Loading video games from vinyl records | Thompson Twins Adventure Game 

Det där kommer jag ihåg! :D

@@H3adcrash The Computer Show in the UK did something very similar on the TV

We had this in UK too. Mel Croucher was a video game don! Known as the father of the UK gaming industry and a pioneer game developer. He started broadcasting games over FM and AM radio in late 1970s.

Did they do it as a quick data burst or full length?

Wow!

I just mentioned that on another post. I think it was Micro Live but I'd have to check back through the episodes I have. The other series it might have been was Makig the Most of the Micro.

I did some digging, and the only reference I can find to the light-dependent-resistor (LDR) method of downloading software relates to to the Thames TV programme, “Database” in 1984. The IMDB entry for the programme even mentions it in the brief description (although there is no further detail about the show). ChatGPT also referred to ‘Database’ doing this in 1984, but was unable to provide references. There are some excerpts from ‘Database’ on RU-vid, on the official ThamesTV channel, but so far I haven’t seen any reference to the LDR software downloads. It would be fun to find one of the transmissions online; it shouldn’t take much effort to decode it if the whole transmission is available. I clearly remember a TV programme doing this, but I have no recollection of the Database TV programme, which is a surprise to me, as I was absolutely obsessed with computers in 1984 (aged 16) and I was also keen on electronics, so I knew what an LDR was (and definitely had some at that age) and remember thinking about building the circuit. It puzzles me that I don’t recall the Database programme, and I’m wondering if it was not shown in my TV region (NW). For this reason, I suspect that another TV programme used the same method; probably one of the BBC shows (The Computer Program, Making the most of the Micro, Micro Live), as I watched all of those. Even watching a few of the Database excerpts on RU-vid didn’t prompt any memories, so I’m convinced that I did not see any of those programmes. However, I guess it’s possible that my memory is wrong.

Woah! Did that actually work?!?

@@leeosborne3793 i wouldve thought thered be a problem with the screen flicker causing issues..unless the interface circuit filters it out.??, i vaguely remember the idea..

@@leeosborne3793 It worked for us!

I see Into The Gap and raise you Love On Your Side!

Well, we didn't exactly have the web, wikipedia, eBay, etc. in the 1980s. Even if you were online, you had FTP sites and NNTP and UUCP and such for the most part in the 1980s.

@@grey5626 That’s true. But the tenacity she’s displayed in acquiring THREE copies of the program on vinyl, the patience she had to show to copy the game from vinyl to cassette and then to play it on such slow hardware all indicate that she would have been successful even back then. In another video she typed the BASIC code from the computer magazine into her Spectrum computer to get a feel for how it worked back then before she then converted it to Python and tweaked it for performance. We who lived it have very fond memories of much simpler times but this young lady is definitely a kindred spirit.

Skill issue

@@grey5626 But you did have the printed magazine with explicit instructions.

She used a mod menu most likely

In Germany they did that too on the PBS show "Computer Club". At the end of the show when the credits were rolling they also told people to start their audio recorders for the incoming "hardbit rock" and you would then hear the data audio. It was often just normal programs i think. Not so much games.

So weird and awesome! Born in 81, I had no idea this was a thing!

Also existed in Denmark in radio show.

And with a straight face!

Because it wasn't all owned by 3 companies!!

@@pepeshadilay I can still remember when Electronic Arts was some weird little company that produced a terrific action game called 'Mail Order Monsters'! I'd love to play that again and see their neat loading-screen effect with the EA logo pulsing in colors.

Reverse engineering has been around for a long long time

@@Nick1921945 Right on!

