Source: Byte – September 1988
Byte was probaby my favorite PC magazine while it was being published. It covered a variety of systems but by late 1989 there was more PC coverage than anything. That was probably just a product of what was popular. They had a lot of room to cover a lot of stuff though with the September 1989 issue having nearly 400 pages. It includes:
Products in Perspective
- What’s New – WPC Bridge combo Apple II and PC computer from Cordata, ALR FlexCache 25386, 25-MHz 386 based machine from Hertz Computer Corp., 40-MB tape backup system from Tallgrass, 150-600 cps Honeywell 4/68 color printer, DSP32-PC floating-point array coprocessor card provides up to 25 mflops, Professional Write 2.0, $1000 CD-ROM drive for the Mac, PageMaker 3.0 for the PC, and much more.
- Short Takes – Short reviews of two 25 MHz accelerator boards for the Mac SE (TSI-020MX for $5000 and Radius Accelerator 25 for $1695-$2195), Turbo Prolog 2.0, SOTA MotherCard 5.0 (286 10MHz or 12MHz accelerator for $895-$995), Mach 20 accelerator card, Choice Words dictionary, and Testline Cache Drive Controller from Konan.
- Cover Story: IBM and Tandy…Same Channel, Same Plan for Growth – A comparison of the IBM PS/2 Model 70 and the Tandy 5000 MC. Both provided microchannel support. Micro Channel wasn’t around very long and both IBM and Tandy would be out of the home computer business in a few more years.
- Product Focus: PostScript Printers Come of Age – An overview of PostScript compatible printers including the Apple LaserWriter IINT, Apple LaserWriter IINTX, Dataproducts LZR 2665, Dataproducts LZR 1260, General Computer Business Laser Printer, IBM 4216 Personal Pageprinter, PC Publisher Kit, ITT Qume ScripTen, QMS Color Script 100, Laser Connection/QMS JetScript, Laser Connection/QMS PS 800 II, QMS PS 810, Texas Instruments OmniLaser 2115, and Varityper VT600.
- Two for the Road – Reviews of two 80386 based laptops including the Toshiba T5100 and GRiDCase 1530.
- An 80386 with a Twist – Review of the AST Premium/386. It came in five configurations with the basic unit consisting of a 20-MHz 80386, 1 MB of RAM, and a 5.25″ floppy drive for $5195.
- Fax Board Faire – A review of seven different fax boards with speeds of 4800 to 9600 bps and prices ranging from $400 to $1200.
- Ada Comes to the Mac – A review of the Meridian AdaVantage compiler for the Macintosh.
- Software for Hardware-Style Debugging – A review of Soft-ICE, a debugger that adds break-on-memory-access and break-on-interrupt to existing debuggers.
- Total Word – A review of Total Word 1.012 word processor for MS-DOS.
- Data Entry Goes High-Tech – A review of DataPlex, data entry software that provides a front end for data entry in a variety of formats and data conversion capabilities.
In Depth
- Face to Face – A look inside the various display types that were commonly in use. These include the CRT, gas-plasma, LCD, and EL (electroluminescent).
- Taking the Wraps of the 34020 – A look at the new 32-bit graphics microprocessor from Texas Instruments.
- Lighting the Way – A more detailed look at electroluminescent displays.
- Monitor Makers – A list of the companies that were currently making monitors or microcomputers.
Expert Advice
- Applications Plus: A Wolf and a Killer Shark – A comparison of Word and FullWrite Professional word processors.
- Down to Business: Is More Alway Better – The Wang VS minicomputer vs. an IBM PC AT-compatible.
- Macinations: Comebacks, Backups, and Updates – A look at FoxBASE +/Mac, dMacIII, Apple Macintosh System Tools 6.0, 4th Dimension 1.06, FullWrite Professional 1.0, HyperCard 1.2, McMax Summer ’87 Version, MindWrite 1.1, and QT-Mac40.
- OS/2 Notebook: All Together Now – A look at OS/2 features including LAN Manager, Presentation Manager and more.
- COM1: Computer Conferencing Homecoming – A look at the still niche market of computer conferencing. This primarily referred to things like message groups or live chat.
Features
- Between Man and Machine – A look at the latest in user interface technology. The focus here is on using gestures. Not as in modern mouse or trackpad gestures but using “data gloves” like something you would see in Minority Report.
- The BASIC Revival – The latest ANSI standard for BASIC turns it into a structured language, eliminating the need for line numbers, adding callable subroutines, multi-line functions and more.
- Clarcia’s Circuit Cellar: Why Microcontrollers?, Part 2 – Using the DDT-51, a low cost PC based Intel 8031/8051 microcontroller development system.
- Some Assembly Required: Floating-Point without a Coprocessor – A type-in high precision floating point emulation library for the PC.
Departments
- Editorial: Mac Clones and OS/2 – A look a a prototype Mac clone and some OS/2 user opinions.
- Microbytes – Cooperative processing on LANs with Paradox, a $3000 80-mflops co-processing card, gallium arsenide in pc chips, DRI released DR DOS, 386 math coprocessor from Weitek, and more.
- Letters – Letters from readers about recursion vs. iteration, fractions, programs vs. AI, and more.
- Ask BYTE – Questions answered about accessing more than 15 files in DOS, video digitizing systems, using old expansion cards in new machines, and more.
- Book Reviews – Reviews of The First Electronic Computer: The Atanasoff Story by Alice R. Burks and Arthur W. Burks, UNIX System Readings and Applications, Programming Windows, Software Engineering: A Beginner’s Guide, Expert Systems for Experts, and Artificial Intelligence Programming with Turbo Prolog.
…and more!
