Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att-cb!att-ih!pacbell!ames!ncar!husc6!m2c!frog!die
From: die@frog.UUCP (Dave Emery)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Computer noises (was Re: Cray architecture)
Summary: PDP-8 music programs really existed
Keywords: PDP-8 music
Message-ID: <2156@frog.UUCP>
Date: 1 Apr 88 16:02:00 GMT
References: <7762@alice.UUCP> <418@ole.UUCP> <3216@phri.UUCP> <1574@osiris.UUCP> <769@kaos.UUCP> <1503@vaxb.calgary.UUCP>
Reply-To: die@frog.UUCP (David I. Emery)
Organization: Charles River Data Systems, Framingham MA
Lines: 31

In article <1503@vaxb.calgary.UUCP> radford@calgary.UUCP (Radford Neal) writes:
>
>I have a vague recollection back from when I was a first-year student
>(1974) of someone demonstrating a program for the PDP-8 that played a quite
>good rendition of some piece of music on a radio placed beside the 
>CPU. In retrospect, this seems moderately unlikely, though not impossible.
>Does anyone know whether such a program existed? Whether it was feasible?
>I believe the machine had core memory, would that have helped?
>
>   Radford Neal

	I remember such a program circulating around Genrad (where I then
worked) in mid 1973.  It played polyphonic Bach (? it has been years)
that ran on for several minutes on an AM radio placed near a PDP-8e.
I beleive it ran in 4 or 8K of (core) memory. It was loaded from paper tape
and not that big.

	We disassembled it (we didn't have the source) and someone figured
out how to enter our own music.  I beleive it basically consisted of 
cleverly constructed nested counting loops, but that was 15 years ago
and I do not recollect the details.

	I can confirm that such a program did exist however.
 
----
David I. Emery
Charles River Data Systems
983 Concord St.
Framingham, MA 01701
Tel: (617) 626-1102
uucp: ...!decvax!frog!die