I wouldn't have thought it would be possible back then anyway, but it makes sense if you can rip vinyl records on your PC that other data files could work. A cassette is essentially the same as a floppy disk too, the main difference is it being a spinning platter instead of tape. It's still weird to think of a game being on vinyl, never even thought of it being a thing. I get how it works but it's still so strange to me, it definitely seems like a novelty thing as floppy disks are both built-in and would be far more optimal lol. It'd be kind of cool to see this make a comeback as limited special editions of certain games, even if it's just to collect a vinyl copy of the game maybe to put on the wall. Of course they could also have a soundtrack on it(the opposite side) and it would have to be smaller games, maybe indie retro style games. It'd be interesting to play the game data as audio.

me neither . i always thought vinyl was for music audio only. never knew that vinyl can hold "actual data"

Load me now, Oh oh, Load my code

Lol load coding better than coating your load….

@@marc.lepage Play with meeeee..... let's hit re-start, don't touch that dial....

In the 80s my grandparents gave us a couple old computers. Maybe not *that* old at the time, but still. The TRS-80 and the TI 99/4A, and i remember having games on cassette tape. I remember too way back, when you ordered PC games from a "catalog", which was really a B&W home printed booklet with a list, fairly simple explanations for them. You eventually got it in the mail, a floppy disc in a plastic sandwich bag. It took more creativity back then, having those limitations. I miss it, as simple as it seems. It was so much more genuine then, more like hobbyists coming together, not so by the books corporate.

@@derealized797 - I remember reading the descriptions in the mail-order catalogue lists, for obscure games I'd never heard of that were probably terrible, and just imagining them being really great.

@@AnthonyFlack A lot of NES games turned out to be terrible, that was just sort of unfortunately how it went back then. Even the early game magazines weren't that great at reviews yet, of course "game journalism" is at it's absolute worst now, it was still interesting in it's own ways. The TRS-80 had it's own magazine, i remember they would list programs for you to try at home. And that's one cool thing from back then, kids were learning about computers and programming, in a way we just don't see anymore.

And probably better to be honest, if it's not a long program. I remember lots of books and magazines at the time provided simple games as BASIC listings, with instructions for how to adapt the code to run on various different computers.

everyone knows you're just jerging it, stop pretending you're not

Hit up the second hand shops, still plenty of these things make it there.

As having a whole barrel, for sure wouldn't look as amazing on me...

Great Mega Drive game !

@@j.goggels9115 that game is ace mind you I love everything about out that film pretty much, great action, fun dialogue, lawerence of Arabia type cinematography and Omar Sharif.

Bottom is even better ;)

I was thinking it would need at least a pretty-good turntable and a fairly clean copy of the record to accomplish it properly or else the receiver would hear record noise as erroneous software code. When I saw her turntable I was pretty sure she'd do it right, and sure enough, there it is.

They called it Videodat and used a tecnique similar to videotext.

There was nothing silly about disks at the time! After years of dealing with all those audio-based methods, which were slow and failed often, disks were a blessing. Audio method was cheap, though... all you need is in/out to plug a tape machine into. I have synths from the same era that use the same method for saving/loading patch settings. One of the advantages is it makes it really easy to share data for these old machines, since it's as easy as downloading an audio file.

I have to admit though, all my old computers have SD card adapters in them now. Cassettes are slow, disks are increasingly expensive and hard to get (especially more obscure formats like 3"), and you can easily fit an 8 bit computer's ENTIRE library on a small portion of a regular microSD card, which is kind of mindblowing.

That'd give these kids who play games these days something to complain about. Where are my pipe and slippers?

It did actually work and load, and yeah it seemed like magic to a 12 year old like myself back then.

If you search RU-vid for “Making the Most of the Micro” episode 10 (“The End of the Line”), you’ll find an example of an audio transmission of a program at around the 22 minute mark. They show a computer screen whilst the audio is playing. It would be fun to grab the audio and see if it can be converted to a program; perhaps via an emulator. Naturally, it’s for the BBC Micro only.

Wasn't Ceefax used for software transmission as well? I don't know how it worked, though.

@@Innesb It may have been the same program and I'm just remembering wrong. I only saw the original broadcasts and would've been 4-5 years old, so I only have vague memories.

Could you elaborate? Is this just tv?

I had this game on a tape full of games that my mate gave me don't know if he got it like that or copied it from vinyl himself