The radio amateur activity is still practiced, what’s more, contrary to what happens with streaming through internet platforms, it requires a special license from the government, since it uses the radio-television network for it and not the internet. So it is an option that is much less popular for that reason, apart from reaching a much smaller audience. However, when the internet did not exist, it was the way in which many fans of electronics, computers and telecommunications communicated with each other.
Boomers’ Twitch
Although it was not very common to do so and the vast majority of them ended up working in local radios to later give way to professional radios, either as communicators or behind the screen. However, long before the massive popularization of internet streaming and in the past, there were already people broadcasting content as a hobby and without being professional. That is, what we could consider
This is how radio amateurs used the PC to transmit
We tend to associate the computers of the 80s with two things, on the one hand, boring PCs with a green phosphor screen being used by boring office workers and on the other, systems for video games. However, one of the activities that was very common at the time was getting a license and becoming a radio amateur. Although the Internet was not used, the personal computer was the center. Including those with 8-bit processors and MHz speeds that could be counted on the fingers of one hand.
Obviously, the processing capacity of these computers was not enough to carry it out, however, in 1979 it had already been shown that it was possible to create a home radio station using a home computer. And we are talking about the first generation, two years before the launch of the first IBM PC. So it was something that eventually anyone could set up in his house if they were a fan of it. Moreover, to this day this activity continues, not only using modern computers with adapters to old peripheral ports such as RS-232but also SBCs such as the Raspberry Pi are used for this.
Not surprisingly, a good part of the professional radio transmitters that were sold they were based on the same hardware as a computer, that is why it was possible, through peripherals, to emulate said stations and have a studio for radio amateurs at home. Although it was not common and that is why external boxes that were controlled through the PC were bought.
What was the computer used for in this case?
At that time there was no type of operating system based on a graphical interface, which is why communicated between the PC and the transmitting device through the RS-232 ports and through a series of command-based applications they controlled the radio broadcast without having to rely on complex analog devices for it. Which meant a huge saving for radio amateurs and not only economic, but also space.
Now, people used them not only to chat, but also to transmit information. Many of the pioneering companies in the sector used this method before the Internet existed to transmit programs. What they did was connect a tape with the application from the sender and the receiver had another from where they received the program. This became popular over time and in our country some other game was in its Jack Sparrow version on these networks. Another of the applications that is usually common on the high seas is the use of these systems on boats to communicate with other ships and to receive information on weather and different alert messages.
