Compute Magazine, 1979-1994

Last Updated on July 3, 2025 by Dave Farquhar

Approximately 45 years ago, one of my favorite computer magazines of all time, Compute!, was born. Its first issue was dated Fall 1979, was printed in October, and reached reader’s hands in late October or early November.

Origins of Compute! magazine

Compute! started as a quarterly newsletter in 1978 covering the Commodore PET computer. Its original name was the PET Gazette. PET Gazette proved to be very popular, and too much work for its founder, Len Lindsay, to handle on his own. He ended up selling the PET Gazette, and the new owners decided to expand it into a more general purpose magazine, initially covering all 6502-based computers, which included Commodore, Apple, Atari, and some kit computers. Later the kit computers were dropped in favor of the TI-99/4A and IBM PC, and by mid-decade, it was covering the Atari ST and Amiga, pushing aside more of the 8-bit coverage.

The mix of content resembled Creative Computing, but it focused on the more popular computers of the era. If you are looking for contemporary accounts of underground computers, Creative Computing is a better place to look. But to see what the mainstream computer media was saying about popular computers, reading the pages of Compute! isn’t a bad approach at all.

Starting a general purpose computer magazine in 1979 may not seem in retrospect like the best idea. It was already a pretty crowded market. Compute distinguished itself by publishing very ambitious type-in programs. I always thought its editorial content was a step below magazines like Creative Computing or Byte. It’s not that the articles were bad, but the type-in programs outshone the articles. And it wouldn’t surprise me if some people didn’t read the articles.

But it was successful. Its largest issue ever was its December 1983 issue, a hefty 398 pages long.

Diversification

In May 1983, ABC Publishing acquired Compute! for $18 million. Later that year, ABC started launching specialized magazines under the Compute! name to cover Commodore, Apple II, the IBM PC, and later, the Atari ST and Amiga. They followed essentially the same formula, but if you bought one of the specialized magazines, you didn’t have to worry about the most interesting type-in program from that month not running on the particular computer you owned. Their magazine for Commodores even reused the Gazette name.

The formula worked well for most of the decade. The specialized magazines did even better, because they didn’t have to worry about a particularly ambitious type in only applying to 25% of its readership. By mid-decade, they were generally publishing one or two type in programs a year that rivaled commercial software quality. Some of these programs took a long time to type in, so they started offering a disk subscription, containing all of the programs from the month’s magazine, sometimes with some bonus content. Rhett Anderson, the former associate editor of Gazette, said in 2019:

When I was at COMPUTE! we were at one time the largest buyer of 5 1/4″ floppy disks in the world, and suppliers courted us aggressively. This was due to the incredible popularity of the [monthly] COMPUTE! disks and especially the COMPUTE!’s Gazette disk.

I think that as we published more and more assembly language programs, fewer and fewer people wanted to type in the programs. After all, you’d learn a lot typing in BASIC programs, but I don’t think anyone learned anything typing in MLX-formatted programs.

I speak only for myself, but I typed in more than one of those MLX-formatted programs. The best was a game called Crossroads. But I did tire of typing in really long programs in that format. A year later when they published a sequel, I bought the disk.

Sale to General Media in 1990

But as interest in 8-bit computers waned toward the end of the decade, Compute‘s fortunes sunk along with it it. Compute‘s owner, Capital Cities/ABC, decided to divest of its computer publications. In May 1990 they sold Compute! to General Media. One of General Media’s publications, Omni, billed itself as covering science fact and fiction, but it was also heavy on conspiracy. Omni would have fit in alongside Wayne Green‘s magazines after he gave up on computer magazines, but it was a bit odd as a sister publication for Compute. Everything else they published, well, that’s a story for someone else to tell.

General Media’s approach to Compute when they relaunched it with the October 1990 issue was to consolidate everything back into a single magazine, but with a twist. The main magazine consisted of general interest computing and PC coverage. In the center of the magazine, they included a supplement, around 40 pages long, dedicated to another platform, either the C-64/128 or Amiga. When you subscribed, you selected which additional platform you wanted.

It was also possible to get what Compute called its multi-user edition, which contained both supplements. I never saw this in person, but have seen examples on eBay. Compute discontinued Amiga coverage in March 1991, and Commodore coverage in December 1993 moved to digital distribution on floppy disk.

This incarnation survived a month shy of 4 years. I am personally attached to it, because my first paid publication happened in Compute. But even though General Media-era Compute paid me money and put my name in print, I think Compute! was better in its Capital Cities/ABC days.

The final issue was September 1994, issue number 168. After that issue, General Media pulled the plug and sold Compute to Ziff Davis, who discontinued it. When Ziff Davis purchased Compute, they offered former Compute subscribers a choice of several Ziff Davis magazines to fill out their subscription. Computer Shopper and PC Magazine were not among the choices they offered. I selected PC Computing.

Dave Farquhar

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.