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In the 1980s we downloaded games from the radio

(newslttrs.com)
286 points spzb | 2 comments | 28 Mar 25 22:14 UTC | HN request time: 0.401s | source
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coreyh14444 ◴[31 Mar 25 10:49 UTC] 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. cstuder ◴[31 Mar 25 14:37 UTC] No.43535577[source]▶
The german C64 magazine "64er" had an application which allowed "easy" entry of assembly applications by means of a hex encoding and used a checksum on each line to prevent bugs from typos. Still an incredible chore.
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2. weinzierl ◴[31 Mar 25 15:15 UTC] No.43535992[source]▶
It was called "checksummer" which is a funny pun on check sum and "summer" which is the German word for buzzer. Oh, I should add that it made an annoying buzzer sound when you made a mistake.