A Few Good Magazines From the 70s and 80s (bi6.us)

Dr. Dobbs Journal of Computer Calisthenics and Orthodontia was my goto, I boot strapped my first C compiler from Ron Cain's Small-C code.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small-C

* https://github.com/trcwm/smallc_v1

I thought of OMNI before anything and was pleased to find it on the article :-)

The article states that "Playboy" magazine creators started "Omni", but I'm almost certain it was "Penthouse".

I would describe both Playboy and Penthouse as primarily pornography. As such, they were both wildly popular in the 1970s and early 1980s.

Omni was not that. I had a subscription to Omni from the first issue in 1978 until about 1983. Pop science, science fiction, fantasy art, interviews and features on space exploration policy... and junk science, UFOs, psychic powers, cults. News of the wierd.

Kilobaud Computing had died out.

Byte and Dr Drobbs had the odd technical article but gone mostly mainstream by the 80s.

But one of my classmates showed me an issue of Hardcore Computist (renamed Computist) and I was hooked.

Technical knowledge about circumventing copy-protected software interspersed with cracks for various software programs.

see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computist

back issues on archive.org at https://archive.org/search?query=Hardcore+Computist

DDJ was my favorite of those mentioned. Byte was #2. The rest were a pass for me. After DDJ called it quits, they released a CDR containing an archive of all issues, which I still have. Much of the content was timeless.

Another magazine I think they should have mentioned: "Radio-Electronics".

The death of Byte magazine cover artist Robert Tinney, was discussed here just a couple of months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46987425

I was surprised to -not- see The_Transactor, which was full of details on how to get your C64 to boldly go where no BASIC type-ins had gone before.

https://web.archive.org/web/20120519135652/http://www.bombja...

I still have that Byte August 1981 issue in my office. I may have the Forth issue as well.

I am surprised at no mention of 2600. Kilobaud would be the other magazine from that time I read voraciously (along with all the computer ones mentioned).

There was a Toronto Commodore magazine called The Transactor that was my absolute favourite. It covered everything from the CBM 4032 and 8032 through the various Amigas. The magazine was very much programmer oriented, from assembly to BASIC and C.

It also published the Commodore Inner Space Anthology, containing full memory maps, ASCII tables, BASIC reference, and much, much more.

https://www.commodore.ca/commodore-gallery/the-transactor-ma...

Earlier on, when I was first using our VIC-20 and C64, I learned a great deal from Compute and Compute's Gazette.

Shout out to Phrack Magazine.

https://phrack.org/