I wonder if the same people also think manipulating the tones to make free phone calls, as shown in Hackers, is also just a Hollywood myth. That shit was actually real.
Yes, in the 1980s we downloaded games from the radio
Submitted 1 month ago by spzb@infosec.pub to retrocomputing@lemmy.sdf.org
https://newslttrs.com/yes-in-the-1980s-we-downloaded-games-from-the-radio/
Comments
Kolanaki@pawb.social 1 month ago
agentshags@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Phreaky
AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee 1 month ago
Jokes on you nobody under the age of 50 has seen Hackers
trolololol@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I’m barely under 50 and never heard of this. And I watched mcgiver as a kid.
Hikermick@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I never had this option. Typing in the whole thing manually from 4 pages of tiny print in BYTE magazine was my go to. Always had to be quick to save progress on cassette whenever mom came near with the vacuum cleaner
shalafi@lemmy.world 1 month ago
A VIC-20 was my first computer and I had never heard of this! Had to do the same with a magazine.
DmMacniel@feddit.org 1 month ago
And Programs/Games came on Casettes :)
mox@lemmy.sdf.org 1 month ago
You cad cassettes? We had manually transcribe machine code from printed listings.
user224@lemmy.sdf.org 1 month ago
Just in case, no it’s not a joke.
Examle: Book - 101 BASIC games: archive.org/details/101basiccomputer0000davi
espentan@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I did that a bit, for C64 games. I recall it being a mix of fun, tedious and extremely frustrating if there was even the slightest transmission interference while recording, then all you could do was wait for the next transmission and hope they went better.
mox@lemmy.sdf.org 1 month ago
See also: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellaview
DmMacniel@feddit.org 1 month ago
and its predecessor: en.wikipedia.org/…/Family_Computer_Network_System
scroll_responsibly@lemmy.sdf.org 1 month ago
We do now too… it’s called WiFi 😅
niktemadur@lemmy.world 1 month ago
WiFi being in the microwave range of the spectrum, surely it packs information much more densely and efficiently than lower wavelength frequencies like radio ever can.
But then WiFi can’t turn a goddamned corner and into another room ten yards away.SupaTuba@lemm.ee 1 month ago
Yeah I’m really confused why people keep saying it’s the same thing. It’s not, aside from being over-the-air at some point in the transmission.
turtle@lemm.ee 1 month ago
I didn’t know about these radio broadcasts, but I did use to buy (pirated) games on cassette tape to load on my (unlicensed) ZX spectrum clone using my mini-boombox. Good times. :)
ch00f@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Didn’t some magazines ship software with plastic records that could be played on a conventional record player?
cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de 1 month ago
Yes, they are called flexi discs.
lurch@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
for a while they sent websites over the tv signal. i forgot how it was called tho. you needed a tv tuner card to receive it on your pc
vk6flab@lemmy.radio 1 month ago
Are you referring to Teletext, or something else?
lurch@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
spzb@infosec.pub 1 month ago
That reminds me. They did used to broadcast software over teletext over TV teletext.mb21.co.uk/gallery/ceefax/telesoftware/
hossein@lemmy.sdf.org 1 month ago
So cool, thanks for sharing.
doingthestuff@lemy.lol 1 month ago
To be fair, I remember writing a choose your own adventure text based game in basic, and the only way to save and reload what you had programmed was via audio cassette.
Harvey656@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Someone once argues with me on here that downloading updates and games in the late 90s wasn’t real. This is very gratifying lol.
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 1 month ago
TIL!
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I only used cassette tape drives a couple times in 3rd grade before we upgraded to Apple IIs, but even then I knew to try putting a music tape in it.
It didn’t work.
Kolanaki@pawb.social 1 month ago
I did the same thing with PlayStation games in CD players. And my PC. Sometimes, the cutscenes were just AVI files you could watch without even playing the game!
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
It was rather common for PC games to include regular everyday “red book” audio for background music; I seem to remember back in the day you’d actually have to hook the optical drive to the sound card with a cable so it could pass through audio.
The Secret of Monkey Island did this for its CD releases; the audio options for that game ranged from PC speaker to Ad-Lib chip tunes to Roland MT-32 support and eventually CD Audio. The game shipped on a few diskettes, a few megabytes tops, so the whole game is tiny on a single 750MB CD, plenty of room for extremely high quality game audio.
Uranus_Hz@lemm.ee 1 month ago
It never really worked for me. I don’t recall ever being able to successfully use a cassette tape as a software storage media.
evidences@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I mean technically speaking if you’re connected on wifi you still are…
otter@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
Came to say exactly this. 🤦🏼♂️ Kids these days.
SupaTuba@lemm.ee 1 month ago
Except for the non-broadcast transmission, modulation, data rates, error correction, frequencies used, protocols, antennas, infrastructure, etc…
Like it’s not the same except for being “over the air”.
Boomers these days 🤦🏻♀️