Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!husc6!bloom-beacon!gatech!mcnc!duke!dfk
From: dfk@duke.cs.duke.edu (David Kotz)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Computer noises (was Re: Cray architecture)
Message-ID: <11452@duke.cs.duke.edu>
Date: 31 Mar 88 18:42:50 GMT
References: <7762@alice.UUCP> <418@ole.UUCP> <3216@phri.UUCP> <1574@osiris.UUCP> <1503@vaxb.calgary.UUCP>
Organization: Duke University CS Dept.; Durham, NC
Lines: 20
Summary: PDP8 music

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?

Indeed it did exist; we ran it (c. 1980) on our PDP 8 in high school
too (hmm, where did you go to school?). It was run in single-user
mode, loaded in from a DECTAPE. It had a repertoire of 10-20 tunes
some of which lasted a long time. They were quite good and even had
several voices involved. 

Gotta love those old things with front panels, lights, and noises...

David Kotz
-- 
Department of Computer Science, Duke University, Durham, NC 27706
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