I pirated music from the radio too!
In the 1980s we downloaded games from the radio
31–40 of 153 posts
Re: In the 1980s we downloaded games from the radio
#32This 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 o…
The beeb could do 1200 baud. I'm pretty sure you could load any game in 5 minutes. A 7 minute tape could hold 64KB.
Wikipedia says the Spectrum could do even better.
Re: In the 1980s we downloaded games from the radio
#33I 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.
[deleted]
Re: In the 1980s we downloaded games from the radio
#34I really thought this was widely known... https://hackaday.com/2024/05/09/the-zx-spectrum-takes-to-the...
Re: In the 1980s we downloaded games from the radio
#35I 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 b…
Also in the UK.
Ceefax provided various programs for the BBC Micro. Or more generally https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telesoftware
Re: In the 1980s we downloaded games from the radio
#36This 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 o…
That's why you needed it saved with Turbo. it was at least 10 times faster.. I used to have this cartridge... besides turbo it had some more things, it could grab a hardcopy of memory (ie if you were playing a game.. you could save it... and then load it later, it would be in the same state)
https://www.ami64.com/product-page/kcs-power-cartridge-c64
See also https://sqlservercode.blogspot.com/2016/11/what-was-first-co...
Re: In the 1980s we downloaded games from the radio
#37Fun fact: ham radio operators to this day use a similar technique to distribute images - it's called slow scan television.
Also check out rtty and FT8/FT4 for those interested in other "digital over analog" modes.
Bell 202 lives on as well: https://www.windytan.com/2014/02/mystery-signal-from-helicop...
In this case, continuous GPS coordinates are sent on one audio channel while the other channel is voice.
Re: In the 1980s we downloaded games from the radio
#38In Brazil, during the 80s there was a service called "telegame". A user could use an Atari 2600 cartridge connected to a modem to download games from a catalogue of 150 diferente games.
Re: In the 1980s we downloaded games from the radio
#39I played games on a Commodore 64 from cassette tapes, in principal you could record games onto a blank cassette but it was very flaky. Good times though.
I did this all the time... even used a double cassette deck to make copies... azimuth was the problem if the heads were aligned different.. so you used a small screwdriver and the top of the cassette had a small opening, this is where you had to align the heads by listening till it didn't sound distorted.. fun times
See also https://sqlservercode.blogspot.com/2016/11/what-was-first-co...
Re: In the 1980s we downloaded games from the radio
#40Minimodem with and without Icecast can do today. But better if you share small games like the ZMachine ones.