Back in 1974 I got a summer job as a night time computer operator for a
NCR Century-101 (32K core memory) with two 5 MB 14" Disk Drives. Most
things were on cards.
The programmer had programs that would play simple tunes on the radio if
the radio was on or very near the computer. He had about a dozen
different programs in COBOL for different tunes, like Dixie, Swanie
River, etc.
He would also use the radio as feedback as to whether his program was
running correctly or not. He could then monitor the progress from
across the room, without looking at the console.
Kip
Luke Welsh wrote:
>
> At 11:35 PM 7/22/99 +0100, Brian J. Beesley wrote:
>
> >Back more or less to topic -
>
> Oh, this is very much on topic!
>
> > when I was a computing neophyte, a
> >quarter of a century ago, I was told a story by an engineer working
> >for a major mainframe supplier. For a laugh, the development team
> >wired up a loudspeaker (presumably through a buffer and amplifier of
> >some sort) to one of the bits in a CPU shift register. (This was
> >easily done in the days when everything was discrete components!)
> >The trick was then to code your program so that it performed to
> >specification, but, by insertion of extra instructions to tweak this
> >particular bit at suitable times, played interesting tunes whilst
> >doing so!
>
> Alex Hurwitz loves this story. They did just that on the SWAC. It
> was captured for prosperity in the film 'Magnetic Monster'. I once
> made some MPegs and put them on the wwweb. I wonder if they are
> still there? Alex says the sounds in the movie were produced by LL
> tests.
>
> I recall the CDC 3150 was so wired from the factory. There was
> even a volume control on the operator's console. Probably a very
> helpful debug tool as you could not see the console when you were
> across the room with your head inside a 32 KB memory bank the size
> of a refrigerator, poking away looking for faulty a core memory.
>
> --Luke
>
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