this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2025
162 points (100.0% liked)

RetroGaming

21836 readers
160 users here now

Vintage gaming community.

Rules:

  1. Be kind.
  2. No spam or soliciting for money.
  3. No racism or other bigotry allowed.
  4. Obviously nothing illegal.

If you see these please report them.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
162
Yes, in the 1980s we downloaded games from the radio (newslttrs.com)
submitted 4 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
24 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/10042126

top 24 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 3 points 16 hours ago

Nearly as unbelievable, the other way to distribute software was to publish in gaming magazines.

Yes, all the code was printed onto the pages of a magazine. And then young nerds bought these magazines and spent days or weeks manually typing in and debugging the hundreds of lines of BASIC to run some game. And then the magazine would be passed onto the next nerd, like comics and pornography.

My own miserable system was a TI 99/4a with a cassette player for data storage. It sounded like a dial-up modem. I typed in a lot of programs and stored them on tapes. Then I started tearing the developed work apart and building my own stuff. It was years before I could call myself a programmer. (I was twelve.) Line-number BASIC sorta ruined me, actually. Learning about object-oriented functions was quite difficult after starting out with GOTO and GOSUB.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

I updated the calendar function on my watch with a windows 3.1 program that flashed the screen black- and- white in an epileptic nightmare.

You put your watch into update mode, and then held the face towards the computer screen.

Edit: behold the Timex Datalink

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

:O ?!

I need to see this thing!

[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Reminds me of TV remotes that worked with sound. Both before my time but very interesting to read about.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 days ago (1 children)

tl;dr: There are little "chimes" of different lengths that produce sound when struck. The sound is higher than what humans can hear. The four buttons on the remote lift strikers and then drop them against the chimes. It's basically a toy piano.

We had one when I was a kid, hand-me-down from grandma. We also had a dog who wore a fairly loose stainless steel choker chain. When he'd bounce around, the chain links would clink, occasionally turning the TV on/off, changing the channel, muting the volume.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I had a cheap programmable multicolor LED lightbulb that used this technology but worse, as it used audible chirping produced by an app. The beeps were earsplittingly high pitched and had to be played LOUDLY to work.

Occasionally the bulb sensor would hear god knows what noise from outside (nothing in that neighborhood sounded even remotely like the app's digital harpy screeches) and SUDDENLY ACTIVATE ITS PARTY STROBE LIGHT MODE.

I let my roommate keep it when I moved out.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

The phone system worked like that! Rumors had it some people could do the sound to a number ...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Phreaking, if you'd like to explore it more.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

After the rotary phones who used "ticks" to spell out numbers (you could hang up quickly to spell phone numbers, like click-click-click meant "2") the newer used sound burst, or short beeps. Beep, boop, baap meant like 735. You could buy a little beeper that dialed a phone number for you. History goes people could mimic the beeps to dial a number, like taking up a phone and go beoueoeop and call comeone.

Phreaking (van eck) is when you listen in on radio waves from electronic equipment, as cool as it is, it has nothing to do with this little information nugget :-)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

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

Your use of the word is probably also valid, but this is the more known form at this point.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

The more you know, thanks! Didn't know that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

When I was a kid my parents still called the remote control a "clicker" because of these.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 days ago

This reminds me that I once read about a Thompson Twins game that was distributed as a flexi disc record. In order to actually play the game it had to be copied to a cassette first. Apparently it's pretty rare, since it was only available as a bonus with a specific issue of a magazine.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago

Had never heard of this, and my first computer had a tape drive. Went to a tiny computer camp and we had a sweet D&D game, but it took 10-minutes to load, if it didn't fuck up. Had to start it before our break or we'd only have 5 minutes to play.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 days ago (1 children)

As Wi-Fi is a form of radio technology, we still basically do this today.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago

mmmm, that's the good stuff

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

It's so gratifying to hear from people on the internet who are older than I am. And this article reads like it bounced off a Listserv to a yahoo email address.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

You don’t even need to go that far to see this technology in action. In the Eastern Europe we got microcomputers pretty late but that also meant our journey through the technological advancements from 1990 to 2010 started with a trickle of obsolete western stuff but then became a wild rollercoaster ride. At close to 40 I remember games being transmitted on the scout radio. You could also get games from magazines which simply printed source code.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago

1000013171

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago

videogames killed the radio star.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

This is fascinating to me, such a shame that these PCs didn't reach my country back then, I've never ever seen one personally, not even in videogame museums.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago

About 20 years ago, there was an art/tech project for distributing Linux Source code by radio. Probably not very practical in reality, but a lovely concept.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

I'm pretty sure WiFi is a kind of radio signal...