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40 years later, a game for the ZX Spectrum will be again broadcast over FM radio

racunalniski-muzej.si

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Re: 40 years later, a game for the ZX Spectrum will be again broadcast over FM radio

#21

Post by flohofwoe »

pjmlp wrote: post #15

If I remeber correctly BBC also used to do this back in the day.

Also in East Germany, initiated by Prof. Horst Voelz (who was kind of a computer celebrity back then, basically the East German Konrad Zuse or Alan Turing).

Interestingly there was a cooperation with computer enthusiasts from the Netherlands which led to the adaption of the Dutch BASICODE standard in East Germany.

Also see (apologies for German link, but I guess machine translation will work well):

https://web.archive.org/web/20181107231024/http://r-h-voelz....

Re: 40 years later, a game for the ZX Spectrum will be again broadcast over FM radio

#22

Post by overlord_tm »

rwmj wrote: post #8

For those far away from Slovenia, is the broadcast available over the internet (I know, I know)? This link says it's not available because of "regional restrictions": https://tunein.com/radio/Radio-Student-893-s25182/ Edit: Found a working link: https://onlineradiobox.com/si/tudent/?cs=si.tudent&played=1

You can also listen to stream directly on website https://radiostudent.si/

Re: 40 years later, a game for the ZX Spectrum will be again broadcast over FM radio

#23

Post by theblazehen »

Angostura wrote: post #16

I fondly remember the Pete Shelley album “XL-1” which had a final track that contained a spectrum program. You dropped the needle on the record and pressed ‘Run’ simultaneously and it would display an animated set of patterns in sync with the music - and the song lyrics

For those curious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhKQy580STQ

Re: 40 years later, a game for the ZX Spectrum will be again broadcast over FM radio

#24

Post by zerkten »

darreninthenet wrote: post #18
pjmlp wrote: post #15

If I remeber correctly BBC also used to do this back in the day.

The BBC version was a small square of "static" broadcast in the corner of the closing credits of the Micro Show and you put and square plastic box (you could get from the show, I can't remember if you had to pay for them or not) with a light sensor over that "static" square and run the special software which take the data and save it as a file. It wasn't terribly reliable but it was an interesting experiment by the B…

Does the BBC still have people in place doing experiments and R&D? I recall at one point they were researching/experimenting with audio codecs. I imagine this has taken a hit with funding cuts and general short-sightedness back home.

Re: 40 years later, a game for the ZX Spectrum will be again broadcast over FM radio

#26

Post by vasac »

markostamcar wrote: post #5
grujicd wrote: post #2

This triggers a lot of nostalgic feelings. We also had that in Belgrade during 80s, in a radio show hosted by late Zoran Modli. I even recorded some of emmited games although I didn't have a computer at a time. Access to software, music, or any kind of information was hard, slow, and limited back then. Hats off to Žiga Turk and Moj Mikro magazine. That one along with Svet Kompjutera and Računari was the main source o…

Nostalgic feelings is what we have been going for. We have a large amount of (also scanned) issues of Slovenian and ex-Yu magazines in our collection: https://zbirka.racunalniski-muzej.si/revije/

Eh, I had all the issues of Moj Mikro while they were publishing in Serbo-Croatian, as well as all the issues of Svet Kompjutera, Računari, and PC until around 2007-2008 (Računari ceased publishing a few years later). They were all carefully packed in the basement until my mother decided to throw them all away, as who needs old stuff?

And I was planning to spend my retirement days playing with the ZX Spectrum and reading stuff that I immensely enjoyed as a kid. Tough luck :)

Re: 40 years later, a game for the ZX Spectrum will be again broadcast over FM radio

#27

Post by Jolter »

dj_gitmo wrote: post #25

Was cassette tape storage more common in Europe than the U.S? I’m too young to have been around for this era, but I’ve just never seen it over here.

The Apple II was the more dominant 8-bit micro in the US. My impression is that most owners got a disk drive. Probably because the Apple II’s disk drive was a marvel of engineering, being both cheap and fast. Meanwhile, the C64 had a drive that was very expensive and very slow, and hence most Commodore owners would just use the included cassette player.

Perhaps it was similar with the Spectrum?

It also makes some sense that users in the East Bloc would have trouble affording expensive hardware.

Re: 40 years later, a game for the ZX Spectrum will be again broadcast over FM radio

#28

Post by noneeeed »

zerkten wrote: post #24
darreninthenet wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The BBC version was a small square of "static" broadcast in the corner of the closing credits of the Micro Show and you put and square plastic box (you could get from the show, I can't remember if you had to pay for them or not) with a light sensor over that "static" square and run the special software which take the data and save it as a file. It wasn't terribly reliable but it was an interesting experiment by the B…

Does the BBC still have people in place doing experiments and R&D? I recall at one point they were researching/experimenting with audio codecs. I imagine this has taken a hit with funding cuts and general short-sightedness back home.

It is still very much a thing.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/rd

Re: 40 years later, a game for the ZX Spectrum will be again broadcast over FM radio

#29

Post by barrkel »

dj_gitmo wrote: post #25

Was cassette tape storage more common in Europe than the U.S? I’m too young to have been around for this era, but I’ve just never seen it over here.

A tape drive was a standard accessory for the Commodore 64. Almost all games were on tape.

The Amstrad CPC 464 had a tape drive integrated into the chassis (the 6128 used a 3" floppy - not 3" 1/4, a 3" disk).

In the UK and Ireland, in the late 80s, the majority of games software in computer shops was for these two platforms (much cheaper than a PC), with a handful floppy disk stuff for PCs. Consoles came in from the toy shop side rather than the computer shop side.

Re: 40 years later, a game for the ZX Spectrum will be again broadcast over FM radio

#30

Post by sdwr »

Waterluvian wrote: post #9

What I'm most curious about is if this was always just a happy side-effect of cassette-based data storage, or if they put specific effort into making this work. Ie. by being resilient to noise before and after a broadcast, having error correction, etc.

I'm curious how the timing worked - what happened if you were a few seconds early to record? Was the first part of the broadcast filled with noops?
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