A small aspect of 80's computer history I was previously unaware of. I don't know if we did this in the US, but I hope so. Now we do something like this all the time without even thinking about it: "How People Used to Download Games From the Radio".
http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2014/10/13/people-used-download-games-radio
@iona I find that really wonderful. Here I was typing programs out of magazines...
@cstanhope Britain in the 1980s had a really strong homegrown computer scene with lots of small manufacturers of various home computers, mostly the sort that plugged into a TV for video output. We were a poor country at the time, mostly couldn't afford the computers from the US manufacturers so we did our own thing our way.
I kind of miss those days.
@cstanhope It was tried briefly here, and over TV, but never caught on. Too many competing computer systems, and only the very poor still used tape by the time it was up.
@cstanhope @djsundog There are still some broadcasts of text and pictures of the radio: http://swradiogram.net/
Useful for getting news to places without much/any Internet these days.
@cstanhope I've seen it happen in Canada fwiw.
@rook @cstanhope Poland, 1985, funny I wrote about this few minutes ago unaware of this thread @saper
@cstanhope That's brillant!
@cstanhope Netherlands, 1983-ish? We had a TRS-80 and an interest in learning about computers and a computer show was on at a reasonable time of day. So we listened. Most programs broadcast were not suited for our machine but sometimes we tried one. I hated the sound though.
Much, much later I found out about software on vinyl. Wish I had some of those - they'd be useless but fun to remix (I don't remix but would try it if I had source material like that).
@cstanhope Hobbyscoop! It's even mentioned in the article, which now that I read it reflects my memories of that era pretty damned well.
@Reinderdijkhuis Vinyl! I haven't heard of that being used before. Winderful.! I would definitely enjoy well done remixes of something like that. 😀
@cstanhope Well here's something to start with: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUgWDHQLhI4 I posted this earlier but jumped out of the thread to do so. It's the second hit from a one-hit wonder called What Fun, "Let's Get Digital" with a BASICODE program at the end, which draws the single's cover art.
I'm really tempted to scrap my weekend plans, get that stuff off YouTube and onto the OP-1 and futz with it.
But, er... 22 pages of comics won't remaster themselves.
@cstanhope Also, I had to dig a little but here's the article about it I read for the first time in 2004: http://www.kempa.com/vinyl-data/
@Reinderdijkhuis So fun! Thank you for digging those links up and sharing them with me. 😀
@cstanhope oh neat, I knew about the Stellavision but I didn't know it also happened with radios! :O
Reading up on Hobbyscoop, I found this single from the Dutch one-hit-wonder What Fun - this was their second single that didn't do too great. At the end of it, there's a snippet of BASICODE, the attempt at a universal BASIC that was mentioned in the Kotaku article. In the comments, you can read what it decodes to and this may even work when you're trying from the YouTube video, IDK.
For those reading this outside the comment thread that I posted this to, the Kotaku article on radio-broadcast programs is here: http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2014/10/13/people-used-download-games-radio
@cstanhope Our local radio station used to do this - here is a snippet of Martin Kelner on Bradford's Pennine Radio (now known as The Pulse) trailing the computer show Chips:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ck0ySR5KPU