DEC LAB-8/e (PDP-8/e) playing music
Philipp Hachtmann1 HN recommender · recommended in 1 month, 2018-2020
50K views · 18 years ago · demo · evergreen
A 1971 DEC LAB-8/e (PDP-8/e) minicomputer plays music by inducing noise into a nearby AM radio. The software is Richard Wilson's 1975 Music Compiler running under OS/8.
HN cites it as an early example of making a computer emit music over AM radio through electromagnetic side effects.
1:16The IBM 1401 makes "music"
Judith Mopalia
18K views • 17 years ago
41:12Trackers: The Sound of 16-Bit
Ahoy
2.1M views • 4 years ago
4:52Freespin
Matthias Kramm
148K views • 5 years ago
15:19The weeCee: A Tiny New MS-DOS & Windows Gaming PC!
LGR
713K views • 4 years ago
14:04The rigs we've created for chipsynth MD's emulation.
plgDavid
24K views • 7 years ago
27:49My old BBC Micro system
mikeselectricstuff
70K views • 9 years ago
3:55Big Ideas: Don't get any -- by James Houston
James Houston
1.1M views • 18 years ago
22:24Lyle Bickley explains the PDP-1 (and we play the original Spacewar!)
CuriousMarc
431K views • 9 years ago
23:00Amiga Samplers : Budget dance music in 1990
debuglive
1.8M views • 6 years ago
8:268088 MPH by Hornet + CRTC + DESiRE
Jim Leonard
327K views • 11 years ago
49:04Polyend Tracker // Review and Full Tutorial from Sample to Song
loopop
355K views • 6 years ago
18:41Emulating the DX7 the HARD way
plgDavid
23K views • 5 years ago
4:12Bytebeat: Experimental music from very short C programs
Ville-Matias Heikkilä (viznut)
222K views • 15 years ago
0:04Icq old sound
vinnymarquetti
3.3M views • 16 years ago
2:24The Floppotron: Sweet Dreams
Paweł Zadrożniak
4.6M views • 9 years ago
11:27The Commodordion
lftkryo
531K views • 4 years ago
12:56SymbOS MP3MSX Demostration
karloch
6K views • 15 years ago
3:03ZX Spectrum 1-bit music: Agent X (Tim Follin, 1985)
aki__
235K views • 13 years ago
2:01"Memories" - 256 byte MSDOS intro
Héll Mood
106K views • 6 years ago
8:27TEENS REACT TO WINDOWS 95
REACT
15.3M views • 10 years ago
3 comments from Hacker News
Here's a video of a PDP-8/e playing tunes over an AM radio: ▶ this video The software dates to around 1975.
> leaking AM emissions from a computer by twiddling the memory bus This technique is as old as computers themselves, it's well-known back to the mainframe and minicomputer era. For example, here's a video of a DEC PDP-8 (LAB-8/e) minicomputer (1971) playing music using the same technique [0], the software was Richard Wilson's "Music Compiler" written back in 1975, you should watch it. Later it was also rediscovered by the microcomputer hackers, members of the Homebrew Computer Club played Beatles on the Altair 8800. Acoustic leakage is also possible. Here [1] is a program that runs on a Thinkpad, and here's the video [2]. It changes the Intel CPU P-state to induce a coil whine at a specific frequency, and it plays PC Speaker music via the inductor coil on the switched-mode power supply of the CPU. On one hand, we can say it's a time-honored tradition in computing and hacking, on the other hand, it means the same huge side-channel exploit is still here despite that it has been half-a-century already... [0] ▶ this video [1] link [2] link
I seem to recall reading about this running on minicomputers or mainframes, as described in another reply, and I also think this predated the Altair, as I first became smitten with computers around 1972. Here's a video of a minicomputer generating AM radio music in 1971: ▶ this video