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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

#51

Post by krige »

coreyh14444 wrote: post #11

I definitely had cassette based games on the TRS-80, but most of the "wireless" transmission in my youth was via BASIC printed in the back of computer magazines. You had to type in the entire app yourself. I did this for basically every app they listed. Sometimes it was like tax prep software, but I didn't care, even though I was like 9 at the time. Yes, it took a very long time. Yes, you could easily introduce typos…

Oh god yes

And that in the era when you could see not much of your code all at once, and trying to catch the issue with LIST was a pain too

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

#52

Post by kragen »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #42

We also downloaded software from our TV's in the UK via the BBC micro's Prestel adaptor. A much more mainstream way of sharing software was source code listings - typically BASIC - in magazines like Dr. Dobbs, that you would type in yourself. I wonder how many of today's youth are also aware of the bulletin board systems (BBS) that existed pre-internet - standalone servers that you would connect to via modem to socia…

BBSes postdated internets (at the time often "catenets"), though only by a few years. They were just open to more people for a long time.

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

#53

Post by atoav »

I know audio gear that does firmware updates via audio input.

The most obscure thing I have ever seen is a device that received firmware updates by strobing the bits as light into a photodiode. You would go to a website on your phone, press upload and hold the phone in front of the thing.

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

#54

Post by lemonad »

Same in Sweden! One of the public radio channels (P2) had some nighttime shows with Commodore 64 programs. I can't remember if it was purely BASIC programs or just loaders using data statements for machine code. Seems really impractical now but back then everyone was using cassette tapes to record music from the radio and the C64 had a cassette deck to load software, so it worked quite well. Except that they, as far as I remember, did not use compression so most programs took ages to broadcast.

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

#55

Post by Sharlin »

Svip wrote: post #10
uneventual wrote: post #2

funny to think that there was a blip of people downloading software over the radio in the 80s, then the internet happened and it was all over hardwire, and now virtually all software is downloaded over the radio again

Even if most devices receive data wirelessly these days, the transfer to its last wireless transmitter will be almost entirely wired. Mobile masts are wired, wireless routers are wired, and so on. That being said, consumer devices are but a part of the much larger group of digital devices connected to the internet in some fashion, and a lot of them remains wired to the internet. "Virtually all software" being downloa…

Microwave links used to be used to transmit TV, calls and data before fibre became commonplace. Presumably also radio for nationwide stations at least.

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

#56

Post by Marazan »

bpoyner wrote: post #25

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 o…

That's what you get for using an inferior machine. Spectrum users had no such problem.

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

#57

Post by llm_nerd »

coreyh14444 wrote: post #11

I definitely had cassette based games on the TRS-80, but most of the "wireless" transmission in my youth was via BASIC printed in the back of computer magazines. You had to type in the entire app yourself. I did this for basically every app they listed. Sometimes it was like tax prep software, but I didn't care, even though I was like 9 at the time. Yes, it took a very long time. Yes, you could easily introduce typos…

My older brother would type in games on the Atari 400 from magazines like Compute! The 400 had a brutal membrane keyboard, and we had no storage so you could then enjoy it until the device powered down and then that work was lost.

The computer was half a decade old at this point but we were poor so it was pretty great to us.

After he finished hours of typing in a game, he called my friend and I to see the magic of first run. My friend, having never seen the 400 before, pops open the cartridge cover to see what's in there, which is an action that powers off the computer.

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

#58

Post by CakeEngine »

Also in the 80s we (by which I mean other people), downloaded software from the television by sticking an LDR to the screen whilst a dot flashed black and white during the duration of a programme. A program from a programme.

I remember see the dot a few times, but it was probably very short lived.

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

#59

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

kragen wrote: post #52
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #42

We also downloaded software from our TV's in the UK via the BBC micro's Prestel adaptor. A much more mainstream way of sharing software was source code listings - typically BASIC - in magazines like Dr. Dobbs, that you would type in yourself. I wonder how many of today's youth are also aware of the bulletin board systems (BBS) that existed pre-internet - standalone servers that you would connect to via modem to socia…

BBSes postdated internets (at the time often "catenets"), though only by a few years. They were just open to more people for a long time.

BBS had been available from late 70's - initially using acoustic couplers rather than modems. The internet (as distinct from ARPANET) wasn't created until early 80's, and what most people today think of as the internet - the WWW - wasn't publicly available until the early 90's.
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