Test Equipment Anonymous

tggzzz wrote: ↑Mon Nov 13, 2023 9:30 am
Wasn't playing tunes traditionally done on the line printer?

The nearest I have is a tape of an Elliott 803 playing music by blipping a loudspeaker whenever it did one operation (ISTR). Given that the instruction time was 576µs, the higher notes tended to be distinctly flat

I heard of an ICL (I think 1900) which had a speaker for some reason, maybe diagnostics, which could be made to play tunes. ISTR the speaker in early IBM PCs was a crude thing which could be turned on and off for periods. The intention seems to have been that it should be used for beeps, but it was also used for the sound effects in games, Leisure Suit Larry and such.

I never came across a line printer being used to play tunes, but I imagine it could be done.

Line printer art was a thing at one time.

tggzzz wrote: ↑Mon Nov 13, 2023 9:30 am

mansaxel wrote: ↑Mon Nov 13, 2023 7:59 am I'd been a good operator and made a flawless manual punch. It did not, however play a little melody as I pressed down the key.

I had a principle of not admitting I could type, except for programming.

Wasn't playing tunes traditionally done on the line printer?

The nearest I have is a tape of an Elliott 803 playing music by blipping a loudspeaker whenever it did one operation (ISTR). Given that the instruction time was 576µs, the higher notes tended to be distinctly flat

The "playing tunes" was a Kraftwerk reference:

I'm the operator with my pocket calculator
I'm the operator with my pocket calculator
I am adding
And subtracting
I'm controlling
And composing
I'm the operator with my pocket calculator
I'm the operator with my pocket calculator
I am adding
And subtracting
I'm controlling
And composing
By pressing down a special key
It plays a little melody
By pressing down a special key
It plays a little melody
I'm the operator with my pocket calculator
I'm the operator with my pocket calculator

On playing music with computers, the traditional way seems to have been to place some susceptible equipment (possibly a broadcast or comms radio receiver) close by and writing programs that create EMI / RFI emissions that can be picked up, demodulated and played back as audio. I had a project manager at Ericsson 25 years ago who'd done that back in the 60s, to alert him that batch jobs had run to completion; he rigged a speaker so as to hear the machine, and could then wake up as the sound changed when the batch had been run -- the idle loop apparently sounded distinctively different.

On making music, the IBM 1401 was used as inspiration, music making machine, and subject matter on the album "IBM1401" by the late Johann Johannsson, an Icelandic musician first known as member of the Apparat Organ Quartet, later as solo artist in a number of projects.

Well worth a listen.

Zenith wrote: ↑Mon Nov 13, 2023 10:55 am Of course there were a few hold outs, but Hollerith cards seemed to disappear into welcome oblivion by about 1980.

Another nasty thing was using consumer cassette tapes as storage for microcomputers. I never had direct experience of it, but it seemed to be a PITA.

Floppy discs weren't that bad. Even in the day they had a limited capacity and were rather slow, and some applications came on ten or more floppies, but they were reliable enough.

Paper tape seemed to hang around for longer. Presumably the higher volumetric data density and unchanging data order meant it had fewer gross failings.

I never had to endure the 300bps Kansas City tap standard, praise be to the deities.

I've still got working floppies from the mid 80s, e.g. Apple's Smalltalk implementation for fat Macs. "Glacial" is an overestimate of the speed, but it was sufficient to convince me that OOP was a GoodThing and C++ (when it appeared) was a BadThing.

tggzzz wrote: ↑Sun Nov 12, 2023 11:53 pm

Zenith wrote: ↑Sun Nov 12, 2023 10:40 pm

MED6753 wrote: ↑Sun Nov 12, 2023 9:33 pm The classic IBM 029 Keypunch Terminal made it a lot easier.

I used a thing like that in the early 70s, except the one I used was ICL.

Writing FORTRAN on Hollerith cards, a painful memory of long ago. The deck was kept together with elastic bands, which I swear were carefully designed to break at the most inconvenient time.

Wasn't it SOP to mark diagonal lines on the edges of decks, to help you get the cards back in order after having been dropped?

