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Long live Byte. Goodbye, Byte, Circuit Cellar, Pournelle, and so many other characters. Long live Ars Technica, Wired, GigaOm, and dozens of other sites like NetworkWorld, InfoWorld, The Register, and so forth. Print will never come back. You won't feel it in your hands until your foldable smartphone makes this comfy some day in the future-- to do again.

I loved reading Byte! starting from the beginning. Reading what hardware and software hackers, who followed hacker ethics not the criminals called hackers in the press today, were doing was terrific. My two favorite columns were Steve Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar, which is now a compleat magazine of it's own, and Jerry Pournelle's Chaos Manor.

Falcon Wolf

I still read this fine magazine: Circuit Cellar
It's worth it.

http://www.circuitcellar.com/

http://www.2600.com/

http://www.linux-magazine.com/ (Linux Pro)

...unless it has Jerry Pournelle, Steve Ciarcia and others in it.

Until I started reading this thread I felt the same, I loved "Chaos Manor" and "Circuit Cellar". However after reading this thread I'm not sure about Jerry Pournelle anymore. If I want to read Steve Ciarcia, I can read his own magazine Circuit Cellar, and I do occasionally. I'll go ahead and check out the new print edition of "Byte" but I'll wait a few months before I ever subscribe to it.

Falcon

Jerry Pournelle was one of the major reasons I canceled my subscription to Byte.

You are the first reader of Byte I've heard didn't like "Chaos Manor". Jerry Pournelle's column as well as Steve Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar were 2 columns that kept me reading "Byte".

Why on earth would anyone want to pay money to read Pournelle's whining about how someone didn't give him enough free stuff;

I don't recall any of that, what I recall was how his teacher wife used computers to help her teach.

Falcon

I never owned an IBM PC at the time, and from what I remember that was it's main focus

Not at all. Byte's focus was the Home Brew computer club audience. Even after IBM released the PC Byte remained focused on homebrews, hardware and software. Steve Ciarcia's column, back then it was a column not a separate magazine, was an example.

Another magazine I remember was COMPUTE's Gazette

I read it too, along with "AmigaWorld", Computer Shopper, Interface Age, and Creative Computing.

Falcon

In depth articles about hardware hacking, software hacking, phreaking, schematic diagrams, source code listings, etc., it was a true nerd's dream, which was why it was the one that "employees of every other tech mag got used to being compared unfavorably with."

Same here. The two columns I looked forward to the most was Jerry Pournelle's "Chaos Manor" and Steve Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar. Luckily he started his magazine.

Falcon

The reminder of Byte's good parts - Jerry Pournelle also made me remember Steve Ciarcia.
Steve and Jerry are still around.
Steve's URL is http://www.circuitcellar.com/
Jerry's URL is http://www.jerrypournelle.com/

I took the time to subscribe to circuit cellar and to Jerry's site. They are good writers and deserve our support.

MacTech is Apple-oriented, obviously, and has been around since 1984 as either MacTech or MacTutor magazine. I believe they still sell a compendium DVD that reaches back into the mists of time, handy if you end up with an old Mac you'd like to hack on.

As someone else pointed out, the classic Circuit Cellar is still around.

Or ....

Get yourself a best-of-class kit radio from Elecraft - K3 or K2 or one of their other kits. Or a cutting edge Open source High Performance Software Defined Radio from HPSDR and TAPR.

Get yourself a radio kit from Ten-Tec, or MFJ.

Or from Oak Hill Research, or Hendrick's QRP Kits, module kits from W8DIZ who also sells parts, or from various non-profit QRP groups selling kits from time to time, like NorCal QRP Club.

Get yourself a copy of Circuit Cellar or Nuts and Volts from the US, or Everyday Practical Electronics (EPE) and Elektor from Europe or Silicon Chip from Australia.

Heck, you can even get vacuum tube based kits still.

Forget it, just go buy a new chinese made mp3 player!

Wow, +4 Insightful for a parent Troll..

