OMG I don't believe it

[andron234]

I just watched a documentary on TV, all about the "MRCA" the Panavia Tornado GR1, I watched in total disbelief as one of the air crew used a standard cassette tape, to program the on board "Bombing computer" Is this now a thing of the past? Over to you guys

[Rabbit 3]

1980`s technology.
I remember it well, before the CD and floppy disc came along cassette tapes were used for a lot of things besides recording music.

[Stumptonian]

Yep.
First PC I played around with was a TRS-80
Had to make sure you left enough gap when recording a new program so you didn't overwrite the previous one.

[RJG173]

My first job had an HP computer that used a digital cassette deck for storing programs and/or data. It was an interesting device to use.

[zenlizard]

OH, yeah, I remember when working at NASA/GSFC, we sometimes needed to use the cassettes to boot up the 'puters. I'm talking mainframes, which usually didn't need shutting down, but when they did...out came the cassettes.

[andron234]

I used to have a "Dragon 32" and would write programs for the machine in "Dragon basic" I always made two copy's of everything I would write, One wrong "blip" on the tape and the program was dead, I once found a "Speed poke" (Poke 49595,0) and that would double the speed of the program. alas it also doubled the save speed, Which rendered all my save tapes useless.

[RJG173]

I used to have a "Dragon 32" and would write programs for the machine in "Dragon basic" I always made two copy's of everything I would write, One wrong "blip" on the tape and the program was dead, I once found a "Speed poke" (Poke 49595,0) and that would double the speed of the program. alas it also doubled the save speed, Which rendered all my save tapes useless.

You have go to be careful when "poking" around inside a computer.

[Naharaht]

There is nothing so frustrating as waiting 15 minutes for a program to load from a cassette only to end up with a syntax or some other error.

[Dirigible]

Back in the day, I recall issuing cassette tapes to F3 crews to programme one of their datalink computers......

[andron234]

Back in the day, I recall issuing cassette tapes to F3 crews to programme one of their datalink computers......

Nowadays it's far more hitech than that!!!!

[Stumptonian]

I think I have a 60+ year-old pencil box like that in the basement somewhere ....