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In the 1980s we downloaded games from the radio

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Re: In the 1980s we downloaded games from the radio

#21

Post by vatys »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #3

I remember here on HN reading about some vinyl which had either software or games on from the 80s but I dont recall the artist, so this doesnt sound too far from that for me.

Much later in the year 2000 there was the 8-Bit Construction Set record: http://www.beigerecords.com/products/beg-004.html

It had Atari and Commodore music (as audio) as well as Atari and Commodore software (as data).

Despite the claim on their old page to be the “first use of vinyl for software distribution” they did later acknowledge and reference some prior art in a Slashdot thread: https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=140154&threshold=-1&com...

Re: In the 1980s we downloaded games from the radio

#22

Post by robertpnl »

ochrist wrote: post #19

The transmissions from NOS in The Netherlands could be received here in Denmark, and I actually succeeded in downloading several programs based on the BASICODE 2 standard. At that time (eighties), people had all sorts of home computers, but this way we could actually run the same programs, whether you had a BBC computer, a ZX81 or one of the many other brands. The way it worked was that the programs used a common (pr…

Here is an example of the sound that was heard on the radio for approximately 2 to 3 minutes that was broadcasted on the Dutch radio. https://on.soundcloud.com/QAUa2Kkgef1gDxDQ6

Re: In the 1980s we downloaded games from the radio

#24

Post by DeathArrow »

I was born in 1980 in an Eastern European country. You could download games and software from TV, too. Provided you had the hardware to run them.

In 1986, a friend of my father, who was a computer science teacher, showed me a ZX Spectrum clone built using a Z80 CPU clone, he used at high school to teach kids.

But it wasn't until I was 10 or 11 years old, after the fall of the communist regime my parents afforded to buy me a ZX Spectrum clone, when kids in other countries already used IBM compatible PCs.

I still have fond memories of it, it was the computer where I first tried to program, typing BASIC commands from books.

Re: In the 1980s we downloaded games from the radio

#25

Post by bpoyner »

This is great and I believe it. But saying your game would be loaded "after a few minutes" might be true for a small game. I had the Commodore 1541 floppy drive while my friend had the Commodore Datasette. The speed difference between these were huge. The floppy drive was around 300 bytes per second while the tape drive was around 50 bytes per second (3KB/minute). We would literally go outside to play while waiting on the tape drive.

Re: In the 1980s we downloaded games from the radio

#27

Post by seba_dos1 »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #3

I remember here on HN reading about some vinyl which had either software or games on from the 80s but I dont recall the artist, so this doesnt sound too far from that for me.

1987 LP "Poniżej krytyki" of a Polish synth-pop group Papa Dance had a ZX Spectrum quiz game about the band on it. I actually have a copy of it. Pretty sure that wasn't the first such record in general, but it likely was the first one in Poland.

https://www.discogs.com/release/631562-Papa-Dance-Poni%C5%BC...

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