Pixie radio transceiver (obviously you could trivially modify it to work on different frequency bands, and/or at such low power levels that it would be irrelevant in terms of any band use / licensing restrictions given that you'd be operating on exempted frequencies or power levels or both).
http://www.al7fs.us/AL7FS2.html
http://www.qrparci.org/content/view/40/55/
http://www.qsl.net/we6w/text/pixie.html
http://www.qsl.net/wa4chq/radio.html

Other resources you should look at:
http://www.circuitcellar.com/index.html
http://amasci.com/
http://scienceclub.org/kidproj1.html

No, not a land war in Asia. From here

Ah, you read Jerry Pournelle? His "Chaos Manor" in "Byte Magazine" was one of my favorite columns in the print edition. My other one was Steve Ciarcia's "Circuit Cellar", which now an independent magazine.

Falcon

No, correcting people tells then they are wrong.

Not in this instance. There are way too many people using it in those ways outside of your control.

But as more people learn they may correct other, more, people. Nothing suddenly happens, most things require a lot of work. This happened when people started using "liberal" incorectly and it can happen when people correct others.

Yep, and no matter how many people you attempt to corect, when you call yourself a hacker, there will be people thinking your a script kiddie attempting to steal credit card numbers to make your super female love bot.

Only if they are not corrected, which I try to do whenever someone uses a word incorrectly. As for myself, I don't call or consider myself a hacker. I know I do not have the skills or knowledge to be one. Which is unfortunate, since the late '70s when I first learned about them I wanted to be a hacker in the mold of those at MIT and in California. I wanted to both program like the software hackers and build hardware like the hardware hackers. Back then one of my favorite magazines was "Byte magazine. I loved Jerry Pournelle's "Chaos Manor" and Steve Ciarcia's "Circuit Cellar" columns. In part because of them I decided I wanted to major in Computer Engineering in college.

Well, not. It isn't about freedom of the body as you mention.

Yes, it is, Liberty is about controlling one's own body. There are some libertarians though who do not support abortion but for most it is about controlling your body.

Abortion effects the child's body too.

Embryos and fetuses are not children, if not aborted they may become children but before birth they are not.

That goes against the entire 'as long as you don't harm another'.

Since they are not humans no human is harmed.

Of course the pro-choice crowd use tricks and change terms much like we are talking about to turn an unborn child into just a cysts or something other then another human life.

So do fake pro lifers. One example is with Intact dilation and extraction. Ask pro lifers if they would allow IDE if the mother's life is in danger and most will say no, so they are not for pro life.

I personally believe it starts at conception and will only concede ground only up to a point where a baby can be reasonably expected to survive outside the human body with or without medical assistance.

Would you allow abortion if the mother's life is in danger? If not you're not a pro lifer.

At whatever stage-age that can happen, there is no way to claim the child isn't a human.

To you but not to others, yet you would dictate to others your beliefs.

Drug use is often results in people who can't control their addiction and end up stealing from others

Only because drugs are illegal. Legalize drugs again and the prices will drop. However alcohol can do the same thing but it's legal.

they end up getting depressed or escaping reality and jumping off buildings

So what? Who are you to tell others they can't "escape reality" or jump off a building? As long as a person does not harm another they should be able to do whatever they want with their own body. This is something I have to deal with on a daily basis. Because of an accident I had more than 10 years ago while I was attending college I now have a disability and can't do most of the things I used to do. While I was in a coma the docs told my family it would be a miracle if I lived. I live but my life as been a living hell. If I could I'd rather commit hari kari or seppuku

No matter how often "ethical hackers" claim the word for themselves or try to give it a meaning contrary to what the general populace believes the word to mean, it still carries that meaning.

The meaning has been maligned because that's how the mass media uses it and no one corrects them on it.

Look at the etymology of "hack".

