Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Swedish file-sharing in 1985


I found an audio file yesterday, a recording of a radio show almost 23 years old. The show was called "Datorernas värld" (World of computers), and was broadcast on the swedish national public radio.

The home computers of 1985 stored programs by recording audio signals with ordinary tape recorders , not a very reliable way of storing data. Adjusting the azimuth angle of the playback head by ear was an important skill for the computer amateur, but unfortunately didn't help to save your data after the occasional, dreaded, tape salad...



The concept of the show was pretty straightforward: Create a program on your computer, save it on a compact cassette that you mail to the public radio and they'll broadcast it nationwide. Presumably amateur hackers en masse recorded the show, and loaded the programs into their computers. Although BBS's were around and FidoNet was starting up around this time, the potential bandwidth of radio broadcasts was hard to beat. And modems were both slow and expensive.

You can listen to the show here, but beware: The computer data signal is loud.

I just love how dry the hosts are. I get an image of them standing in the studio dressed in lab coats, holding their clipboards. And I have a hard time deciding whether the fact that I can identify the typical sounds of both the Commodore 128 and Sinclair ZX Spectrum computers is a good thing...

/O.K.
(Listening to while posting: Beeeeeeooprrrrscriiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeoiesssh...)

Tape picture from Found Tapes.

6 comments:

EH said...

I too remember the sound OK, and I also remember my class of computers (ABC80) where we learned to write things like
10 Write "E"
20 GOTO 10

And you got E:s all over the screen.... wow...

LS said...

I don't really get this. They sent your program via sounds on the radio? How did the computers pick it up? How did you know when it was being broadcast?

I remember ZX81, and when it made our TV catch on fire. Or maybe the TV was just old? MY first laptop cost me 20000 Swedish Kronor, and it also caught on fire after a few years. And today, smoke was coming from my engine of my car, so that is in the shop being investigated now. Leaky oil somehow, who knows what is wrong... And now the SwedBanks IT department is on fire in central Stockholm - fire, fire everywhere!

O.K. said...

"I don't really get this. They sent your program via sounds on the radio? How did the computers pick it up? How did you know when it was being broadcast?"

It was manual process, remember that this was when computers were (almost) steam powered...
You just recorded the show on tape and then connected the tape recorder your computer.

I don't remember the ZX81 being involved in any fires, anyhow it is still alive and kicking today.

LS said...

The fire - ZX81 was hooked up to the old black and white TV at Barking Dog Plaza. Suddenly the TV started smoking and we ran and unplugged it from the wall. I have a distinct memory that one of our parents blamed the computer, not the age of the TV ;)

I also remember that the keyboard on the ZX81 got partially broken after a while - you had to push really hard to get certain letters. Is that still the same?

O.K. said...

"10 Write "E" "

"Beeep! Unknown command!" :)

O.K. said...

"I have a distinct memory that one of our parents blamed the computer, not the age of the TV ;)"

Computers, the root of all evil? :)

It was our cousin's ZX81 that had trouble with it's keyboard, particularly with the "0" which also happened to be the delete ("rubout" as they called it) key.