BASIC over FM in the VIC-20 days

[Agg]

Thought this might interest you retronauts:

http://arstechnica.com/business/2012...over-fm-radio/

With his VIC-20, Tunkelo taught himself BASIC, then studied assembly language. He wrote programs that ran "straight to the metal," as he put it, but also came from the heart. One included graphics that celebrated his sister's high school graduation. But the young innovator felt isolated. "Computers were not as popular as they are now," Tunkelo said, and few schools had one.

Then came a remarkable radio show that changed the landscape for him and a generation of Finnish technology lovers—a show that literally broadcast code over the airwaves.

I've always had a soft spot for the VIC-20 - my first computer was a friend's one which I studiously typed BASIC programs into from that book with the cartoon robots in it.

[kenay]

It sucks that I missed out on all of this Thanks for putting the link up

[MonoJoker]

Wow, interesting article. I had no idea back in my C64 days such things were possible. As exciting as it got for me was the 1541 Disk Drive (from memory near on $400 ) but it kicked the hell out of waiting 30 mins for the average Datasette game load time LOL.

I remember the exact same thing - buying magazines which had 50-500 line BASIC programs listed in them for input. So much fun - or frustration when you got to the last line, typed "RUN" and got back SYNTAX ERROR IN LINE 242 haha.

[Exige]

I dont even remember BASIC on the C64 giving any kind of error codes. Then again I was 10 at the time I stopped playing with BASIC and just played the games.

I got my C64 when I was 8, and got the disc drive a couple years later. My parents really went out of their way to get me some cool stuff.

Thanks Mum and Dad !

As for the FM broadcasting, it makes plenty of sense when I think about it.
I remember copying tapes via cassette recorders, so the FM thing is pretty simple. I just wish I was a tiny bit older and could have gotten in on BBS's and such.

[Phido]

One of the things I did before I left school was steal all those osborne basic programming books. They were obsolete and were no doubt going to get thrown out ( in the mid 90's here). I often flick through them and stroll down memory lane.

But what great resources for kids. Cool little robots telling you how binary works, how computers add numbers, how ram works, how to code. It was awesome. Your first program you copied, then the first program you wrote from scratch, first graphics, first file routines.

Logical thinking, maths, computers.. I coded Vic 20, C64, some BBCmicro, GW-Basic/Basica, Qbasic, Quickbasic..

Then the late 90's came, basic was then a horrible disease.

[Alby1976]

I remember typing in codes to program games from magazines with my grandfather on his commodore 16.

[elvis]

I love the idea of audio encoded code. Obviously old tape systems did just that, but I've seen a few recent examples of it which were great.

Here's a page where I played with an old Sega SC-3000H and some tape dumps, then later emulating the tape playback via the MESS emulator:
http://www.stickfreaks.com/sc3000h.php

Treasure are one of my favourite developers, and they made a game on Nintendo DS called Bangai-O Spirits (a sequel to an old Dreamcast and N64 game). They enabled custom level creation, a feature that let you export the levels via the NDS audio out. The NDS had a microphone, so you could re-import the levels again later on.

And of course in the modern world, you can now upload these to any audio/video sharing site, and then re-import them into your DS just by holding it up to your PC speakers (or tablet/mobile phone even). Brilliant!

I look forward to the days when retro communities start sharing and/or preserving old tape-based systems via Soundcloud, YouTube and Vimeo.

[flugle]

Originally Posted by elvis

Here's a page where I played with an old Sega SC-3000H and some tape dumps, then later emulating the tape playback via the MESS emulator:
http://www.stickfreaks.com/sc3000h.php



And of course in the modern world, you can now upload these to any audio/video sharing site, and then re-import them into your DS just by holding it up to your PC speakers (or tablet/mobile phone even). Brilliant!

I look forward to the days when retro communities start sharing and/or preserving old tape-based systems via Soundcloud, YouTube and Vimeo.

There's a great app for iOS called speccytape which does something similar

http://www.retrocollect.com/News/spe...ur-iphone.html

Just plug your headphone output into the tape socket on the speccy, and the app will pull down the file from WoS and load it into the computer.

Thinking back of odd ways to distribute software, does anyone remember some of the old computer mags shipped with a Flexi disc that you could record onto tape?

I still have my copy of C&VG with the Thompson Twins on the cover and a game on flexi I have an issue of Big K which I think came with one as well.

[gameboy1971]

i had a sinclair zx spectrum when i lived in the uk as a teen in the early 80's. we often used to record the programs that they played over the radio and load them up. good fun