Comment by yesturi

15 days ago

In Poland, in the communist period, the national broadcaster used to do it. For Atari, ZX Spectrum, Commmodore 64.

Haven't heard the audition, though. Well before my era.

6 comments

yesturi

Reply
ekropotin  15 days ago

It’s crazy that you had access to these technologies during communist period.

Growing up in USSR I didn’t know anyone who would own a PC up until early 90s.

  • yesturi  15 days ago

    PC-s were only described in hobby magazines, like Bajtek or Młody Technik. Nobody had them, though, except maybe some institutions. The hobbyists used to own ZX Spectrum or Commondore 64, but even that was rare.

    I know one programmer in his 50s. He had an access to the ZX Spectrum in his primary school, but that was by effort of his local physics teacher.

    • mbork_pl  14 days ago

      I'm not (yet) in my 50s (though close). I used to have a C64 back in the day. I wrote write a few things in its horrible BASIC dialect. Probably the most advanced was a database (not relational, just one table, but kept separately from the source, of course on an audio cassette).

      That device had ridiculous capabilities. The sound chip was good enough people wrote a speech synthesis software. Later, people wrote a graphical OS, with e.g. a text editor being an equivalent of Windows Write from the 90s.