Start: https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1984-08/page/n137/...
Continuation: https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1984-08/page/n405/...
Results: https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1984-08/page/n411/...
Compuserve's CB Simulator sounds like it must've been awesome!
I wished they would of had more UNIX in the issues, however it was usually unaffordable. But a fun look, at least for me, to the history of computing. And who does not like an ad for a 8MB, $3999 disk drive subsystem.
Byte almost was reverse Playboy: you almost didn’t read it for the articles.
Steve Ciarcia
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Ciarcia
His BYTE electronics DIY project articles in his Circuit Cellar column were so well-written that I used to enjoy browsing them even though I'm not an electronics guy, gleaning what I could about the topic. He even did one about a 32-bit computer, when 8 and 16 bits were still the standard! The Definicon motherboard/CPU, I think it was about.
Magazine ads where the way to get targeted views.
Those ads were unbelievably lucrative. Each page cost thousands of dollars, and there were hundreds and hundreds of them, plus smaller classifieds. Freelancers were paid fairly generously, but that outgoing was a drop in the ocean compared to the monthly ad income. Byte was posting profits of around $10m/year in the 80s.
Edit to add: many readers saw the ads as informative rather than intrusive and distracting. This was partly because many were creative and fun, but also because they went into far more technical detail than you'd see today, so they were almost a supplement to the official written copy.