There is a DECUS program for the -10 that also did music. Before the FCC mandated shielding c.a. 1990, your could also get sound effects from the RF emissions.
I predict that SimH isn't going to emulate any of that. The -10 also supported 1,200 CPM card readers. The amazing thing is that in a machine room where the fans, AC, motors & printers were deafening, you REALLY noticed the extra noise when the card reader started. I wore hearing protectors... On 12-Feb-16 18:09, Bob Supnik wrote: > And then there was early computer music... > > When Applied Data Research got its PDP-7 in 1966, there was a DECUS > program to get it to play music by toggling the lower order 4 bits of > the MQ (and the MQ lights) to generate square waves. If you wired that > up to an audio player, you got electronic "music" of a blatting sort, > in four part harmony. (It really needed some analog filtering to > flatten the square waves into curves, but that was beyond me.) Anyway, > I spent much of my free time that summer programming as much of the > original piano score of "Pictures at an Exhibition" as would fit into > four parts. With the buzzing tones, the completely constant volume, > and the coarse controls over note lengths, it sounded utterly bizarre, > but... the computer was playing music! As was said back then, "The > marvel is not that the bear dances well, but that the bear dances at > all." > > The PDP-7 had DECtapes, and they had their own unique rhythms. DEC's > software was poorly written and could only read a block at a time, so > you'd hear the tape start, reverse, read, stop; rinse and repeat. A > brilliant colleague named Avram Caspy figured out how to insert > optimized routines underneath DEC's software (he used all 8KW extended > memory as a buffer). With his routines, the DECtapes would start, > reverse, and then whoosh at high speed for up to 30 blocks before > stopping. DEC's paper tape routines were equally poor and would > stutter-read; use of interrupts and a short circular buffer made that > continuous and quieter as well. > > Another fun set of devices were the very high-speed vacuum pick card > readers that the mainframe companies made. They would blow air through > the card deck to separate the cards and then vacuum pick the top card, > reading and expelling it at breakneck speed (the best readers did 1000 > cards per minute or more). Of course, when they broke, you got a > totally different sound, as cards were blown all over the machine > room, typically with the front-edges curled, making them unreadable. > > /Bob > > _______________________________________________ > Simh mailing list > [email protected] > http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/mailman/listinfo/simh
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