Byte Magazine – Atari Articles (1979-1993) | Hacker News Reader

Byte Magazine – Atari Articles (1979-1993)

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68 pointsvo2maxer22 comments

For anyone not aware, pretty much every BYTE issue is in the Archive. If you have a favorite article from childhood that you want to update for your kids, it's a gold mine. There are hundreds of tutorials ranging from introductions to programming for people who've never done so before to incredibly complex programming language implementations.

If you're new to BYTE, you should spend a little time exploring: https://archive.org/search.php?query=byte%20magazine

A general rule of thumb is that any cover with a photograph on it is past the magazine's prime, and you'll probably have a lot more fun looking through older ones instead.

(Edited s/picture/photograph at suggestion of TMWNN for more concision.)

It seems the very first issue had a picture on it. From July 1976 all the covers had full-color art:

https://www.digibarn.com/collections/mags/byte-covers/

So I'm not sure what you mean.

The first three don't have illustrations. There's one or two after that in the "good" run of BYTE that don't. All of the rest do. After 1987, their illustrator was replaced with a photographer and Photoshop.

«From 1975 to 1986, Byte covers usually featured the artwork of Robert Tinney. These covers made Byte visually unique. In 1987, Tinney's paintings were replaced by product photographs, and Steve Ciarcia's "Circuit Cellar" column was discontinued.»

I said it was a rule of thumb, not an exact measurement.

So by picture you mean photograph? To me an illustration is a kind of picture.

Yes. It's probably regional vernacular, but "picture" and "photograph" are equivalent in my area.

>A general rule of thumb is that any cover with a ~~picture~~ photograph on it is past the magazine's prime, and you'll probably have a lot more fun looking through older ones instead.

FTFY

Tech writers just don't have this edge anymore!

The more experienced programmer seeking cybernetic high adventure must first defeat the friendliness engineered into the machine to unleash its throbbing brute power.

It's nice to see here! I wrote the index by year comment / review, and I wasn't sure whether 1-up or 2-up was better. Thoughts?

Played on the 2600 at a neghbours house as a kid, and grew up around Amiga hackers. For many years I have wanted to find a way to pitch one of the luxury conglomerates like Kering, LVMH, or Richmont, on acquiring all the Atari brand assets and relaunching it as a heritage technology brand (it's the Barbour of tech) that does acquisitions of niche craft tech companies using a business model akin to the way Hermés supports its artisans, and then create products to compete with Apple. Lux tech has always been too vulgar and they could never get it right because they didn't understand it. But by acquiring the right niche technologists under a cool umbrella, in 10 years I could make it bigger than Yamaha.

Atari in it's prime was playful and futuristic in a way difficult to cultivate today.

That said, I would love to see some reincarnation actually get traction.

Fun to look at these!

I was also happy to find old issues of Computer Language Magazine [1] which I used to love back in those days even though many of the articles were way beyond me.

They also have Nibble Magazine for Apple ][ Enthusiasts [2] with playable versions of their code diskettes! The magazine images are all in monochrome though as they were extracted from microfilm, and one needs to sign up and borrow the magazine to see the full contents. It's worth supporting the Internet Archive to do so though.

I remember typing in the machine code listings to get some software to run, and proofing long printouts on the bus ride to and from school when they didn't work! Developing fundamental development skills!

[1] https://archive.org/search.php?query=computer%20language%20m...

[2] https://archive.org/details/pub_nibble

The Introduction to Atari Graphics was a pretty damn nice article. I loved programming the Antic and Pokey (sound) chips in the Atari 8-bit computers. You could really do things the Apple folks couldn't. Plus, four joystick / paddle ports were fun to hook up electronics to.

Does anyone remember the Action language?

Yes! I did a ton of projects in Action! for a number of years. Lots of fun and learned a lot.

>The Introduction to Atari Graphics was a pretty damn nice article.

The entirety of De Re Atari (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Re_Atari>), the first substantial technical information for Atari 8-bit, was excerpted in BYTE. This article is part of the series.

Ancient Atari hacker here. Started with the 400, upgraded to 800, St 512, St 1024. Wrote lots of software, primarily MIDI-based

Did you retrofit a better keyboard to your 400?

I did back in the day. Bumped it to 48K too. Good times!

I love how the 400 looks with the original keyboard though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Atari-400-Comp.jpg

I have one, and use it to play "Star Raiders" sometimes. The funky coke proof keyboard works fine for that.

No I suffered with the membrane keyboard until I got my 800. I consider it a Rite of Passage

It surely was.

I used mine for about a year. Ended up in some user group, who set me up. Was a teen at the time. I did notice the difference, but not as much as I might have. Did not begin to get any typing skills, until much later.

Today, I actually enjoy the occassional time I get the machine out. That keyboard looks really cool, and the little click brings me impressions from earlier, simpler times.

Digging into my deep memories, I think I repurposed the 400 as a stand- alone MIDI application that didn't need keyboard input.

That seems like a great use case. Fun to think about.

It would have stage "presence" seen in some performance today.

If only those machines came with a system language compiler... As a kid, having to go through BASIC for coding anything held me back from learning the important stuff. When I met my first PCs with Turbo Pascal in college, it was a revelation. But the machine and OS were much more boring than the Amiga and Ataris.

That's what 6502 assembly was for!

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