ubikuberalles' Blog - Old Computer Magazines

RSS Bot · July 7, 2006

I just about never throw anything away. As proof of this all you need to do is look through my collection of old magazines. I have at least nine large plastic crates full of magazines with perhaps more than a thousand issues. I have Sci-fi related magazines: Fantasy & Science Fiction,Analog Science Fiction & Science Fact,Astounding, Locus and others. I even kept magazines from when I joined various organizations including IEEE, The Planetary Society, the NAR (National Association of Rocketry), The Skeptics Society and so on. I have issues of IEEE Spectrum and various other mags related to the societies and clubs I joined: IEEE Computer,IEEE Micro, The Planetary Report, Mars Underground News and Model Rocketeer. I have 15 years worth of Popular Science, a few Popular Mechanics and even a few issues of Scientific American.

Recently I've been reviewing my collection of old computer magazines. I decided to scan a few and show them off.

The first magazine I scanned is an old issues of Computer Notes.

This magazine was published by MITS and a subscription was included free to all new owners of Altair computers. Naturally it had all sorts of articles praising the abilities of the Altair computer and a few advertisements for the machine:

The magazine was not just a publicity sheet for MITS, it also had included source code for useful programs, diagnostic tips, lists of Altair owners and lists of the various computer clubs that were springing up across the country. The magazine didn't last long, mainly because MITS ceased to exist as a company when it was bought out in 1978. About 30 issues were printed from early 1975 to early 1978.

I have lots of issues of Byte magazine.

In the 1970's and 1980's this was the magazine to have to keep up to date on personal computing. Until the Apple II came out (and MITS ceased to exist), the computer that appeared the most in ads in Byte was the Altair:

(Altairs also appeared in a lot of Byte cover art.)

And the prices of computers and peripherals in those days? $800 for a 16K memory board? $600 for a floppy drive? And yet people couldn't buy them fast enough. Why? Because the choice in those days was either an expensive low powered computer or...nothing. Having my own computer was a big priority in my high school years but, until I could afford one, I just used my dad's Altair.

One of my favorite articles on Byte was titled: "Why Aren't There Any Altairs on Ardurus II?". Basically it was a lament on Science Fiction's failure to predict the microcomputer. If you read any Science Fiction from the 1950's, 1960's and even the 1970's, you'd notice that computers in those stories were usually the size of buildings and required armies of technicians to operate them (Arthur C. Clarke's novel Imperial Earth was the first Sci-Fi book I read that featured palm-sized computers and it was published in 1976).

Byte magazine is still around but in Web form only. Check it out at Byte.com.

When I got my Atari 400 in the early 1980's I subscribed to Creative Computing to get the latest info on Ataris, Commodores and other computers.

When the Atari ST came out Atari advertised heavily in that magazine:

Alas, Creative Computing didn't last long: ten years. It closed shop in 1985.

My favorite magazine was this issue of Interface Age.

It had everything a geeky teeager wanted: Computers and Star Trek. Inside this issue was an article describing a game called "Star Trek".

It included source code for Altair Basic and I quickly typed the program into my dad's computer. "Star Trek" was my favorite computer game in the 1970's and I spent many hours playing that game. I even ported it into my Atari 400 (and then later into my Atari ST) so I could play it there. It was only a text-based game but it was fun, nevertheless.

I'll probably still hang on to these magazines for a while. I'll only consider getting rid of them after I scanned them in or find scanned copies on the web. I already found a bunch of old Computer Notes issues on the web and I'm sure there are plenty of other magazines online as well including Creative Computing, Byte and many others.

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?a...;showentry=1694