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spzb@infosec.pub to retrocomputing@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish · 2 months ago

Yes, in the 1980s we downloaded games from the radio

newslttrs.com

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  • cross-posted to:
  • retrogaming@lemmy.world
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Yes, in the 1980s we downloaded games from the radio

newslttrs.com

spzb@infosec.pub to retrocomputing@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish · 2 months ago
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  • retrogaming@lemmy.world
So there I was, minding my own business, doom-scrolling my way through Facebook posts when I happened upon one that hit me straight in the nostalgia. A photo of a 1980s home computer, a cassette player and some tapes. The text underneath proclaimed "In the 1980s, people could download video
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  • evidences@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I mean technically speaking if you’re connected on wifi you still are…

    • Øπ3ŕ@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      2 months ago

      Came to say exactly this. 🤦🏼‍♂️ Kids these days.

      • SupaTuba@lemm.ee
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        2 months ago

        Except for the non-broadcast transmission, storage methods, 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 🤦🏻‍♀️

        • Gen Z

        Edit: Looks like he didn’t like the taste of his own ageism.

  • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮 @pawb.social
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    2 months ago

    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.

    • agentshags@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      Phreaky

    • AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      Jokes on you nobody under the age of 50 has seen Hackers

      • trolololol@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        I’m barely under 50 and never heard of this. And I watched mcgiver as a kid.

  • Hikermick@lemmy.world
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    2 months 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
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      2 months ago

      A VIC-20 was my first computer and I had never heard of this! Had to do the same with a magazine.

  • espentan@lemmy.world
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    2 months 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
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    2 months ago

    See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellaview

  • Scroll Responsibly@lemmy.sdf.org
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    2 months ago

    We do now too… it’s called WiFi 😅

    • niktemadur@lemmy.world
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      2 months 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
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        2 months 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.

  • ch00f@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Didn’t some magazines ship software with plastic records that could be played on a conventional record player?

    • cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de
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      2 months ago

      Yes, they are called flexi discs.

  • lurch (he/him)@sh.itjust.works
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    2 months 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

    • Onno (VK6FLAB)@lemmy.radio
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      2 months ago

      Are you referring to Teletext, or something else?

      • lurch (he/him)@sh.itjust.works
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        2 months ago

        It was Intercast

      • spzb@infosec.pubOP
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        2 months ago

        That reminds me. They did used to broadcast software over teletext over TV https://teletext.mb21.co.uk/gallery/ceefax/telesoftware/

        • Onno (VK6FLAB)@lemmy.radio
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          2 months ago

          There was also a system where some TV screen pixels were used to send data, but I’m struggling to remember how you were supposed to get it into the computer.

          I suspect that you needed to build some light sensor with a serial cable, that you held to the screen, but I’m not sure.

          This was in the Netherlands, not sure if it was done elsewhere.

          • spzb@infosec.pubOP
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            2 months ago

            I had heard of this but your comment sent me searching for more info. I think you might be referring to Visicode.

            https://archive.org/details/PersonalComputerWorld1985-07/page/286/mode/2up?q=visicode

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxo1Gs46ti0

            https://archive.org/details/PersonalComputerWorld1985-08/page/194/mode/2up?q=visicode

            • Onno (VK6FLAB)@lemmy.radio
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              2 months ago

              That looks interesting, but it’s not ringing any bells.

      • lurch (he/him)@sh.itjust.works
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        2 months ago

        deleted by creator

  • turtle [he/him]@lemm.ee
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    2 months 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. :)

  • hossein@lemmy.sdf.org
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    2 months ago

    So cool, thanks for sharing.

  • doingthestuff@lemy.lol
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    2 months 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.

  • Boomer Humor Doomergod@lemmy.world
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    2 months 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.

    • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮 @pawb.social
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      I did the same thing with PlayStation games in CD players. And my PC. Sometimes they actually had music that played in a CD player, and sometimes cutscenes were just AVI files you could watch on a PC without playing the game!

      • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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        2 months 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.

  • Harvey656@lemmy.world
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    2 months 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.

    • meliante@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      Downloading updates for what?

      • Harvey656@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Diablo is what I remember.

        • meliante@lemm.ee
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          Really? I don’t really remember any game that received updates back when, but I didn’t play diablo.

  • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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    TIL!

    Yes, I’m in this picture, although it makes perfect sense in hindsight. It’s what I would have done if I wanted to get computing going in the 20th century.

  • Uranus_Hz@lemm.ee
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    It never really worked for me. I don’t recall ever being able to successfully use a cassette tape as a software storage medium.

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