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DEC LAB-8/e (PDP-8/e) playing music

Philipp Hachtmann

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  • Recommended by 1 person: 1 on Hacker News.

Beginner. No background in the topic needed.

50K views18 years ago1 recommendation

History and cultureHardwareRetro computingHistory of computingElectronics

A 1971 DEC LAB-8/e minicomputer plays music by generating electromagnetic noise that is picked up by a nearby AM radio receiver.

This is a video of my 1971 DEC LAB-8/e minicomputer playing music. In this video it is revealed where the music comes from: The music is generated by generating noise induced into an AM radio receiver near the CPU. The software is Richard Wilson's "Music Compiler" written back in 1975. It runs under OS/8, one of Digital's operating systems for the PDP-8 series of computers. Visit pdp8.hachti.de?lab8e

Why it's here

1 person recommends this

What people say. Shared as a classic historical example of using electromagnetic side-channels to transmit audio from a computer without radio hardware.

segfaultbuserron Hacker News • Recommends

On “Finding Radio Frequency Side Channels”

…e a coil whine at a specific frequency, and it plays PC Speaker music via the inductor coil on the switched-mode power supply of the CPU. On one hand, we can say it's a time-honored tradition in computing and hacking, on the other hand, it means the same huge side-channel exploit is still here despite that it has been half-a-century already... 0 link to this video 1 link 2 link…
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braythwayton Hacker News • Mentions

On “System Bus Radio: Transmits AM radio on computers without transmitting hardware”

I seem to recall reading about this running on minicomputers or mainframes, as described in another reply, and I also think this predated the Altair, as I first became smitten with computers around 1972. Here's a video of a minicomputer generating AM radio music in 1971: link to this video
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tdeckon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Transmits AM radio on computers without radio transmitting hardware”

Here's a video of a PDP-8/e playing tunes over an AM radio: link to this video The software dates to around 1975.
View on Hacker News