A long read, but an amazing project… Back in the '80s I remember buying copies from time to time, looking for ‘stuff’…
Any Computer Shopper fans out there? Jason Scott at the Internet Archive has acquired and is MANUALLY scanning in 16 years of back issues to add to the Archive.
I rather admire anyone crazy enough to take on such a project. Not that I think it is a reasonable investment in time and effort. I think it is nuts, but nuts in such a gloriously obsessive way that my hat’s off to him.
I was a BYTE and PC Magazine man, myself.
Well, pre-Apple ][+, I watched the Commodore & Radio Shack TRS80, not sure on when they came along, but when Dad passed in '79, I, as executor, had a spot of unexpected cash, jumped into he 6502 world of the Apple][+. Tape loading and all, I still have a couple copies of their Red Books, and some other notes from those times, poked around a little in assembly, and Integer Basic, but once AppleSoft Basic came along I was hooked.
Byte & PC mags had a ton of interesting articles, Nibble was an Apple based magazine, lots of Basic programs from various authors to type in, chase the errors, modify, and chase more…
Then a friend in WeCo Engineering and I translated a seemingly simple Basic genealogy program from a a NorthStar computer. That got us started, chasing bugs, differences, sending each other floppies to update each other’s versions… Had it working decently, gave me a nudge ing genealogy, later on, PAF, Personal Ancestral File, from the LDS refined their version and we lost interest in the old NorthStare conversion, but had a lot of fun making it all work… Today on my Mac, Reunion is the best, maybe 1800 or so relatives in there…
But Byte, and Computer Shopper filled in a lot of gaps, some really serious talented authors… Seems like a whole other lifetime, today when we have so much information, hardware at our fingertips.
I still have, out in the garage my last Apple //e, dual floppy drives, an amber monitor… But more recently retire my 2012 Mac Pro, replacing it with a new Mac Mini Pro (M2), comparing them is indeed a world apart, sadly we lost Basic, some licensing games between Apple & Microsoft, maybe a bit of lost interest, but there are times when it might be a kick to play, even run some of the old Basic programs…
Anyway, I expect, as he scans the issues they will show up online, reminders of days gone by…
weco
Yeah, a colossal waste of time, but I too would buy the occasional issue back in the day and marvel at the huge amount of info in it. If it isn’t immediately obvious, as it wasn’t to me, you can find at least some of the scanning results here: Internet Archive: Digital Library of Free & Borrowable Books, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine
