The Computer Audiophile Posted April 24, 2009 Share Posted April 24, 2009 Founder of Audiophile Style | My Audio Systems Link to comment
markr Posted April 25, 2009 Share Posted April 25, 2009 ... Nostalgia from the day when computers were computers and men were men. LOL. Thanks Chris! - markr There are only 10 kinds of people: Those who understand binary and those who don't. PS: WHAT IN THE HECK is the machine that takes center stage here? It looks like the innards of a scanner, but I am not sure. Link to comment
The Computer Audiophile Posted April 25, 2009 Author Share Posted April 25, 2009 A scanner is my guess as well. Founder of Audiophile Style | My Audio Systems Link to comment
AV-OCD Posted April 25, 2009 Share Posted April 25, 2009 Fascinating. I think that it is a scanner as well but how did he get the motor to change pitch, and does an oscilloscope make sound? Cheers,[br] - Tim Link to comment
markr Posted April 25, 2009 Share Posted April 25, 2009 No, oscilloscopes don't generally have the facility to make sound. They just display waveforms from electrical signals. Though I did once own a DuMont O-scope that hummed a bit (not in tune)- it was vacuum tube based -. I'm pretty sure that 99% of the sound is coming from the floppy drive motor and the TI and Atari computers' audio outputs - it appears that the Eico O-scope (the one where you see the 'hand of god' adjust the 'V-Pos' knob) is connected to the Atari and the Tektronic is connected to the TI 99-4A to just show the waveforms generated by their sound chips. I've never tried this sort of thing, but I am also fascinated by (1) how he drove the floppy motor to create the buzz in tune to the song and (2) how he drove the scanner - Scanners are pretty much output-only devices and generally operate on their own when you tell them to 'go'- not like the FD which is an I/O device. How he got the scanner to respond to this sort of input is a place I haven't been to before. It is also pretty intriguing from the aspect of how he got the computers to operate in unison as they do here (MIDI?). This guy must be a 'mad scientist' type who epitomizes what Wozniac (and myself) had hoped the home computer users were 'going to be' back in that day: programmers. Maybe he should be described as a 'hacker' - in it's old-school sense (not a cyber punk which is what is today commonly referred to as a hacker) - re: hardware and software. This is really a cool video. I like the irony of him hitting the disc of a modern day hard drive to sound a bell for the end of this presentation too. - markr PS: This guy has a channel on YouTube. Search 'BD594' on YouTube. Pretty interesting stuff. Link to comment
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now