Byte was one of the more successful early computer magazines. It's popularity faded away as coverage moved away from more technical subjects and computer became more of a commodity item. It was definitely going strong in 1985 though. The November 1985 issue has over 500 pages and includes:
Features
Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar: The World's Smallest 1200-bps Modem - Customizing a modem to include answering service, speech synthesis, and more.
Programming Project: An Assembler For VM2 - Creating an assembler for the VM2 virtual machine presented in the previous issue.
Programming Project: Extending Turbo Pascal - Five libraries to extend Turbo Pascal including routines for input/output, integer handling, string replacement, and more.
CD-ROMs and Their Kin - Some of the latest developments in optical storage.
Table of Contents from the November 1985 issue of Byte
Themes
The Amiga's Custom Graphics Chips - An interview with Jay Miner, designer of the Amiga's custom graphics chips.
Raster Operations - Methods for combining text and graphics, specifically using the PMR 96016 chip.
Moving Pictures - System design for rea-time graphics performance using double buffering.
Reviews
The Data GeneralOne - A portable computer featuring a 80C88 CPU, 256KB of RAM (expandable to 512K), one or two 720K 3.5" disk drives, MS-DOS 2.11 and more starting at $2995.
Sanyo MBC-775 - A portable PC compatible computer featuring a 8 MHz 8088 CPU, 256K (expandable to 640K) RAM, two 360K 5.25" disk drives, and more for $2599.
Five C Compilers for the Macintosh - An overview of C Compilers for the Macintosh including Aztec C, Hippo-C, Mac C, Megamax C, and Software Macintosh C.
Magic/L - A review of this development system that is a descendant of FORTH.
Table of Contents from the November 1985 issue of Byte (continued)
Kernel
Computing at Chaos Manor: Old Favorites and New Ones - Discussion of the ARPANET, BIX, Zeke, SideKick, SuperKey, the Kaypro 286i, and more.
According to Webster: Memories - Discussion of Megamax C, future Macintosh computers, the Amiga, the Atari ST, optical disks, and more.
BYTE U.K.: Living C-Personal - A look at this real-time C debugging environment.
BYTE Japan: Comparing Fujitsus - A look at the Fujitsu FM-16B, a sort of update to the Fujitsu FM-11BS, as well as the NEC PC-9801M2.
Editorial: A Tale of Four Covers - This issue was available with four covers meant to emphasize computer graphics capabilities.
Microbytes - Apple introduces a RAM expansion card for the Apple II, 3.5" disk drive for the Apple II, ImageWriter II printer, Hard Disk 20 for the Mac, and Apple Personal Modem and more; Intel starts selling samples of 80386 processors; and more.
