Tuesday, January 24, 2023

Compute! (May 1981)

Compute! was one of the earliest and longest running multi-format computer magazines published in the U.S. In the early days, it covered the Atari 400/800, Apple II and Commodore PET as well as various kit computers. The May 1981 issue includes:

The Editor's Notes - A look at some of the things seen at the West Coast Computer Faire, including the Votrax Type-'N-Talk text to speech synthesizer, the Commodore Super-PET, A 256K memory expansion from Axlon for the Atari 800, and more.

The Readers' Feedback - Praise for the magazine, small business programs for the Atari, improving magazine distribution, and more.

Computers and Society - Addressing computer phobia.

Computer Aided Instruction, Boon or Bust? - Analyzing the effects of computers in the classroom. Still a novel idea at the time.

They Mysterious and Unpredictable RND - The last part in a series on random numbers. This part presents solutions for finding maximum and minimum numbers in a sample of random numbers, simulating dice rolls and a number of other exercises.

Land of the Lost - A Program For a Cassette Filing System - A type-in menu-driven program to create labels for cassettes (the dominant home computer storage medium of the time).

_{Table of Contents from the May 1981 issue of Compute!}

The Apple Gazette

Using Named GOSUB and GOTO Statements in Applesoft BASIC - A simple way to create named subroutines vs. just using line numbers.

Commas, Colons, and Quote Marks Too - Writing BASIC programs that can accept commas, colons and quotation marks as part of their input.

The Atari Gazette

A Cure for Atari BASIC or, Make Your Atari a Bit Wiser - An assembly language program that adds the ability to do bitwise operations in Atari BASIC.

Copy Your Atari Screen to Your Printer - A short BASIC program that will dump the contents of the screen to a printer.

Hardware Information at Last! - Three new Atari technical manuals, including Atari 400/800 Technical User Notes, Atari 400/800 Operating System, and Atari 400/800 Disk Operating System.

Using Strings for Graphics Storage - A method for using BASIC strings to create graphics on the Atari.

Atari Machine I/O - Three machine language routines for processing input.

The OSI Gazette

Through the Fill-The-Buffer Routine with Gun and Camera - Some technical info on how the "Fill-the-Buffer" routine (FTB) of OS BASIC works.

FOOTU: FOO Revisited - Converting FOO (a racing game for the OSI) to run on OSI systems with BASIC-in-ROM.

The PET Gazette

A Fast Visible Memory Dump - A program for creating a graphical memory dump to a printer.

Machine Language: Getting to the Machine Language Program - Methods for combining BASIC programs with machine language routines.

A Thirteen Line BASIC Delete - A short BASIC program that allows you to delete any group of lines form an existing program.

Calculated Bar-graph Routines on the Pet - How to calculate the length of bars in a bar graph so that they can be properly printed.

The Revised Pet/CBM Personal Computer Guide - A look at the changes in the newest revision of the Osborne/McGraw-Hill Pet/CBM Personal Computer Guide.

The SBC Gazette

Nuts and Volts - Information about building your own microcontrollers.

A Kim-1 Music File in Microsoft Basic: Part 1

New Products - Atari sponsors contest for new software; the BYTEWRITER-1 dot matrix printer from Microtek; Hayes releases the Smartmodem, a 300 baud modem that set the standard for years to come for $279; and more.

_{Back cover of the May 1981 issue of Compute!}

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