOMPUTER TIMESHARING : A Review of the Techniques A BINARY GUESSING GAME Nucleus In This BYTE Editorial: On the Importance of Backups Letters Book Reviews Technical Forum BYTE's Bugs BYTE's Bits Desk Top Wonders: Digital Circuit Simulation Nybbles: BASIC Cross-Reference Table Generator BYTE News Event Queue Clubs and Newsletters Programming Quickies : Label and File Program Languages Forum What's New? Unclassified Ads BOMB Reader Service Download it here: BYTE Vol 04-04 1979-04 Low Level Programming Cover Index 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
erd Posted January 7, 2011 Share Posted January 7, 2011 (edited) BYTE Vol 04-04 1979-04 Low Level Programming An excellent choice - one of my all-time favorites. I built the Simon knockoff ("The Toy Store Begins at Home", p. 10) and hooked it up to the User Port on the PET as my first foray into building peripherals. My second was building a two-digit 7-segment display (also for the PET User Port) and displaying two-letter codes from the "Digital Alphanumeric Display" article on p. 218. Because Mark Zimmerman's (of FLOPTRAN-IV fame) article on "Simulating Physical Systems" was written for the PET, I tried to follow it, but he only provided assembler code (not a hex dump) and the idea of hand-assembling his program (I only had a cassette drive and no assembler program) was beyond me at the time. This was one issue I read over and over until the pages fell out. Thanks for posting it! Edited January 7, 2011 by erd Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted January 7, 2011 Share Posted January 7, 2011 I had the advertisement on page 35(magazine numbering) 37(pdf numbering) hanging on my locker in school. These were the times!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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