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by le-mark 439 days ago
Iirc the “gazette” version of Compute! Was focused on Commodore machines, whereas Compute was a polyglot of several popular US machines. Theses magazines were a lifeline to a lot of us in the 80’s pre internet. It reminds me how amazing this age is, with regard to freely available information.
2 comments
pryelluw 439 days ago
Not only information access but the distribution model. In middle school, I had a little side business selling shareware on diskettes. My school had gotten brand spanking new 386/486 machines. My older brother had copied a bunch of games and programs from his friends into a stack of diskettes. I was king and made some good cash. Enough to buy a bike.

I miss physical media.

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massysett 439 days ago
Yes, Gazette was published as a standalone magazine, as COMPUTE’s Gazette. Later, it was published as a supplement to COMPUTE, the main COMPUTE had some Gazette pages printed in the back or something.

I subscribed for at least a few years. I did the type-in programs. I think I got the BASIC ones to work but I never got one of the assembly language ones working. Understandably topping them in did not forgive errors, though each line of assembly came with a checksum, this didn’t save me.

And typing them was mind-numbing besides.

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