In the 1980s we downloaded games from the radio

Posted by spzb 3/28/2025

In the 1980s we downloaded games from the radio(newslttrs.com)

289 points | 149 commentspage 3

cvladan 6 days ago|

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ventilator_202

tenderfault 6 days ago|

awesome stuff, YT has it and modli.rs is, well, up and running.

thank you!

saltysalt 6 days ago||

I played games on a Commodore 64 from cassette tapes, in principal you could record games onto a blank cassette but it was very flaky. Good times though.

HNDen21 6 days ago|

I did this all the time... even used a double cassette deck to make copies... azimuth was the problem if the heads were aligned different.. so you used a small screwdriver and the top of the cassette had a small opening, this is where you had to align the heads by listening till it didn't sound distorted.. fun times

makeset 6 days ago|||

Then came a nifty upgrade called "LED control" which installed a red LED next to that screw so all you had to do was turn until it was brightest, significantly reducing ?LOAD ERROR. Good times.

HNDen21 6 days ago||

Yep, there was also a program where a red line would be on your monitor and you had to turn the screw until the line was completely flat

j_french 6 days ago||||

From what I remember I had a decent amount of success copying games using a twin tape deck for my amstrad 464. I ended up passing on the amstrad to a colleague over a decade ago, who since moved to the US and is almost certainly on here. If you see this Jim, I found the manual!

saltysalt 6 days ago|||

Oh nice, I never knew about that!

cvladan 6 days ago||

I really thought this was widely known...

https://hackaday.com/2024/05/09/the-zx-spectrum-takes-to-the...

fragmede 6 days ago|

https://xkcd.com/1053/

Mashimo 6 days ago||

"Hällo? Can you play Frogger, for my Atari?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_Oe4aB_lG4

sitkack 6 days ago||

BASICODE: the 8-bit programming API that crossed the Berlin Wall https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1vCpm1-9Yc

https://github.com/robhagemans

In German https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEsOwE_dpiU

metalman 6 days ago||

there 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

NikkiA 1 day ago|

> and sending photos over a dot matrix phone line system in the late 1940's

Facsimile was actually invented in the 1840s to transmit images over telegraph.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fax

fabiopjve 6 days ago||

I did that in Brasil in the late 80s! There was a show on the radio that every sunday afternoon they would broadcast computer programs! The problem is that I had a coco2 clone and most programs were for Spectrum or MSX (the more common machines in Brasil back then). Needless to say, any noise on the radio would damage the recording and the transmitter was very far from me so usually there was noise... :(

crazygringo 6 days ago||

This is wild. Was it a European thing only? I never heard of it in the states. I was stuck typing in games from the back pages of Compute's Gazette...

pantulis 6 days ago|

I remember a Spanish radio program doing this (“Bienvenido Mr. chip”)

ratg13 6 days ago|

Tangentially related, Radio Shack had a remote control robot called Robie Sr. You could move him around, turn his eyes on as lights, and make him say whatever you wanted through the remote.

The robot also had a tape deck, and if you hit record on the tape you could later playback the pre-recorded actions for the robot.

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