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[Arran]

I think there must have been plenty of kids who tried playing a computer game cassette in a stereo out of curiosity back in the 1980s. It sounded vaguely similar to when you dialled the fax number instead of the phone number.

[Arran]

There must have been cassette tapes manufactured specifically for the distribution of computer games that were about 10 minutes long. Any ideas if the tape stock was the same for standard audio cassettes or was it higher grade?

I have seen some 'flippy' cassette tapes that have the game...

[Arran]

Has anybody experienced software on cassette tapes on computers at school - and having to wait for it to load? The BBC B / Master has a cassette interface port. I'm sure that plenty of schools in the 1980s didn't have (or couldn't afford?!) floppy drives for their computers.

Does loading...

[Arran]

Enter the hall early before assembly starts.

Insert bromine capsules under chair legs in strategic locations.

When kids sit on a chair with a bromine capsule it breaks and bromine fumes start filling the hall.

It's pandemonium when hundreds of kids are trying to...

[Arran]

Cassette tapes used to be used for games on 8 bit computers.

It must be a strange feeling having to connect your computer to your stereo then waiting between 5 and 10 minutes for the game to load before you could play it, for anybody used to instantly loading games on a console or mobile...

[Arran]

I asked a friend about the sentence making software but he didn't know what it was called. He said it generated sentences like My dad's new car jumped down the toilet or The hairy purple kettle started world war 3 with the gumpy old remote control.

He then mentioned how his teacher removed...

[Arran]

There was some software for the BBC computer back in the 1980s that enabled the user to create sentences by choosing whether a word is a noun / verb / adjective but you couldn't choose the word itself. The software then (randomly?) picked words out of a database. The resulting sentences were often very...