_{Cover of the October 1986 issue of Byte}

Byte was perhaps the best computer magazine throughout most of its life. It tended to be a bit more technical that most and continued to cover non-IBM compatible systems longer that most multi-format magazines survived. The October 1986 issue includes:

Features

Product Preview: The Apple II GS - A detailed first look at Apple's 16-bit successor to the Apple II line.

Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar: Build an Intelligent Serial EPROM Programmer - A hardware project that allows you to program your own EPROMs.

Programming Project: Safe Storage Allocation - Various methods of safely allocating and de-allocating memory.

Sound and the Amiga - A detailed look at sound and memory usage on the Amiga.

Programming Insight: A Useful Property of 2 - Using powers of 2 to increase available user flags.

_{Table of Contents from the October 1986 issue of Byte}

Theme: Public Domain Powerhouses

PD Prolog - A look at a public domain Prolog implementation.

An Icon Tutorial - ICON is a high-level general-purpose programming language that emphasizes nonnumeric computation. Apparently it wasn't very successful...at least I have never heard of it.

Enhanced Console Driver - A replacement for ANSI.SYS designed for creating a more user-friendly interface for DOS.

Abundance - A public domain database language.

Z80MU - An emulator for the Zilog Z80 and CP/M 2.2.

CP/M Hall of Fame - An overview of some of the best CP/M software.

Reviews

The Commodore Amiga - A detailed review of the Commodore Amiga which would later be known as the Amiga 1000.

The Compaq Portable II - A suitcase style 286 based portable computer with as similar design as the original Compaq Portable.

Four 1/4-inch Tape Backup Units - Reviews of various tape backup drives including the QIC-60, Smart QIC-File, FT-60, TG-4060, and Videotrax.

muLISP-86 - A customizable LISP implementation with an optional compiler.

ITC's Modula-2 Software Development System - A Modula-2 compiler and editor package for PCs. This would be called an IDE today though it is certainl less integrated than a modern IDE.

Microsoft Word Version 3.0 - The latest version (at the time) of Microsoft Word.

The Norton Utilities PC Tools And Super Utility - I'm not familiar with versions of Norton Utilities quite this early but by the Windows 3.1 era, this was really indispensable software.

_{Table of Contents from the October 1986 issue of Byte (continued)}

Kernel

Computing At Chaos Manor: The Show Goes On? - A disappointing National Computer Conference and discussions of various products including Aegis Images, FancyWord, Gator S/20, Geometry, MacSpin, Norton Commander, Ready!, ScenicWriter, Turbo Prolog, Wilderness, Word Finder, Z-181 Portable Computer, and more.

According to Webster: Bit by Bit: Putting It Together - A look at the product of the month, Advanced Trace86, a tool for 8088 assembly language programming.

Applications Only: Shareware - A look at some of the latest and greatest shareware including Recall, TSRCOM, Pibterm, ProComm, Qmodem, and PC-Shell.

BYTE Japan: Taiwan's Computex 1986 - A look at inexpensive Taiwanese PC clones.

BYTE U.K.: BASIC to C - A project for translating BASIC programs into C.

Editorial: Signs of Vitality - Some signs of renewed vitality in the desktop market include trends toward open hardware including in the new Apple IIGS, the introduction of the 80386, upcoming 68020 based Macs and Amigas, and more.

Microbytes - Optical logic device from Bell Labs; Softguard VM OS for the 80386; improved Amiga chips; MIT's media lab produces computer generated holographic image; and more.

Letters - Letters from readers about the mathematics of programming and music, updates for ATOMCC, horizontal sync on the Atari ST, and more.

What's New - A brief look at new products including five new Tandy machines (1000 HL, 1000 EX, 1000 SX, 3000 HL, and Color Computer 3), the PAL System Amiga expansion chassis, token ring networks from 3Com, and more.