I managed to avoid cards, using paper tape in the 70s, and then mag cassettes on the 9845b, and floppies on PCs and Macs.

hmmmmm. used to have some cassettes from my 9845c days working for the damn navy (ftn). they must be in a box down in the basement somewhere. but the cards and paper tapes got tossed a couple of years earlier when my favorite professor handed me a diploma.

there was nothing worse than handing a rubber band bound stack of cards to a long haired kid for batch processing, and then returning the day before the assignment was due to find a one page print out telling you it had crashed.

if you had told me then that someday i would be carrying a portable phone that would allow me to download and search a map to see traffic tie ups ahead on the interstate (in real time)........ida' walked away. i don't talk to crazy people.

mansaxel wrote: ↑Mon Nov 13, 2023 11:24 am

tggzzz wrote: ↑Mon Nov 13, 2023 9:30 am

mansaxel wrote: ↑Mon Nov 13, 2023 7:59 am I'd been a good operator and made a flawless manual punch. It did not, however play a little melody as I pressed down the key.

I had a principle of not admitting I could type, except for programming.

Wasn't playing tunes traditionally done on the line printer?

The nearest I have is a tape of an Elliott 803 playing music by blipping a loudspeaker whenever it did one operation (ISTR). Given that the instruction time was 576µs, the higher notes tended to be distinctly flat

The "playing tunes" was a Kraftwerk reference:

I never really got into Kraftwerk, preferring the earlier Tangerine Dream records. You can hear me on their Ricochet album

On playing music with computers, the traditional way seems to have been to place some susceptible equipment (possibly a broadcast or comms radio receiver) close by and writing programs that create EMI / RFI emissions that can be picked up, demodulated and played back as audio. I had a project manager at Ericsson 25 years ago who'd done that back in the 60s, to alert him that batch jobs had run to completion; he rigged a speaker so as to hear the machine, and could then wake up as the sound changed when the batch had been run -- the idle loop apparently sounded distinctively different.

That was pretty much SOP. Originally it was loudspeakers connected to bits in processor registers, but as speeds increased the technique continued with FM radios (but with less musicality) or front panel blinkenlights.

On making music, the IBM 1401 was used as inspiration, music making machine, and subject matter on the album "IBM1401" by the late Johann Johannsson, an Icelandic musician first known as member of the Apparat Organ Quartet, later as solo artist in a number of projects.

I went to see John Whitney's pioneering computer animations in the mid 70s. Apparently he used an IBM360.

I've just had another look at some on yootoob. It is interesting to place them in a spectrum from Disney's Fantasia to 90s screensavers. Many are repetitive, but Arabesque is stunning and I like the visuals for the same reason I like 70s Tangerine Dream.

Some of Disney's stuff was several decades ahead of everyyday culture, e.g. Fantasia (1940), EPCOT (1960) and Tron (1980). Now KorporateKlones rule via their FokusGruppen

Zenith wrote: ↑Mon Nov 13, 2023 11:06 am Line printer art was a thing at one time.

I still have some

The usual pinups of course, but the overprinted "GPO Tower at night" really is good. It took until the late 80s before that kind of thing was bettered.

tggzzz wrote: ↑Mon Nov 13, 2023 12:40 pm
Paper tape seemed to hang around for longer. Presumably the higher volumetric data density and unchanging data order meant it had fewer gross failings.

I never had to endure the 300bps Kansas City tap standard, praise be to the deities.

I've still got working floppies from the mid 80s, e.g. Apple's Smalltalk implementation for fat Macs. "Glacial" is an overestimate of the speed, but it was sufficient to convince me that OOP was a GoodThing and C++ (when it appeared) was a BadThing.

I never used paper tape or saw it used. I had the impression it was on its way out by the late 60s. It probably depended which area of application you were in. Some industries such as telecomms are notoriously conservative. They were using 1/2" tape long after everyone else had moved to DAT and other cartridge form factors, which were much cheaper, faster, and with vastly higher capacity.

An advantage with cards was that it was easy to amend a program, without having to redo the whole thing. One of the disadvantages was that the deck could be dropped and scrambled. I'm not sure how that worked with paper tape.

Zenith wrote: ↑Mon Nov 13, 2023 2:00 pm

tggzzz wrote: ↑Mon Nov 13, 2023 12:40 pm
Paper tape seemed to hang around for longer. Presumably the higher volumetric data density and unchanging data order meant it had fewer gross failings.

