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In the 1980s we downloaded games from the radio

(newslttrs.com)
288 points spzb | 1 comments | 3/28/2025, 10:14:00 PM | HN request time: 0.241s | source
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coreyh14444 ◴[3/31/2025, 10:49:00 AM] No.43533429[source]▶

I definitely had cassette based games on the TRS-80, but most of the "wireless" transmission in my youth was via BASIC printed in the back of computer magazines. You had to type in the entire app yourself. I did this for basically every app they listed. Sometimes it was like tax prep software, but I didn't care, even though I was like 9 at the time. Yes, it took a very long time. Yes, you could easily introduce typos and bugs.

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1. colkassad ◴[3/31/2025, 1:26:00 PM] No.43534805[source]▶

I did the same with an Atari 400 that had a cassette tape. I remember it would take 30 minutes or so to load/save games I copied from magazines. The keyboard was torture. I then moved on to very rudimentary text adventures of my own once I felt a bit comfortable with BASIC. I'm very glad my father bought that for me...he was a painter and we didn't have a lot of money then. It was extremely formative.