The flexi disc audio format | Hacker News Reader

The flexi disc audio format

arstechnica.com

58 pointsTomte13 comments

Not mentioned in the article - although hinted at in one of the images - is that computer programs were also distributed on Flexi!

http://blog.modernmechanix.com/the-floppy-rom-software-distr...

I was familiar with code coming on cassette - but I'd never heard of it on vinyl.

I see your code on vinyl and raise you code over broadcast radio.

http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2014/10/13/people-used-download-game...

I had a couple of friends who had ZX81's and CB radios and they managed to transfer a program using the radio succesfully back then. Was not long after that CB radio fad kicked in and the ability to find a unused channel for along enough period ended for them. But they did it and it worked, least for the ZX81 audio storage format used upon tapes. iirc it was stored on tape at 300 baud, so the bandwidth was low requirement.

There was also code over Teletext (broadcast TV) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telesoftware

And in Japan code over satellite TV https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellaview

That was true (least in the UK) around the micro days and I still have a few stored away. C64,BBC Micro, ZX81 programs on flexidisc. Used to have to play them into the casste input port and worked great, though was often easier to record them onto tape and load from there.

Was a fad for a while, to include a flexi cover disc upon computer magazines and sure beat the endless typing in pages of code to then go back and fix the mistakes and many mistakes that you would end up finding as errors and a correction in the next issue. Fun times and learned lots.

EDIT add- this is one of those disc's from that time https://www.discogs.com/No-Artist-ZX-81-VIC-20-Spectrum-Game...

I definitely remember one magazine-cover-mounted flexidisc from the Spectrum era, but it was a real hassle to get it to work: the spectrum had a 3.5mm audio jack labeled 'EAR' that was designed to be connected to a headphone socket on a cassette player, and most Spectrum owners had a relatively small portable cassette player to perform that role (a dumb one with no dolby noise reduction nonsense - but with a good mechanical three digit tape counter so you could mark tape positions); on the other hand, to play the flexidisc into the spectrum would require wiring up the headphone output of your stereo system amp up to the Spectrum (portable record players with headphone jacks not really being a common household appliance in 1984) - which also needed to be wired to a TV at the same time. This definitely involved a certain amount of wire stretching in our house, and in fact I suspect may even have required unplugging the TV output while the disc loaded, then unplugging the headphone lead and reconnecting the TV to see if it had worked.

There's definitely good reasons why cassettes were the preferred audio delivery mechanism for 8 bit games, even with all the trouble that rewinding and azimuth alignments caused.

If you like this kind of stuff, I can highly recommend Techmoan on YouTube.

I still have a few dozen of these in my collection. I remember as a kid getting Whale songs, The mcdonalds menu song, and a few terrible singles on em.

I remember the whale songs from the National Geographic when I was a kid! I was incredibly intrigued, especially with the sped up versions that sounded like birds.

My prized possession as a kid was the flexi from the National Geographic issue covering the first moon landing. I wish I knew where it was now. Was entirely recordings of the chatter between Houston and the Lander, including the "Eagle has landed" and the "one small step for man" moments.

Have you seen this? http://www.firstmenonthemoon.com/

These things were the 'fremium apps' of the time, 'apps' for the hi-fi.

Now the odd thing is that I bought many thousands of records, only in 12" or (rare) 10" size. Along the way I collected maybe three 7" singles, 10-20 photo colour discs, 50-100 coloured/transparent discs and precisely zero flexidiscs. To me they were not an incentive to buy a magazine or box of cereal, they had zero relevance to the music I was collecting.

Why was this?

Probably CD buyer remorse had something to do with it. A pressing of 1000 'white label' by the artist would be pure music, by the time it made it to CD it would have been remixed and licensed to a bigger label - a major label, yikes! So for my ears, CD was always inferior. Then there was the flexidisc - the music would be the Justin Beiber/Hanson grade stuff of the day, i.e. the stuff made by labels not artists. I think this article cherry picks the good from the bad, flexidiscs were bad, with as much appeal as the 99% of 'apps' you can get for your phone today.

  play the flexi while it was on top of a normal 
  vinyl single, or place a coin or two somewhere 
  near the centre of the disc—some later Soundsheet 
  pressings actually contained a circle marked out 
  for where the coin, or coins, should best be placed

Seems kind of obvious in retrospect, that the format could have been improved with an adapter to clip the discs into, but oh well.

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