My hubby starting subscribing with issue #1... and before that he had a few issues of Computing 73. The latter being an off shoot of magazine for ham radio.
Before computers came around he was into ham radio... but truly only building the equipment. He was a shy nerd and did not like talking to strangers, so he was very very glad when computers came around. As a college student he spent his extra change buying parts for his first homebrew computer... including coming home with a blank keyboard circuit board and a paper bag of blank keys. I used to have to climb over a box of parts to my side of the bed in that tiny apartment.
His first homebrew used CPM and had an 8" floppy drive. He drove me nuts nipping out the access hole in the case, and then went and ruined one of my glass baking pans to etch a board.
The last computer he built is what he is on now... and it drove him nuts because the first hard drive he tried to install was bad. He almost built me a system, we got all the way through Fry's with a cart full of parts --- until we realized that for the same amount we could get an already built machine for the same cost and less headache (I got a refurbished HP).
In my basement is a large plastic box full of electronic bits and pieces that he will not let me throw away. It has a couple of very large capacitors, at least one blank board... and lots of different colored wires that I have snuck out of it to put on a robot costume.
Also in our basement is 10 years worth of Byte starting at issue #1, he stopped subscribing years ago.
Along with a bunch of other magazines he now gets (EE Times, C/C++, MSDN, etc, most of which are free)... dear hubby subscribes to the Langalist, which I believe he told me was from a former Byte contributer.
