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

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

#41

Post by gregopet »

Jolter wrote: post #27
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 sen…

Interestingly enough, the plot of the game being broadcast was (if I remember correctly) about smuggling a new computer from the west. It was loaded with puns at the system (e.g. one of the locations was a government building and you had to navigate through its loopholes).

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

#42

Post by jprd »

gregopet wrote: post #32

A friend of mine had faulty wiring in his house, the electricity would go out for a few brief moments whenever someone would ring his house bell. He would stand in front of his house when ZX Spectrum games were being broadcast so nobody would ring and interrupt his recorder :)

This is so great!

Reminds me of policing the phone line so someone didn't blow up my BBS Kermit downloads.

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

#44

Post by qingcharles »

DrBazza wrote: post #31

Back in the day, there were magazines that had a flexible plastic LP/single (aka 'vinyl'), that you'd play on your stereo, and record to cassette, and load into the computer. Coincidentally, it's this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FePROXUG6E

Me: going through the racks of magazines trying to find a record without a crease in it.

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

#45

Post by NikkiA »

Jolter wrote: post #27
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 sen…

The spectrum didn't have an official (**) floppy disk add-on, the official mass storage upgrade* was the microdrive, which was a 100kB tape loop format - an improvement on cassettes, but not by much.

As a result, there was a wide range of unofficial floppy disk addons, which then brought the issue that there were so many competing products that supporting them all was near impossible and hardly any commercial software bothered.

Post main-popularity, most people settled on the Beta Disc / Beta 128 from Technology Research as being the main unofficial standard, somewhat bolstered by it being adopted in eastern europe and russia, but during the main popularity period, even it had really poor market share in the UK.

* There was also the cartridges for the Interface 2, but that's a different beast entirely and they were even less common than the Interface 1 + microdrive.

** of course there was the Spectrum +3 near the end of the spectrum's life which had a built-in 3" amstrad drive, which saw reasonable commercial support, but it was long after the main portion of the spectrum's popularity, and at a time when the ST and Amiga were beginning to dominate.

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

#46

Post by qingcharles »

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.

You've never had the pleasure of twiddling the volume control on a tape deck for the 15th time trying to get exactly the right setting for your game to not die two minutes into loading :(

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

#47

Post by gregopet »

The user manual is also quite awesome :) Here's the bit about copy protection (translation is mine):

Programs cannot be copy-protected successfully. KONTRABANT 2 is protected only insofar as not just anyone can look at its databases. Therefore you could copy it to whomever you wish.

Know that by doing so you will be nipping Yugoslavia's young software industry in the bud and hurt us, the enthusiasts who are writing it. You will also be hurting yourself. Programs will become more expensive due to smaller sales or won't come to exist in the first place.

Copying programs is hurting everything ALL of us computer folk have fought for. We've already achieved that anyone can buy a modest computer legally without humiliating themselves at a border crossing while YOU can help us breathe our local soul into these machines.

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

#48

Post by DrBazza »

qingcharles wrote: post #44
DrBazza wrote: post #31

Back in the day, there were magazines that had a flexible plastic LP/single (aka 'vinyl'), that you'd play on your stereo, and record to cassette, and load into the computer. Coincidentally, it's this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FePROXUG6E

Me: going through the racks of magazines trying to find a record without a crease in it.

Yes!

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

#49

Post by gregopet »

gregopet wrote: post #47

The user manual is also quite awesome :) Here's the bit about copy protection (translation is mine): Programs cannot be copy-protected successfully. KONTRABANT 2 is protected only insofar as not just anyone can look at its databases. Therefore you could copy it to whomever you wish. Know that by doing so you will be nipping Yugoslavia's young software industry in the bud and hurt us, the enthusiasts who are writing i…

..and in the troubleshooting section:

Don't forget the first law of computer science: "Is it turned on?"

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

#50

Post by tombert »

It's a bit before my time, and tape based games never really caught on in the US as far as I'm aware, but I've always been kind of fascinated by storing programs in audio.

There's something bizarrely cool about the idea of taking something designed for an analog medium and using it for something sort of definitionally not analog. It was traditionally cassette tapes, but I saw a YouTube video where some companies distributed games on CDs, and there's something kind of weird and anachronistic about being able to play a ZX Spectrum game off a CD; the program is going from Digital (being written) -> analog (converted to audio signals) -> digital (put on a CD) -> analog (back to audio) -> digital (read by the computer). People can be pretty clever sometimes.

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