Byte vol.8 №7 July 1983

Themes
40 Videotex Brings the World to Your Doorstep by Rich Malloy / Essentially an enhancement of existing technologies, videotex will bring into your home or place of business a host of services and conveniences, such as shopping and banking. Videotex’s potential is enormous, but a few problems must be worked out before it reaches the mass market. Our theme articles address some of these problems and look at the possibilities videotex presents.
42 Videotex: Science Fiction or Reality? by Darby Miller I An overview of the fledgling videotex industry.
60 Prestel: The Basis of an Evolving Videotex System by Graham Hudson I The pioneering videotex system is flexible enough to adopt anticipated technological advances.
82 NAPLPS Standard Graphics and the Microcomputer by Leo Lax and Mark Olson / The authors discuss incentives for adopting the NAPLPS standard and what NAPLPS means for microcomputer users.
96 Privacy and Videotex Systems by Richard M. Neustadt I The potential for abusing personal information is that much greater with two-way systems.
104 Graphics Artistry On Line by Martin Nisenholtz / The Telidon videotex workshop from the National Endowment for the Arts explores a new medium for artistic expression.
114 Commentary: Personal Computers and Videotex by Rich Malloy I The different worlds of personal computers and videotex complement each other in exciting ways.
Features
26 Build the RTC-4 Real-Time Controller by Steve Ciarcia IA 4-bit single-chip microcomputer from Texas Instruments comes preprogrammed for timed automatic control.
1 30 The Microsoft Mouse by Chris Peters / Someone let the mouse out of the bag. 147 Benchmarking the Intel 8086 and 8088 by Gregg Williams I The 8086 is faster than the 8088, but there’s more than execution speed to consider when selecting a computer.
166 Vlsl On’s Interface Design by Dr. George Woodmansee I Design philosophy behind Visicorp’s integrated software.
186 Voice Lab, Part 1: A System for Digital Speech Synthesis and Analysis by John E. Hoot I Modular routines make this speech synthesis and analysis system useful for application programming and experimentation.
210 Parallel I/O Ports for H-89 Computers by Ronald LaClaustra I You can add 64 input/output ports plus a Centronics-type printer interface to your Heath-/Zenith-89 computer.
266 The Touch of Color by David M. Dacus I Add a new. inexpensive keyboard to Radio Shack’s Color Computer.
286 BYTE West Coast: Improving the User Interface at Digital Research by Phil Lemmons and Barbara Robertson / Digital Research’s vice-president of Commercial Systems Divison, Gordon Eubanks, describes three different general approaches that his company is taking to improve the user interface.