Among the mainstream computer magazines at the time, Byte tended to be the most technical. Unlike PC specific magazines such as PC Magazine and PC World, Byte also covered non-PC systems, at least for as long as they were viable. The February 1988 issue includes:
Products in Perspective
What's New - The MPP 286 line of computers, The Toshiba T3200 portable, the CompuPro Mp 200 series of parallel processing multiuser systems, 2400bps laptop modems, the CDR-3500 Hitachi CD-ROM drive, Commodious 20 MB hard drive for PS/2 Model 25, WM-S500 WORM drive (can store 2 GB on each side of a 12-inch disc), GigaStore storage device that uses VHS to store up to 2.5 GB, and lots more.
Short Takes - Short reviews of the QuickShare (PC card designed to share a Mac hard drive), Lotus Agenda, Word 4.0, Tax Preparer, Ask Dan About Taxes, and more.
Cover Story
Multiscan Color Monitors - An overview of fourteen monitors including the Conrac 7250, Electrohome ECM 1310, 1312, and 1910, Logitech Autosync, Magnavox MultiMode, Mitsubishi Diamond Scan, Nanao Flexscan, NEC MultiSync Plus, NEC MultiSync XL, Princeton Graphic Ultrasync, Sony Multiscan, Taxan Multivision, and Thompson Ultrascan.
Compaq Flexes Its Muscles - A look at Compaq's 386/20. It included a 20 MHz 386 CPU, 1 MB of RAM, 1.2 MB 5.25" floppy drive, and a 60 MB hard drive (or larger). It was the fastest PC you could get at the time but expensive starting at $7499.
The Tandy 4000 - This was Tandy's 386 based system. While not quite as advanced as Compaq's overall, it was a solid machine for less money. It included a 3.5" 1.44 MB disk drive and 1 MB of RAM for $2599. For $5977 you could get an EGA monitor, 40 MB hard drive and some other additions.
Datavue's Spark and Snap 1 + 1 - A look at two laptops. The Snap 1 + 1 features an NEC V20 CPU, 640K RAM, and two 720K disk drives. The Spark features an NEC V20 CPU, 384K RAM, and one 720K drive. There are also various screen, hard drive, and other expansion options.
Micro Channel Memory Boards - A look at three memory expansion boards for the PS/2 Models 50 and 60 that add up to 8 MB of RAM. Prices range from $840 to $4170 depending on the board and RAM amount.
A Quintet of WORMs - A look at some early optical drives with prices ranging from $2500 to over $4000.
Turbo Pascal 4.0 - The latest version of Borland's Pascal compiler.
Columns
Computing at Chaos Manor: Life after Las Vegas - A discussion of various products including Time Bandits, Cyber Studio, Donald Duck's Playground (I remember playing this game on the Commodore 64), Earl Weaver Baseball, HiSoft BASIC, Atari ST Mega 2 and Mega 4, Sota MotherCard 5.0, 386-to-the-Max, VM/386, Wizard's Crown, and more.
Applications Only: Shortucts for Simplicity - The potential for OS/2 to fragment the PC standard, plus discussion of MacinTax, TaxView, TopDOS, PowerStation and more.
Lisp: A language for Stratified Design - Creating abstraction with Lisp.
Semantics of Scheme - Lisp was one of the first languages used for artificial intelligence. Scheme is a particular implementation of Lisp and one that I used in my very first computer science class in college.
Features
LIM/EMS - The Lotus/Intel/Microsoft Expanded Memory Specification adds a variety of improvements in version 4.0.
The DSI Transputer Development System - A card for parallel computing on the PC.
Departments
Editorial: News and Technology - Some notes on changes to the magazine starting with this issue.
Microbytes - HP's NewWave application environment, the Matrix I supercomputer based on older hardware, and lots more.
Letters - Letters from readers about creating CRCs, High C 386 compiler, Fibonacci numbers with APL on a 286, and more.