I have, have you? The Online Etymology Dictionary is pretty good, read the second (2) entry particularly. As used with writers "hack" dates back to 1749, whereas with criminals using computers it first appears in 1984. It's ethical meaning was used years before then. I first came across the ethical meaning in the mid to late 1970s in magazines like "Byte: The small and micro systems journal" magazine. My fav writers in "Byte" was Steve Ciarcia who wrote the column "Circuit Cellar" which became it's own magazine and Jerry Pournelle's "Chaos Manor".

Falcon

http://www.circuitcellar.com/ - Check out the archives for tons of interesting projects. These are not kits, but most articles are well written and provide the necessary information to build the project.

Try Steve Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar magazine and try to dig up any old Byte magazines with his column in it.

That may well be so, but there have been specific requirements in the GPL/LGPL that restrict usage of GPL/LGPL'd software that in no way relate to copyright; these requirements so broadly degrade the scope of the "freedom" that is the main talking point for the GPL that the license is of no interest to me except as an example of how not to distribute software.

Yea that's why I think BSD style licenses are freer and I prefer them. For instance a person can take BSD code and close the source they add to it. If I'm right all that's required is proper attribution of those who contributed code. The original code is still available but you can close your own code.

After reading on and on in the GPL about what you have to do, what you can't do, what you have to accept, etc., I am left completely without any feeling that I've been given something "free", or, were I to adopt it for my own work, that I would be creating something "free."

The way I look at it is the GPL's freedom is for users not programmers, there are just too many restrictions on programmers in it.

I'm 100% guilty of carrying forward the attitude I started with back in the 1960's, where software was a fabulously interesting thing that we shared with each other without any thought whatsoever for moderating that behavior because the other party might actually make use of it.

Ah, it was in part because of the hackers and their culture in the Tech Model Railroad Club at MIT as well as the hardware hackers on the West Coast in the 1970s that in high school I wanted go into computer research. I wanted to be a hardware and a software hacker.

On that basis, entire magazines existed that shared code, talked about various design issues, laid out hardware designs, etc.

I recall a few magazines from the '70s but not many. "Creative Computing", "Interface Age", and my fav "Byte" I recall but that's it. I especially loved Jerry Pournelle's "Chaos Manor" and Steve Ciarcia's "Circuit Cellar" columns. The one computer magazine I wish were still in print is "Byte".

Yeah, I'm an old hippie. :-)

Same here except smoking marijuana.

I believe it was in its first edition when I read it (in '93?), so it's been a while.

Yea, I read it when it first came out in '84. Back then I loved reading the magazine "Byte". My fav columns were Steve Ciarcia's "Circuit Cellar" who now has his own magazine "Circuit Cellar" and Jerry Pournelle's "Chaos Manor".

I might not quite remember the details like the name of Tech Model Railroad Club.

Because of an injury my memory is weird, I recall some things easy while other things I can't recall. A few years ago this proved to be a difficulty I had when I was taking Java classes. I'd do alright in the first class but then I could only recall a little bit for the second class so I'd start behind. I reread the book last year though, from where I am now all I have to do to get it is stand up and grab it from my book shelf.

Sure, but that won't help the other 99.9% of the population who won't know or care.

There will always be ways around any copy protection or DRM. Heck, we could make our own CPU's for sure that would handle anything we wanted. Again, 99.9% of the population wouldn't know or care.

The funny thing is that its founder Steve Ciarcia left then market leader Byte Magazine, because it was turning into an advertorial marketing rag. Guess which magazine no longer exists :-)

Before rolling out a big business wireless network, the installers should do a check of existing interference, then setup a simple access point/client and check it out in different places using a spectrum analyzer. Just like cable techs sometimes need a cat-5 analyser to trouble wiring plant problems, the wireless tech needs an instrument to measure the rf environment.

Heck, my wireless pda loses signal while standing near the microwave popping pop corn. Some buildings, especially in industrial areas, can get lousy with interference

I've worked with people with very focused high-level programming skills and found that while they could write mostly decent code, their code was also most likely to fail in production since they were completely mentally removed from concepts like disk-seek times or bandwidth constraints.

