In the 1980s we downloaded games from the radio

Insane that there are people denying that this happened. I wasn't born during this period, but being able to download stuff off of terrestrial radio is completely believable. What do people think Wi-Fi or cellular networks are???

> What do people think

Well...

> do people think

Often, no.

For real. It's really not that much of a stretch.

I was alive, and it did happen.

I never did it myself, but did get copies of the (British I think) broadcasts on cassette for the ZX Spectrum. iirc a program would be about five-six minutes of beeps.

I did this in New Zealand around 1985-6 on Saturday mornings around 930 IIRC. It was recorded onto cassette tape and then loaded into our BBC Micro B. We couldn't afford a disk drive. I can also remember typing in many BASIC programs from magazine listings. That was how we learned.

I was skeptical until I saw information confirming it.

It's not obvious that the frequency range used by computers recording on audiocassette would fit into that used by AM or FM radio transmission and reception equipment.

In other words, it's obvious that it would be possible on equipment specifically designed for it.

But I'm quite surprised that it worked without it (presumably) having been designed for. Or maybe they did pick a frequency ceiling compatible with commercial radio intentionally?

The cassette loading/saving on home computers had to be extremely failure tolerant so that it would work with low quality tapes and shitty recorders. I guess as a side effect this failure tolerance also made it work over radio.