COMPUTE!
Encyclopedia
Compute! was an American
computer magazine that was published from 1979 to 1994, though it can trace its origin to 1978 in Len Lindsay's PET Gazette, one of the first magazines for the Commodore PET
computer. In its 1980s heyday Compute! covered all major platforms, and several single-platform spinoffs of the magazine were launched. The most successful of these was Compute!'s Gazette
, catering to Commodore
computer users.
The magazine's original goal was to write about and publish programs for all of the computers that used some version of the MOS Technology 6502
CPU. It started out with the Commodore PET
, Commodore VIC-20
, the Atari 8-bit series
, the Apple II plus, and some 6502-based computers one could build from kits, such as the Rockwell AIM 65, the KIM-1
by MOS Technology
, and others from companies such as Ohio Scientific
. Support for the kit computers and the Commodore PET were eventually dropped. The platforms that became mainstays at the magazine were the Commodore VIC-20, Commodore 64
, Atari 8-bit series
, TI-99/4A
, and the Apple II series. Later on the 6502 platform focus was dropped and IBM PC
, Atari ST series
, and the Commodore Amiga series
computers were added to its line-up.
Compute! also published a very successful line of computer books, many of which consisted of compilations of articles from the magazine.
Most personal computers of the time came with some version of the BASIC
programming language. The magazine often featured type-in program
s written in these versions of BASIC for their respective computers. Machine code
programs were also published, usually for simple video games listed in BASIC DATA statements as hexadecimal
numbers that could be POKE
d into the memory of a home computer
by a 'stub' loader at the beginning of the program. Machine language listings could be entered with a program provided in each issue called MLX (available for Apple II and Commodore hardware, and written in BASIC). Early versions of MLX accepted input in decimal, but this was later changed to the more compact hexadecimal format. It was noted particularly for software such as the multiplatform word processor SpeedScript
, the spreadsheet SpeedCalc, and the game Laser Chess
.
Editors of the magazine included Robert Lock, Richard Mansfield, Charles Brannon, and Tom R. Halfhill. Noted columnists included Jim Butterfield
, educator Fred D'ignazio and science fiction author Orson Scott Card
.
In May 1988, the magazine changed its focus to PCs and PC clones
and dispensed with the type-in listings. During the early 1990s, with the decline of the home computer market in favor of the PC market, Compute! went out of publication for a while until it was sold to General Media, publishers at the time of Omni
and Penthouse
magazines. Ziff Davis
bought Compute!'s assets, including its subscriber list, in 1994. General Media had ceased its publication before the sale.
programming language in North America.
Robert Lock: After Compute! Publications, Lock started another company, Signal Research, which was among the first to publish magazines and books about computer games. He also wrote the book The Traditional Potters of Seagrove, N.C. in 1994, and started Southern Arts Journal a quarterly magazine featuring essays, fiction and poetry about all things Southern, in 2005.
Richard Mansfield: Mansfield has written many books, mostly on Microsoft technologies, including Visual Basic .NET All in One Desk Reference for Dummies, Visual Basic .NET Power Tools, Office 2003 Application Development All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies, Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition For Dummies, and CSS Web Design For Dummies. He also writes occasional pieces for DevX.com. He created much controversy with an article he wrote there called OOP is Much Better in Theory Than in Practice.
Tom R. Halfhill: Halfhill went on to become a senior editor at Byte
. He currently writes for Microprocessor Report and Maximum PC.
David D. Thornburg: Thornburg has continued to work in the field of educational technology and is involved in projects both in the US and Brazil.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
computer magazine that was published from 1979 to 1994, though it can trace its origin to 1978 in Len Lindsay's PET Gazette, one of the first magazines for the Commodore PET
Commodore PET
The Commodore PET was a home/personal computer produced from 1977 by Commodore International...
computer. In its 1980s heyday Compute! covered all major platforms, and several single-platform spinoffs of the magazine were launched. The most successful of these was Compute!'s Gazette
COMPUTE!'s Gazette
COMPUTE!'s Gazette was a computer magazine of the 1980s, directed at users of Commodore's 8-bit home computers. Publishing its first issue in July 1983, the Gazette was a Commodore-only daughter magazine of the computer hobbyist magazine COMPUTE!....
, catering to Commodore
Commodore International
Commodore is the commonly used name for Commodore Business Machines , the U.S.-based home computer manufacturer and electronics manufacturer headquartered in West Chester, Pennsylvania, which also housed Commodore's corporate parent company, Commodore International Limited...
computer users.
