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Modern Day Equivalent of Byte/Compute! Magazine?

Posted by timothy on from the must-have-tape-drive dept.

MochaMan writes "I grew up in the '80s on a steady diet of Byte and Compute! magazines, banging in page after page of code line by line, and figuring out how sound, graphics, and input devices worked along the way. Since then, the personal computer market has obviously moved away from hobbyists intent on coding and understanding their machines down to the hardware, but I imagine there must still be a market for similar do-it-yourself articles. Perhaps the collective minds of Slashdot can divine some online sources of fun and educational mini-projects like 'write your own assembler' or 'roll your own bootloader.'"

10 of 327 comments (clear)

  1. Circuit Cellar by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    A fantastic hobbyist type magazine. Our community college has a student subscription for it, definitely worth it. Edited by Steve Circia, name should ring a bell!!

    1. Re:Circuit Cellar by LWATCDR · · Score: 5, Informative

      Yep that was number one on my list. You might want to add Nuts and Volts as well.
      Oh and the entire internet for software.
      I really miss Byte :(
      Oh and this as well http://www.chaosmanorreviews.com/

      --
      See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
    2. Re:Circuit Cellar by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Am I the only still buying copies of 2600?

      Am I the only leaving words out of my sentences?

      Oh, I not.

    3. Re:Circuit Cellar by commodore64_love · · Score: 5, Interesting

      You missed a lot of pain in my opinion.

      I remember spending several days typing-in RUN Magazine's "error checking" program into my C64. It ran perfectly. And then several more days typing boring hexadecimal code into that compiler, expecting to get a free word processor called RUNscript. Well the error-checking program said I had typed flawlessly, but the RUNscript still didn't work. So I waited 3 weeks for the next magazine (a long time in the life of a 13 year old), and looked diligently for typos and there were some listed in the "Ooops" column.

      So I had to type in the WHOLE project another time. Several more days of my life. And it was still broke! I then reached into my measly allowance and paid $15 to get the so-called "free" RUNscript word processor on a floppy. As it turned-out it was a worthwhile investment since I used it another 2 years to do homework, until I eventually got the Mac-like GEOS system.

      I learned two valuable lessons:
      (1) It's easier to BUY programs than to type them in yourself (and then have them not work).
      (2) Debugging hexadecimal is a bitch.

      --
      "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
  2. The Internet is this magazine. by vesik · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The Internet is this magazine.

    1. Re:The Internet is this magazine. by Weedhopper · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Ars' Science section is great but aside from the longer technical articles, such as Siracusa's OS X reviews, I get the sense that more and more of their writers are wannabe geeks that like to write about technology but aren't real geeks themselves.

      Lifehacker? Hahaha. Sorry, but I can't take a site whose 30 something founder just put together her first desktop from parts LAST YEAR as a serious tech head's site. Again, this site is about being a fan of geek/nerddom but isn't really run by real geeks and nerds. Take Lifehacker and then take a look at Hackaday. One is a hipster fansite for hacker wannabes and the other actually shows you how to do interesting hacks.

      TomsHardware, don't have any opinion.

      Jerry Pournelle is the shit.
      John C. Dvorak IS shit.

  3. I like this one... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Try looking at http://www.nutsvolts.com/. It has electronic and some programming at very low level.

  4. Arduino by BitZtream · · Score: 5, Informative

    Personally I prefer working with ATmega's directly rather than with Arduino, but ... if you want to futz around and LEARN, Arduino is a good place for it. Lots of tutorials and others willing to help. Lots of neat plugin boards for sensors IO. Lots of choices of example software from FreeRTOS to VGA output on a pin (both of those aren't designed for the arduino framework, but porting them should be rather trivial once you get to the point where you would consider porting them.

    If you're using Windows, I'd suggest just using the AVRstudio from Atmel and WinAVR (GCC for AVR chips if you want to use C/C++ instead of just ASM). You can start with the Arduino development environment and move up later. Its free. The Arduino environment is really just a replacement for your main() with a while(1) loop on the standard AVR toolchain anyway

    Arduino has lots of examples and information, but from a debugging standpoint, its the worst there is.

    AVR Studio from Atmel has a nearly perfect simulator, and if you use something like HAPSIM you can simulate other hardware as well, such as serial ports, buttons, leds and a specific LCD.

    If someone would add some decent debugging abilities to Arduino it'd be a useful development environment for me, but debugging through the simulator might be a little overwhelming for a newbie I guess.

    I used to roll my own boards for ATmegas, now I just use Arduino boards, price is more than the processor, but cheaper than rolling the whole board yourself unless you do it in numbers, the Arduino hardware is the best way to go if you're talking quanities less than 10 for sure, probably cheaper all the way up to the 100s if you're hand assembling.

    --
    Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
  5. Re:Make by TrisexualPuppy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Not anymore. They really dumbed it down over the last couple of years. When you recruit mindless radio DJs like Kipkay to the spotlight, you end up with stuff that might look cool to a twelve-year-old, but to any real hobbyist, it's just a bunch of lame junk like adding a Radio Shack toggle switch to a "radar gun" from Toys "R" Us or "hacking" a 9V battery by cutting it open and removing the AAAA cells. Not to rail on Kipkay because he really doesn't know any better, but Make has really moved to cater to the technically illiterate masses. It's becoming more of a light mods site than an in-depth guide to some really unique projects.

    There's still always 2600, as limited as its scope is...

  6. Re:Make by gunnk · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Wow... I'm going to disagree with you in a big way. The current issue (Make 22) has an in-depth article on converting your lawnmower to RC control. Circuit boards, wiring, assembly... it's a big project but with LOTS of good info to get you there. NOT an overview or a news article. The same is true for the article on hacking wireless power outlets. Then there is the Arduino-powered tweeting cat toy. The physics and construction of double pendulums. How about a sun tracker for solar projects?

    There's a ridiculous amount of great material in that single issue! Not news articles but full, in-depth how-to's. There are some light mods (to borrow your phrase) as well, but many of the projects require a significant investment of time and energy.

    I think Make is a great source for projects. No dumbing down that I see, at least not in the latest issue!

    --
    Life is short: void the warranty.