Byte was a bit more technical than most mainstream computer magazines of the time. It really was more for hobbyists than just users. In 1980, the IBM PC still had not bee introduced yet. The closest thing to a standard were machines with an 8080/Z80 CPU, S-100 bus and CP/M but there were tons of proprietary systems. Home users would mostly have been using an Atari, Apple, Commodore, or Radio Shack machine. The October 1980 issue of Byte includes:
Foreground<
An 8088 Processor For The S-100 Bus, Part 2 - The second part of a design for an 8088 based S-100 processor board.
Sorting With Binary Trees - A description of the binary tree sorting algorithm.
FLOPTRAN-IV: A Tiny Compiler - This is basically a floating point translator for Commodore PET BASIC
Symbolic Math Using BASIC - A simple BASIC program that expands polynomials.
Background
Make Liquid-Crystal Displays Work For You - A technical description of LCDs and how to interface with and control them.
An Information-Retrieval System - Designing a more user friendly information retrieval system.
Add Macro Expansion To Your Microcomputer, Part 1 - The first part of this series on macro assemblers details the process of defining and using macro instructions.
Editorial - The results of a reader survey that provides info on the types of people that read Byte.
Letters - Letters from readers about software piracy, transferring files from a mainframe to a CP/M machine, TRS-80 performance, and more.
Product Review - A review of the Synertek Systems KTM-2 Terminal-on-Board. This was basically a keyboard and terminal hardware that, with a display, made a complete terminal.
Desk Top Wonders - Darth Vader's Force Battle, a game for the TI-59 calculator.
Education Forum - A Multiple-Machine Loader for Classroom Computers - This is an interface for loading programs on multiple computers from a single source. This great reduces the coast of classroom systems since a separate disk drive would not be needed for each machine.
Product Description - A look at the TRS-80 Model III (I used these in high school though they were already outdated then) and the TRS-80 Pocket Computer.
Technical Forum - Adding upper-and-lowercase capability to the TRS-80.
