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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: 0s | 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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mysterydip ◴[31 Mar 25 10:55 UTC] No.43533473[source]▶
Sometimes the typos were in the magazine itself, and you wouldn't figure out the problem with the code you triple-checked you typed in properly until the errata in next month's issue :)
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1. kotor ◴[31 Mar 25 19:59 UTC] No.43539196[source]▶
My exact memory. When you did finally get everything correct, the program could take 15 minutes to load from the cassette tape. I remember upgrading my Commodore 64 with a floppy disk and loading programs in 2 minutes (which felt instantaneous by comparison).
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2. ratg13 ◴[31 Mar 25 22:54 UTC] No.43540868[source]▶
I never had a tape deck, and was constantly flustered by “press play on tape” messages.