Chips 'n Bits Magazine

Chips ‘n Bits magazine was started by Christopher Davidson in October 1992 as a BBS user subscription newsletter that BBS Sysops could send to their users.

Chris Davidson approached Tom Koltai of Kakadu Konnection BBS (FIDO 3:850/111) and asked him to subscribe to the newsletter for his BBS subscribers. Koltai responded that if he wanted to tell his users something – then the BBS would do it. However, if the Newsletter was turned into a magazine then it would teach persons who were not BBS users about BBS’s.

So Davidson and Koltai turned out the first copy of Chips ‘n Bits Magazine which was 16 pages of A5 sized content printed on a manually fed Canon photocopier with spot colour red and blue. They created 200 initial copies and stapled them by hand. Davidson delivered them into the Darwin Newsagency in Smith Street where Koltai had organized for distribution of a few copies – to see how it would go. They rang the next day – could we give them another two hundred please – they were sold out and receiving phone calls from Katherine and Alice Springs for copies.

The magazine had regular columns written by contributors from all over the world. It regularly included content from Fidonet including Random Access Humor (RAH)written by Dave Bealer A listing of Australian and New Zealand BBS'es A monthly update of the K12 educational network and interviews with industry bodies like Austel. Chips and Bits introduced Australians to the commercial Internet by advising which BBS'es had Internet access and how to use the various internet tools like Telnet, FTP, Gopher and Veronica.

The magazine by the 5th issue was available in New Zealand and by issue 7 Malaysia and Singapore. Distributed by Gordon & Gotch, it achieved a 76% sell through rate.

Koltai left the magazine after issue 7 and Chips and Bits continued for another eight months until it was closed due to Davidson’s ill health.

In its short lifespan, Chips ‘n Bits was purchased by 213,000 readers in six countries.