I never had to endure the 300bps Kansas City tap standard, praise be to the deities.

I've still got working floppies from the mid 80s, e.g. Apple's Smalltalk implementation for fat Macs. "Glacial" is an overestimate of the speed, but it was sufficient to convince me that OOP was a GoodThing and C++ (when it appeared) was a BadThing.

I never used paper tape or saw it used. I had the impression it was on its way out by the late 60s. It probably depended which area of application you were in. Some industries such as telecomms are notoriously conservative. They were using 1/2" tape long after everyone else had moved to DAT and other cartridge form factors, which were much cheaper, faster, and with vastly higher capacity.

Certainly declining in the late 70s, as 8" floppies became more available.

I suspect machine control, process control and similar high-reliability long-lifetime were holdouts. Not having lots of wires running around a machine shop, rebooting PDP11s (which will be in service until at least 2038!), that kind of thing.

Watching a tape being read at 1000cps (i.e. 100in/s, 2.5m/s) was fun, especially when it stopped dead. Paper cuts? Nah. It was bleedin' obvious that the edges shouldn't be touched!

An advantage with cards was that it was easy to amend a program, without having to redo the whole thing. One of the disadvantages was that the deck could be dropped and scrambled. I'm not sure how that worked with paper tape.

Slowly, painfully, one character at a time, and there's a reason the ASCII DEL character is 0x7F. Plus edlin, ed, and contemporary editors were terse and opaqueness wasn't an issue.

The IBM System 7 used cassette tape for diagnostics. The attached printer used paper tape.

Someone in need of 4 palettes of electronic parts? Estimated weight overall: 2000kg.

https://www.kleinanzeigen.de/s-anzeige/ ... 2-168-6432

And, as usual: NAWTS

Another variation of our signature tune.

https://www.facebook.com/10008852695127 ... 879840985/

Some really interesting CT scans of real & fake Apple products.

mnem

Einstein's field equations for beginners (and dwagons):

https://lizardshuffle.tumblr.com/tagged/hoards

Warning: Some are NSFW. Most are by commission.

mnem

Found this in one of my feeds; excerpt from: https://orionmagazine.org/article/inter ... y-anatomy/



Well, maybe I really am a big ol' tub of goo...

mnem
everything is connected.

mnem
"...thanks for all the fish."

Fun with color and luminance:

https://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2013/0 ... or-vision/

-Pat

mnementh wrote: ↑Mon Nov 27, 2023 1:33 am Found this in one of my feeds; excerpt from: https://orionmagazine.org/article/inter ... y-anatomy/

Well, maybe I am a big ol' tub of goo...

mnem
everything is connected.

“It is Orion’s fundamental conviction that humans are morally responsible for the world in which we live, and that the individual comes to sense this responsibility as he or she develops a personal bond with nature.” The Orion Nature Quarterly was founded in 1982 as a program of the Myrin Institute, a private operating foundation based in New York.

and

The Myrin Institute
An operating foundation working to re-establish balance between the scientific or intellectual world view and the vast, more intuitive potential of the human spirit.
“The wheel of history cannot be turned back; modern man
neither can nor should give up the high degree of analytical
intelligence gained in the course of centuries, nor should he lose
interest in the great achievements in the material world. But
these gifts of destiny can be matched by a conscious effort
to re-strengthen dormant intuitive powers.”
- Franz E. Winkler, MD

"conscious effort to re-strengthen dormant intuitive powers." causes my klaxons to scream, and the red flags to twitch vigorously.

Cubdriver wrote: ↑Mon Nov 27, 2023 6:02 am Fun with color and luminance:

https://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2013/0 ... or-vision/

Many fun, interesting, and effects... https://michaelbach.de/ot/index.html
Then a scary effect... Look at the central green blob, and imagine the yellow blobs are gliders coming straight at you.
https://i0.wp.com/whyevolutionistrue.co ... 4979-1.gif

These changes are remarkably difficult to spot, due to the blink plus the human brain. After you spot them, they are almost blindingly obvious and you wonder how you could miss them. (Not shown as img tags, since you need to see them individually with nothing else.)
Couple eating a meal: http://nivea.psycho.univ-paris5.fr/ASSChtml/couple.gif
Canal bridge: http://nivea.psycho.univ-paris5.fr/ASSC ... bridge.gif
but why it is much easier to see this change: http://nivea.psycho.univ-paris5.fr/ASSChtml/milkman.gif

tggzzz wrote: ↑Mon Nov 27, 2023 12:08 pm

mnementh wrote: ↑Mon Nov 27, 2023 1:33 am Found this in one of my feeds; excerpt from: https://orionmagazine.org/article/inter ... y-anatomy/

Well, maybe I really am a big ol' tub of goo...

mnem
everything is connected.