I'm not a great programmer, but I've always had a good "sense" (for lack of a better word) about technical things. I worked a bit at a company doing mid to high level (V)FoxPro programming. They put me on the least desired machine and I set to work. Within minutes I realized the machine was not running right, CPU at 100% or close to it most of the time. Turns out it was virus-infected (despite NAV, of course). I found the name of the EXE, renamed it in autoexec.bat before it loaded, then deleted same. Problem solved and the oldest 'clunker' became a quite acceptable computer.

I think this story illustrates the two broad classes of programmers. (1) those able to get a task done, no matter how nerdy or obscure (but who are pathologically incapable of documenting their work, or teaching others) [e.g. my co-worker who had used that computer for months or years without noticing the virus] and (2) those who are good at interface, optimization, and documentation but lack the penetrating power to solve the more difficult problems [e.g. myself -- I had to leave that job because I couldn't 'crack' the OO stuff].

Speaking to this thread's main question: both classes of programmer would need to understand some assembly, but for different reasons. Group 1ers would likely end up using it (or having to debug/change it) from time to time -- and it would be no big deal to them to learn it, use it, whatever. Group 2ers would likely want to know _when_ to use it, and probably get someone else to do that coding.

In the geek cred hungry world of /., not many would want to admit to being a Group 2er but I have no problem with it. For example, Group 2ers would also know when a Group 1er's code sucked, from a performance standpoint. Coders with a trailblazer mindset are rarely good optimizers.

BTW, in considering where Woz, Ciarcia, Kahn and Hertzfeld fit into this, I think they are Group 1ers who simply took an interest in Group 2 stuff. If you can learn both mindsets, you are one powerful programming dude, IMO. [Pity that 2ers like myself can't easily (ever?) become 1ers.] Most 1ers just want to get the job done and move on, yet so much can be learned after you think you have finished your program. [MS deserves props for realizing this and assigning a second unit to work on optimizing the code already working -- Win95 crap became slightly less crappy Win98 through this process (pdf)]

• Elmer101
    a tutorial on radio theory with practical experiments. Think of it as a grown-up's version (you are a grown-up, right?) of the 500-in-1 manual. It's based on an existing design, a transceiver kit from Small Wonder Labs, and so you can read it and do experiements with with your own parts or with the kit. [A ham license to use these kits no longer requires a morse code test, just a 35-question written Technician exam.]
• QRPKits.com. This site runs the gamut for easy radio kits from simple transmitters to software-defined radio.
• Nuts and Volts magazine, a great resource, with a good coverage of general electronics, radio, robotics, microprocessors.
• Circuit Cellar magazine, descended from Steve's Circuit Cellar column in the old Byte magazine. Slightly more in depth articles, but fewer areas of coverage.

the demise of popular electronics and the slate of similar magazines, in which you had both semi-interesting one or two element circuits to learn off of as welll as more advanced functional items is badly missed.

There are still some good electronics magazines published. There's Everyday Practical Electronics for instance. Steve Ciarcia's Ciruit Cellar , I used to love to read his "Circuit Cellar" column in the print edition of "Byte" magazine, is good though works mainly with microcontrollers. Ooh I see you mention both "Byte" and "Ciruit Cellar" later. Then there's Make zine, which is about hacking most anything, an example is one issue on hacking plants. One article was on how to setup a mycology lab and grow mushrooms. So though it's not just electronics they do have some electronics projects.

as is heathkit

Heathkit is still around but I don't know how good they are now.

• Teach Yourself Electricity and Electronics (4th ed.) by Stan Gibilisco
• Guide to Understanding Electricity and Electronics by G. Randy Slone
• Getting Started in Electronics by Forrest M. Mims III
• The Art of Electronics by Horowitz and Hill - IMHO an excellent reference, not as useful for the newbie
• Basic Electronics by Bernard Grob
• Understanding Basic Electronics by Larry D. Wolfgang
• Practical Electronics for Inventors (2nd ed.) by Paul Scherz

I remember PCW when it had a section devoted to assembler subroutines, proper programming tutorials, a column about numbers/problem solving etc

I remember when Byte magazine was a printed magazine and would subscribe in a heart beat if it in print again.

even fiction. Not it's just glossy photographs of Dell keyboards and mobile phones.

