Old computer noises

[Dani Eder]

> 
> We even knew if we had diagnostics in our compile by the sound of the
> old 1132 printer....It had a different "rhythm.".....I remember talking
> on the phone from home to a friend at the computer...in the background was
> the printer ker-chunking out a listing for him.....I heard the
> unmistakable tones of a diagnostic report, and told him he had better
> fix his bugs and re-compile....He thought I was psychic!
> 
     Back in high school, we had an IBM 1620 that was just as old
as I was.  Someone had discovered that if you put an AM radio on
the console near the typewriter, and tuned to the low end of the
AM dial, you could hear all sorts of interesting noises.  We never
did figure out what caused them, but one guy wrote a program that
would play songs, and after a while, you could tell what the
computer was doing by the sounds it was making.  It was lots of
fun to be able to tell innocent bystanders "the printer will start
in five seconds", and then have it happen.

Dani Eder / Boeing / ssc-vax!eder / Ad Astra!(To the Stars!)