There were, and still are, a number of magazines in the electronics industry, EDN, for example, that were available for free to engineers that were 75% ads with a few articles. The publishers and advertisers expected the articles to draw the engineers who would be the ones to spec components for their current designs.
replyEDN - Voice of the Engineer
https://www.edn.com
Electronic Design News (EDN) is an electronics community for engineers, by engineers.
Find the latest articles, magazines, tools, and blogs in the industry.
replyI like their tear downs of electronic equipment. https://www.edn.com/category/design/under-the-hood-teardown/...
Sadly Internet archive does not have a complete collection of old EDN magazines ....
Then there was computer shopper...man I'd get 8 months out of one of those just paging through and dreaming
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