I especially loved the columns in "Byte", Jerry Pournelle's Chaos Manor and Steve Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar , which now is his own magazine.

Oh, and don't forget the CD full of shareware. That's something you can't get very easily elsewhere.

I see many magazines that include cds, and now dvds. Most don't but many still include disks.

The 2006-May issue (#190) of Circuit Cellar magazine has a design article on rolling your own answering machine: ARM-Based Modern Answering Machine. This particular design won first prize in the 2005 Philips ARM Design Contest, and includes caller-ID handling and a web server. Source code and schematics are available.

The 2006-May issue (#190) of Circuit Cellar magazine has a design article on rolling your own answering machine: ARM-Based Modern Answering Machine. This particular design won first prize in the 2005 Philips ARM Design Contest, and includes caller-ID handling and a web server. Source code and schematics are available.

Circuit Cellar published an article on how to build one of these a few months back, I wouldn't be surprised if it was exactly the same hardware. The circuit cellar version costs a fraction of the cost to build yourself

http://www.circuitcellar.com/library/print/0406/Ar mitage-189/index.htm

No, that's why I have a remote-controlled pressure cooker. Besides, the kitchen needs repainting anyway.

I used to love reading Steve Ciarcia's "Circuit Cellar". I first started reading his article in the print edition of "Byte magazine" before he started his own magazine. Along the same lines I also liked to read Jerry Pournelle's "Chaos Manor" in the same magazine.

These days, it's online only at BYTE Online. The hardware stuff seems to have mainly moved to Circuit Cellar. As one of the few generalist mag's out there, BYTE got clobbered in the PC-biased publishing boom a few years back; of course now *all* the technical mag's are hurting with the market contraction.

There are a lot of microcontroller/hardware programming contests.

It is programming on a small scale, but it also involves building some hardware. If you are burnt out on programming, working with your hands on real hardware is a great way to relax. It is also fun to work on the nitty gritty low level stuff if you are used to high-level languages. (or vice versa). When it comes to languages it is Haskell or Assembly for me, anything in between would just be mediocre :)

There are a lot of PIC, Amtel, or other microcontroller contests out there.

http://www.circuitcellar.com/ hosts regular contests with big cash prizes
http://piclist.com/techref/piclist/pcbcontest.htm is a monthly PIC one.

anyone have any other good ones?

I enter circuit cellar contests whenever I can. The development kits alone are worth the cost of a one year subscription (Linky! *looks at the 60Mhz ARM board and tries to come up with a project idea* --buddy

Circuit Cellar magazine has articles on smart cards, RFID, etc, now and then.

Best price I've seen on this: http://www.elexp.com/kit_x909.htm

If I remember correctly, ads in Nuts & Volts and Circuit Cellar magazines list these at around $179.

http://www.nutsvolts.com/
http://www.circuitcellar.com/

Ahhhh, only if they still printed "Byte magazine". As far as I'm concerned it was the best computer magazine. I especially loved Jerry Pournelle's "Chaos Manor" and Steve Ciarcia's "Circuit Cellar".

hop to it here


oh yes..

Take a look at Circuit Cellar. If you have any interest in electronics/microprocessors/microcontrollers this magazine is top notch.

Wups! Who put that extra dot there?

If you're interested in a self built solution I recommend you take a look at an article I saw in Circuit Cellar's January '04 issue, Remote Observation Station(PDF. by by Richard Dreher.

If you're interested in a self built solution I recommend you take a look at an article I saw in Circuit Cellar's January '04 issue, Remote Observation Station(PDF. by by Richard Dreher.

Really, believe me. 8-bit MCUs aren't going anywhere. Even if people, for some weird reason, want their alarm clocks, washing machines, and toasters on the Internet.