“...But these gifts of destiny can be matched by a conscious effort to re-strengthen dormant intuitive powers.”
- Franz E. Winkler, MD

"conscious effort to re-strengthen dormant intuitive powers." causes my klaxons to scream, and the red flags to twitch vigorously.

What does that have to do with this article? It outlines something that has been documented about how our body works, and may very well alter how modern medicine deals with our bodies. It bears watching, to see if current scientific study into this approach proves fruitful.

I really don't care about the ideology involved; but completely dismissing the value of "the intuitive leap", which has brought about many of the greatest inventions of human history, is equally as foolish as trusting in mysticism and voodoo for one's healthcare.

Cheers,
mnem
nice pants.

mnementh wrote: ↑Mon Nov 27, 2023 1:03 pm

tggzzz wrote: ↑Mon Nov 27, 2023 12:08 pm

mnementh wrote: ↑Mon Nov 27, 2023 1:33 am Found this in one of my feeds; excerpt from: https://orionmagazine.org/article/inter ... y-anatomy/

Well, maybe I really am a big ol' tub of goo...

mnem
everything is connected.

“...But these gifts of destiny can be matched by a conscious effort to re-strengthen dormant intuitive powers.”
- Franz E. Winkler, MD

"conscious effort to re-strengthen dormant intuitive powers." causes my klaxons to scream, and the red flags to twitch vigorously.

What does that have to do with this article? It outlines something that has been documented about how our body works, and may very well alter how modern medicine deals with our bodies. It bears watching, to see if current scientific study into this approach proves fruitful.

I really don't care about the ideology involved; but completely dismissing the value of "the intuitive leap", which has brought about many of the greatest inventions of human history, is equally as foolish as trusting in mysticism and voodoo for one's healthcare.

Follow the money to understand what type of articles are likely to be (financially) worth publishing. Strike 1.

Despite that article mentioning "reputable bodies like the NIH", there are no references. Strike 2.

That article includes paragraphs like... Strike 3
"This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius, after all, when the mystics tell us we “shift from matter to spirit; from egotistic materialism and hope for personal redemption to shared feelings and aspirations; from the long ago matriarchal/patriarchal tensions to an age of equality and androgyny.” It’s all about that third thing that envelops the spaces between any two nodes: the relationship, the dynamic, the warm data and the energy that animates their movement, direction, and leaves everything changed through the very act of connection."

The author does not have a relevant background... Strike 4
"Jennifer Brandel is a serial entrepreneur and innovator who works between industries to address the same problem set: how to design systems that listen, respond and evolve with their stakeholders. Her curiosity and listening-based approach has yielded the kind of change that shifts sectors toward a co-creative paradigm. She is co-founder of Hearken, Zebras Unite, Civic Exchange Chicago, Election SOS, Democracy Day, Advancing Democracy, WBEZ’s Curious City and Dance Dance Party Party. Brandel received the Media Changemaker Prize by the Center for Collaborative Journalism, was named one of 30 World-Changing Women in Conscious Business, is a Columbia Sulzberger Fellow, an RSA Fellow, a member of the Guild of Future Architects and the National Civic Collaboratory. "

And I'm sure there are more, but life's too short!

I always read who the article is written by before I read it and she is not qualified to speak on such matters and should probably stuff her fist in her cakehole and try and strangle herself to death from the inside.

You are a lovely and very kind person.

BU508A wrote: ↑Mon Nov 27, 2023 6:36 pm You are a lovely and very kind person.

I try to give people what they deserve as soon as possible, since that saves our remaining lives for other things. BD is doing the same

His suggestion is compassionate, since it would be quick - iff the author was sufficiently competent. The comparable suggestion I have for politicians that don't know how many children they have had is that they be staked down over an anthill, with 6 weeks supply of water.