The magazine's original goal was to write about and publish programs for all of the computers that used some version of the MOS Technology 6502
MOS Technology 6502
The MOS Technology 6502 is an 8-bit microprocessor that was designed by Chuck Peddle and Bill Mensch for MOS Technology in 1975. When it was introduced, it was the least expensive full-featured microprocessor on the market by a considerable margin, costing less than one-sixth the price of...
CPU. It started out with the Commodore PET
Commodore PET
The Commodore PET was a home/personal computer produced from 1977 by Commodore International...
, Commodore VIC-20
Commodore VIC-20
The VIC-20 is an 8-bit home computer which was sold by Commodore Business Machines. The VIC-20 was announced in 1980, roughly three years after Commodore's first personal computer, the PET...
, the Atari 8-bit series
Atari 8-bit family
The Atari 8-bit family is a series of 8-bit home computers manufactured from 1979 to 1992. All are based on the MOS Technology 6502 CPU and were the first home computers designed with custom coprocessor chips...
, the Apple II plus, and some 6502-based computers one could build from kits, such as the Rockwell AIM 65, the KIM-1
KIM-1
The KIM-1, short for Keyboard Input Monitor, was a small 6502-based single-board computer developed and produced by MOS Technology, Inc. and launched in 1976...
by MOS Technology
MOS Technology
MOS Technology, Inc., also known as CSG , was a semiconductor design and fabrication company based in Norristown, Pennsylvania, in the United States. It is most famous for its 6502 microprocessor, and various designs for Commodore International's range of home computers.-History:MOS Technology, Inc...
, and others from companies such as Ohio Scientific
Ohio Scientific
Ohio Scientific Inc. was a United States computer company that built and marketed computers from the late 1970s to the early 1980s...
. Support for the kit computers and the Commodore PET were eventually dropped. The platforms that became mainstays at the magazine were the Commodore VIC-20, Commodore 64
Commodore 64
The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer introduced by Commodore International in January 1982.Volume production started in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US$595...
, Atari 8-bit series
Atari 8-bit family
The Atari 8-bit family is a series of 8-bit home computers manufactured from 1979 to 1992. All are based on the MOS Technology 6502 CPU and were the first home computers designed with custom coprocessor chips...
, TI-99/4A
Texas Instruments TI-99/4A
The Texas Instruments TI-99/4A was an early home computer, released in June 1981, originally at a price of USD $525. It was an enhanced version of the less-successful—and quite rare—TI-99/4 model, which was released in late 1979 at a price of $1,150...
, and the Apple II series. Later on the 6502 platform focus was dropped and IBM PC
IBM PC
The IBM Personal Computer, commonly known as the IBM PC, is the original version and progenitor of the IBM PC compatible hardware platform. It is IBM model number 5150, and was introduced on August 12, 1981...
, Atari ST series
Atari ST
The Atari ST is a home/personal computer that was released by Atari Corporation in 1985 and commercially available from that summer into the early 1990s. The "ST" officially stands for "Sixteen/Thirty-two", which referred to the Motorola 68000's 16-bit external bus and 32-bit internals...
, and the Commodore Amiga series
Amiga
The Amiga is a family of personal computers that was sold by Commodore in the 1980s and 1990s. The first model was launched in 1985 as a high-end home computer and became popular for its graphical, audio and multi-tasking abilities...
computers were added to its line-up.
Compute! also published a very successful line of computer books, many of which consisted of compilations of articles from the magazine.
Most personal computers of the time came with some version of the BASIC
BASIC
BASIC is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages whose design philosophy emphasizes ease of use - the name is an acronym from Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code....
programming language. The magazine often featured type-in program
Type-in program
A type-in program, or just type-in, is a computer program listing printed in a computer magazine or book, meant to be typed in by the reader in order to run the program on a computer....
s written in these versions of BASIC for their respective computers. Machine code
Machine code
Machine code or machine language is a system of impartible instructions executed directly by a computer's central processing unit. Each instruction performs a very specific task, typically either an operation on a unit of data Machine code or machine language is a system of impartible instructions...
programs were also published, usually for simple video games listed in BASIC DATA statements as hexadecimal
Hexadecimal
In mathematics and computer science, hexadecimal is a positional numeral system with a radix, or base, of 16. It uses sixteen distinct symbols, most often the symbols 0–9 to represent values zero to nine, and A, B, C, D, E, F to represent values ten to fifteen...
numbers that could be POKE
PEEK and POKE
In computing, PEEK is a BASIC programming language extension used for reading the contents of a memory cell at a specified address. The corresponding command to set the contents of a memory cell is POKE.-Statement syntax:...
