Bluetooth on Amstrad CPC: copying a game from PC

[ronaldo]

I've made a video demonstrating how to copy a snapshot of a game from PC to Amstrad CPC over bluetooth. For this, I used CPC Minibooster and X-MEM along with SNArkos ROM. I also have made an article explaining all the steps (in Spanish). I leave them here, for those interested

   
• Bluetooth on Amstrad CPC: copying a game from PC (Spanish)

[woody.cool]

That's awesome .... if you'd have told me in 1985 that we'd be able to transfer games wirelessly over Bluetooth, I wouldn't have believed you.

On top of all that .... it's still quicker than loading from tape.

[Velktron]

Now you need to add some trippy loading sounds and scanline effects to go with the radio link activity 

[Gryzor]

[attachimg=1]

That's awesome .... if you'd have told me in 1985 that we'd be able to transfer games wirelessly over Bluetooth, I wouldn't have believed you.

Totally, especially since bluetooth was a few years in the future then

[Velktron]

Totally, especially since bluetooth was a few years in the future then

Yup, if you said "Bluetooth" in 1985 nobody would know what you were talking about, even though data radio links already existed, just (for the most part) not for the home hobbyist.


And yet, some form of "wireless data transfer" was accessible even to the humble home micro users back then: in fact, it was possible, under the right circumstances, to broadcast "datassette" audio over FM/AM or even CB radio at the time, though, and in some Eastern Bloc countries it was a quite popular software distribution method. Which is interesting, because I recall a letter written to the -once legendary- Pixel magazine in Greece, where someone asked whether it'd be possible to "stream" a Spectrum cassette over a friend's amateur FM TX, receive it with a casscorder, and load it on the computer directly. I remember the magazine raised quite a few objections (e.g. interference, noise, modulation artifacts, unwanted harmonics, pilot tones etc.) which might make data reception difficult. Well, apparently not impossible 

[Gryzor]

Huh, I don't remember that article despite having most (but not all... damn ) the Pixel issues. This would've been awesome

[Velktron]

An extension of the above concept: we all (?) know how modems went from crude acoustic couplers capable of doing maybe 300-600 baud, to super-refined DSP-driven communication devices, able to reach 56 kbit/sec over a common POTS line...that means with a 3 kHz bandwidth and a SnR of (at best) 35 dB.  While it seems laughable today, that performance is actually quite close to the theoretical Shannon channel capacity limit for the medium.



Now....even the crappiest ferric cassette could deliver a respectable 55 dB in a properly made recorder/player, and frequency response was well beyond the 300-3300 Hz of the phone, and it has TWO channels per side... How many kbits/sec could be squeezed out of it, if the same technology used in models was used in a modernized "datacorder", equipped with an adequately powerful DSP (the modulation used was way more complex than what passive circuittry can decode/encode)? A conservative estimate would be easily in the 300-400 kbps ballpark ;-)


I know that Philips introduced the short-lived DCC format at some point, which actually had a quite similar performance to what I described, but that one did not use complex modulation like 56k modems did, it used a completely different 9-track digital head and video-grade tape.

[VincentGR]

 

Damn you rock!!!

[KaosOverride]

LOL a radio station at Bilbao did that back in the 80's... they broadcasted some ZX Spectrum demos of games, and basic programs made by the audience, was a late night radio show, we had the pleasure of speak with the director/speaker of the show at one of the RetroEuskal workshops at the EuskalEncounter

[Gryzor]

I'd actually have that station on and just listening to it if it existed now