I'm not sure if Byte was the first computer magazine but I think of it as the original computer magazine. It was around before home computers were even a thing. Nevertheless, Byte was covering "small systems" or microcomputers used by businesses and hobbyists starting in 1975. The October 1979 issue includes:
Foreground
Tracing Your Own Roots - A type-in program to aid you in your genealogical research.
Power Helps Analyze Electric Bills - A type-in BASIC program to help you analyze your power bill.
Self-Refreshing LED Graphics Displays - A guide to building LED displays of various sizes including a 4x4 LED matrix.
Interfacing The S-100 Bus With The Intel 8255 - The Intel 8255 is a programmable peripheral interface chip that could be used, for example, to interface to a printer.
The XYZ Phenomenon: Stereoscopic Plotting by Computer - A way to print 3D images.
Picking Up The Pieces - A guide to recovering from floppy disk errors.
Variables Whose Values Are Strings - A couple of methods for storing strings.
IBM Compatible Disk Drives - The IBM PC was still in the future. IBM compatible in this case refers to the IBM 33FD 8-inch floppy drive which was originally create for the IBM 3740 Data Entry System.
The TRS-80 Speaks - A guide to using BASIC to control the Speech Synthesizer Module for the TRS-80.
Low Level Program Optimization - How to reduce the space required and execution time of your programs.
Nucleus
Editorial - Designing a board for a 6809 processor.
Letters - Letters from readers about light based communication, mapping phone companies, converting hexadecimal to ASCII, and more.
Technical Forum - Implementing a finite state machine.
BYTE News - A look at the future of the S-100 bus and competition from Apple, Radio Shack, Commodore, etc.; a new image sensor using a photo diode array; a new online service called The Source, automobile makers researching computer controlled cards; and more.