d into the memory of a home computer
Home computer
Home computers were a class of microcomputers entering the market in 1977, and becoming increasingly common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as affordable and accessible computers that, for the first time, were intended for the use of a single nontechnical user...
by a 'stub' loader at the beginning of the program. Machine language listings could be entered with a program provided in each issue called MLX (available for Apple II and Commodore hardware, and written in BASIC). Early versions of MLX accepted input in decimal, but this was later changed to the more compact hexadecimal format. It was noted particularly for software such as the multiplatform word processor SpeedScript
SpeedScript
SpeedScript was a type-in word processor for various home computers. Approximately 5 KB in length, it provided many of the same features as commercial word processing packages of the early 8-bit era, such as Easy Script and Bank Street Writer....
, the spreadsheet SpeedCalc, and the game Laser Chess
Laser Chess
Laser Chess first appeared in Compute!'s Atari ST Disk & Magazine in 1987, written in Modula-2. It won the $5,000 first prize in a programming competition held by the magazine...
.
Editors of the magazine included Robert Lock, Richard Mansfield, Charles Brannon, and Tom R. Halfhill. Noted columnists included Jim Butterfield
Jim Butterfield
-External links:* * featuring Brad Templeton, Jim Butterfield, and Steve Punter** * * , previous unpublished, presented by the Personal Computer Museum, Brantford, Ontario...
, educator Fred D'ignazio and science fiction author Orson Scott Card
Orson Scott Card
Orson Scott Card is an American author, critic, public speaker, essayist, columnist, and political activist. He writes in several genres, but is primarily known for his science fiction. His novel Ender's Game and its sequel Speaker for the Dead both won Hugo and Nebula Awards, making Card the...
.
In May 1988, the magazine changed its focus to PCs and PC clones
IBM PC compatible
IBM PC compatible computers are those generally similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT. Such computers used to be referred to as PC clones, or IBM clones since they almost exactly duplicated all the significant features of the PC architecture, facilitated by various manufacturers' ability to...
and dispensed with the type-in listings. During the early 1990s, with the decline of the home computer market in favor of the PC market, Compute! went out of publication for a while until it was sold to General Media, publishers at the time of Omni
Omni (magazine)
OMNI was a science and science fiction magazine published in the US and the UK. It contained articles on science fact and short works of science fiction...
and Penthouse
Penthouse (magazine)
Penthouse, a men's magazine founded by Bob Guccione, combines urban lifestyle articles and softcore pornographic pictorials that, in the 1990s, evolved into hardcore. Penthouse is owned by FriendFinder Network. formerly known as General Media, Inc. whose parent company was Penthouse International...
magazines. Ziff Davis
Ziff Davis
Ziff Davis Inc. is an American publisher and Internet company. It was founded in 1927 in Chicago by William B. Ziff, Sr. and Bernard G. Davis. Throughout most of its history, it was a publisher of hobbyist magazines, often ones devoted to expensive, advertiser-rich hobbies such as cars,...
bought Compute!'s assets, including its subscriber list, in 1994. General Media had ceased its publication before the sale.
Where are they now?
Len Lindsay: Lindsay went on to found the COMAL User's Group, which promoted the COMALCOMAL
COMAL is a computer programming language developed in Denmark by Benedict Løfstedt and Børge R. Christensen in 1973.The "COMAL 80 PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE REPORT" contains the formal definition of the language.- Design :...
programming language in North America.
Robert Lock: After Compute! Publications, Lock started another company, Signal Research, which was among the first to publish magazines and books about computer games. He also wrote the book The Traditional Potters of Seagrove, N.C. in 1994, and started Southern Arts Journal a quarterly magazine featuring essays, fiction and poetry about all things Southern, in 2005.
Richard Mansfield: Mansfield has written many books, mostly on Microsoft technologies, including Visual Basic .NET All in One Desk Reference for Dummies, Visual Basic .NET Power Tools, Office 2003 Application Development All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies, Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition For Dummies, and CSS Web Design For Dummies. He also writes occasional pieces for DevX.com. He created much controversy with an article he wrote there called OOP is Much Better in Theory Than in Practice.
Tom R. Halfhill: Halfhill went on to become a senior editor at Byte
Byte (magazine)
BYTE magazine was a microcomputer magazine, influential in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s because of its wide-ranging editorial coverage...
. He currently writes for Microprocessor Report and Maximum PC.
David D. Thornburg: Thornburg has continued to work in the field of educational technology and is involved in projects both in the US and Brazil.
Sources
- Tom Halfhill's web site
- Correction - Ziff buys Compute assets -- Newsbytes News Network, August 10, 1994