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 and bugs.
In the 1980s we downloaded games from the radio
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Re: In the 1980s we downloaded games from the radio
#12there was "live streaming" of concerts over special phone lines in the early/mid 1960's
and sending photos over a dot matrix phone line system in the late 1940's
first "drone" flight of an unmaned aircraft, steered by radio control was in the late 19teens
old technical books and album covers, reveal the oddest stuff...
so we are kind of living in an "alternate history"
where everything that could of happened, actualy is happening, all at once, right now
Re: In the 1980s we downloaded games from the radio
#13funny 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…
In the UK transfer to the last wireless transmitter in radio are almost always wired (ISDN or similar back in the 80s). Wireless repeaters were used in the early days of TV, but rare for radio
Re: In the 1980s we downloaded games from the radio
#14I 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…
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 :)
Re: In the 1980s we downloaded games from the radio
#15Here's a personal record of Prof Dr Horst Völz (basically the figure head of East German hobby computing) about his computer radio show which featured such downloads over radio (in German):
https://web.archive.org/web/20250127135637/http://horstvoelz...
The most remarkable detail might be the collaboration across the Iron Curtain with West German and Dutch computer enthusiasts.
Re: In the 1980s we downloaded games from the radio
#16From my subjective experience, having "been there at the time", I think this was sufficiently obscure that "not really a thing" is not an unreasonable take. It's a bit like "Yes, in the 2020s we got NFTs tattooed on our bodies".
Edit: Although having just googled it it seems like NFT tattoos might be more of a thing than I was aware, so what do I know.
Re: In the 1980s we downloaded games from the radio
#17From my subjective experience, having "been there at the time", I think this was sufficiently obscure that "not really a thing" is not an unreasonable take. It's a bit like "Yes, in the 2020s we got NFTs tattooed on our bodies". Edit: Although having just googled it it seems like NFT tattoos might be more of a thing than I was aware, so what do I know.
It was 'big in East Germany' though (see my comment about Prof Dr Horst Voelz). A translated section from that link:
"The response to the show was unexpectedly overwhelming. Over the course of the approximately 60 episodes, the station received a total of approximately 50,000 letters from listeners. This was unprecedented in the history of broadcasting."
...and of course as a teenager I was eagerly awaiting each show and recorded the programs that were broadcasted at the end :)
Re: In the 1980s we downloaded games from the radio
#18I read this is how the CD Projekt Red founders smuggled Western games into the Iron Curtain states. I think it's an urban myth, but separately, the founders smuggled games into the USSR, and some games were smuggled through the radio then.
Re: In the 1980s we downloaded games from the radio
#19The 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 (primitive) BASIC dialect, and where there was a difference, a subroutine was added with a high line number.
E.g. instead of clear screen you would just write GOSUB 100.
There's a user manual here:
https://archive.org/details/BASICODE2Manual/page/n7/mode/2up
Re: In the 1980s we downloaded games from the radio
#20Fun fact: ham radio operators to this day use a similar technique to distribute images - it's called slow scan television.