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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

#131

Post by nurettin »

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…

The hardest programs to type were in 6502 assembly. One byte mistake and the entire program was botched.

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

#132

Post by kmeisthax »

theginger wrote: post #63

Something I also remember from tv was what I think they called data bursts, at the end of certain TV shows they would play a few seconds of still frames full of information, like flicking through a magazine in 10 seconds. You would record this on a VCR and play it back frame by frame, occasionally it included some computer code to manually type in, it was pretty terrible because paused video frames tended to be a bit…

Datablast, and Tom Scott has a video on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBs_ABt-hRc

It's one of those ideas that makes a whole lot more sense at the broadcast studio where everyone edits on consoles[0] tied to Betacam decks that have exact, to-the-field seek timecodes and stable freeze frame capability. Even a 4-head VCR would utterly ruin it though.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEMdmnNbCZA

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

#133

Post by bitwize »

Some (I want to say mainly British) rock bands even included C64 games on their records.

The cassette interface to old 8-bitters is basically a modem, so you can transmit programs anywhere you can achieve a clear enough audio signal: cassettes, CDs, MP3 players, the radio...

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

#134

Post by rufus_foreman »

tantalor wrote: post #117
aaronbaugher wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After a while, magazines like Commodore Run and Compute started including a short program that would checksum each line as you entered it, so you could check that against a checksum in the magazine. Of course, you had to get that program typed in correctly first before you could use it to enter others.

I'm curious, can you say more about "as you entered it"? Do you mean like, "for lines 1-20 the checksum should be 0xDEADBEEF"? This would let you find the error before finishing the program. Or just at the end, it would checksum the whole thing?

A checksum for each line of code. COMPUTE! magazine used one, the article introducing it and explaining how to use it is at https://archive.org/details/1983-10-computegazette/page/n49/....

The code listings had a comment (rem) at the end of each line with a checksum number, when you used the checksum program it would display a checksum at the top of the screen that would match if you entered the line correctly.

An example page of code with checksums is at https://archive.org/details/1983-10-computegazette/page/146/....

A life changing event for those of us entering code from magazine listings in the early '80s.

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

#136

Post by quenched »

nunez wrote: post #77

Insane that there are people denying that this happened. I wasn't born during this period, but being able to download stuff off of terrestrial radio is completely believable. What do people think Wi-Fi or cellular networks are???

I did this in New Zealand around 1985-6 on Saturday mornings around 930 IIRC. It was recorded onto cassette tape and then loaded into our BBC Micro B. We couldn't afford a disk drive. I can also remember typing in many BASIC programs from magazine listings. That was how we learned.

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

#137

Post by unsui »

aaronbaugher wrote: post #101
jonwinstanley wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The compiler/interpreter couldn’t even tell you what line the error was on! You’d just get a big error message for the whole program.

After a while, magazines like Commodore Run and Compute started including a short program that would checksum each line as you entered it, so you could check that against a checksum in the magazine. Of course, you had to get that program typed in correctly first before you could use it to enter others.

My favorite was the "TYPO II" ("Type Your Program Once") application, which was part of every Antic! Magazine program listing:

https://www.atarimagazines.com/v3n9/TYPOII.html https://www.atarimagazines.com/antic/

This was wrapper around the BASIC interpreter that printed out a 2-character checksum of each entered code line.

The magazine printing also had an associated 2-character checksum for each line. Your job: make sure the checksums matched.

As a teenager who only had cassette-based storage (couldn't afford a disk drive) and was addicted to typing in programs from Antic! and ANALOG magazines, this was a lifesaver.

(ANALOG's checksum program wasn't quite as convenient, and, IIRC, required a disk drive?)

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

#138

Post by ratg13 »

kotor wrote: post #127
mysterydip wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes the typos were in the magazine itself, and you wouldn't figure out the problem with the code you triple-checked you typed in properly until the errata in next month's issue :)

My exact memory. When you did finally get everything correct, the program could take 15 minutes to load from the cassette tape. I remember upgrading my Commodore 64 with a floppy disk and loading programs in 2 minutes (which felt instantaneous by comparison).

I never had a tape deck, and was constantly flustered by “press play on tape” messages.

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

#139

Post by ForOldHack »

kolanos wrote: post #83
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…

Doing this is one of my earliest memories. I think I was 5 or 6. I hadn't even mastered reading yet and I was typing a game into an IBM XT clone (think it was QBasic) one character at a time. Don't think I would have bothered with a tax prep program, though. Now that's dedication. Edit: Could not have been QBasic as it wasn't released until 1991 and I was doing this in 1987-1988. So maybe GW Basic? Whatever came stan…

GW Basic came with DOS, but there was a way to get real BASICA onto a clone, either through ROMS or with a patch.

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

#140

Post by ratg13 »

Tangentially related, Radio Shack had a remote control robot called Robie Sr. You could move him around, turn his eyes on as lights, and make him say whatever you wanted through the remote.

The robot also had a tape deck, and if you hit record on the tape you could later playback the pre-recorded actions for the robot.

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