I first read articles from Steve Ciarcia in some early issues of Byte Magazine (I subscribed to Byte due to his and Jerry Pournelle's articles.) But those things are history. Go to http://circuitcellar.com/ for some interesting projects.

One of my good Professors here at RIT introduced me and gets copies of the magazine Circuit Cellar. They are a complete computer hobbyist magazine -- very, very good. They have everything from radio controlled robots to how to add USB to your embedded project.

Circuit Cellar

They also host contests constantly which give out free hardware for those with good design ideas! Great for those student needs!

Your idea of using surplus is only good is you have whatever said surplus already laying around. I don't happen to have any of the old parts you mention (gameboys, zip drives, scanner, etc.) lying around, or you have a large enough surplus supply (electronic goldmine, ocean state electronics, ebay but prices get whacked quickly) on the market.

Experimenting with cheap 8-bit microcontrollers such as Microchip's PIC or Atmel's AVRs is quite cheap, and typically all you need is a chip and one (really cheap if want) device - a programmer to transfer the (binary/hex) programs from your PC to the microcontroller's flash memory.

You will quickly outgrow Radio Shack unless you need a part right now and you don't have the right one in your own stock pile, often referred to as a "junk box" regardless of actual physical size. You should be getting the free catalogs (or CDs) from Digikey, Mouser, Newark, and Jameco. These all have usable online ordering systems and reasonable minimum order & shipping fees. UK geeks check G3SEK's UK Component and Tool Suppliers web page.

Many useful projects can be made for less than $100 even if you need to buy all the parts. After you build a collection of common parts (common resistors, capacitor values, PIC 16F628, AVR AT90S2313, red & green LEDs, 2N2222A, 2N3904, 2N3906, 2N4401, 2N4403, 2N4416, 4N25, 1N4148, 1N4001, 1N4007, etc.) and tools this cost will go down.

The real question is do they assume a general audience or do they assume a "knowledgeable user" is their target market? If the stuff is purely "cookbook" & kit building (AmQRP kits as an example) with little or no encouragement (and knowledge transfer) for the average Make reader to explore and expand it won't survive IMHO. BTW AmQRP kits on their own are pretty limited at expanding your knowledge, but combined with the AMQRP Homebrewer magazine and Conference Proceedings they do teach a lot. There is also the QRP-L mailing list which is very useful for technical questions (and has a rich archive)

I think it should be what Nuts and Volts magazine tries to be, but without the "legacy" dead weight and filler articles. A gentler introduction to most of the Circuit Cellar type stuff.

If people think this will recreate the Homebrew Computer Club, I expect they will be mistaken, but if you expect it to awaken the curiousity and encourage youth to learn about electronics, then I hope it is a brillent success.

In the end, I am curious and not quite sure what to expect of Make. It could be really lame if all it ends up being is computer geeks pretending to be electronic engineers (or electronic hobbyists). I hope that at least 10% of it expands what I know, which is more than I can say of books like Hardware Hacking Projects for Geeks (O'Reilly) and Hardware Hacking: Have Fun While Voiding Your Warranty. I am more interested in reading stuff like Hacking the Xbox (An Introduction to Reverse Engineering) by Andrew "bunnie" Huang which starts simple but gets into FPGAs and reverse engineering.

Anyway, it seems nobody remembers steve, because I expected to see someone here mention how this magazine looks pretty much like a "mainstream" version of Circuit Cellar. The whole "aerial photography with a kite" thing was done AGES ago in that magazine - as well as helium balloons, hot air balloons, rockets and R/C airplanes, helicopters, and cars (and, I believe I recall, even model trains). And "home control" was the project that got steve started on all this way back when. The magazine often cooperates with manufacturers of chips to sponsor design contests, and some really nice projects have evolved from this.

Circuit Cellar does range into more advaced electronic design, but the've done lots of fun and approachable stuff over the years. Back in the early days they did a whole series on making rockets with 2 liter bottles.

/frank

Circuit Cellar is a decent electronics rag. Some of the projects are pretty interesting (and useful). Obviously, this magazine is intended for electronically mature individuals.