In the 80s, one of my favorite pastimes was reading computer magazines. Yes, I was and still am a nerd. I still spend far too much time collecting (and reading) retro magazines.
Today I almost certainly have more retro computer magazines than you do. By my count, I now have nearly 700 issues of various computer magazines from the 70s, 80s and 90s!
Just a small sample of my retro magazine collection!
Looking back at the 80s, it was a great joy to get a magazine in the mail. As a young teenager, I’d grab it and curl up on my bed and read it through, cover-to-cover. In fact, I also often reread magazines several times. Some I’ve read so many times, I know where to find topics and specific articles off the top of my head.
Being an Atari kid, my favorites were Atari magazines, especially Analog and Antic in those early days. Compute! was another one I enjoyed because it covered other computers like the VIC-20, Commodore 64, TI-99/4a, IBM PC and Amiga.
I remember my Dad had subscriptions to ANALOG and Antic, but he would often pick up others magazines at Bookland or Waldenbooks. He flipped through them, but I studied them all. Magazines were the web of the 80s!
I certainly loved hanging out in those book stores and flipping through the dozens of computer magazines that were available. There were just so many choices in the heyday of the 80s.
I’d sometimes buy a copy of Byte if the topics interested me, because at 300-400 pages, it always felt like a great value.
In High School I would even go to the school library to check out copies of Creative Computing magazine!
Later in the 80s we started getting START, ST Log and then Current Notes. Sadly, by the late 80s Atari computer magazines were no longer in normal book stores (at least here in the US). You had to go to an Atari dealer to find them, and there were not many of those, or subscribe.
Both START and Compute!’s Atari ST Disk & Magazine were sold with their companion disk that contained all the programs from the issue. This was a smart move as some early ST magazines would actually print program listings, but that was always a waste of space. 16-bit programs were much longer than the 8-bit BASIC programing listings from the past. No one in their right mind would type in a 10-page C program! Companion disks containing public domain programs were also common with many Atari magazines.
I’ll be writing about my complete collection of START magazines in another post.
I remember going to at least one Atari show in Connecticut in the early 90s. I was amazed at the Atari stuff available to buy, but as you can imagine the magazines would always catch my eye.
Often a booth or two would have tons of magazines I’d never heard of, usually because they were from the UK. Many UK magazines would come with a companion disk that contained older commercial software. Even START did this the last couple years, which is how I got my first exposure to GFA BASIC!
I’ve written a lot about specific magazines and you can find those articles here at Goto 10. This is the full list of magazines I currently have along with links to articles.
The magazine that I have the most issues of is Current Notes (85), followed by ANALOG (79), Antic (74) and Creative Computing (47).
As you can see from the above list, there are plenty of magazines I have that I’ve yet to cover, but I will do so here at Goto 10 so be sure to subscribe!
Of course many of the above magazines are available today as online PDFs (often on the Internet Archive). That’s great from a historical and archival purpose, but I’d rather read the actual magazine instead of a PDF version.
What were your favorite computer magazines, Atari or otherwise? Are there any magazines you suggest I try to find?
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