12 Jul
2020
12 Jul
'20
4:22 a.m.
Did the non-Unix people also pull pranks like the
watertower?
One of my favorites was by John Kelly, a Texas original,
who refused the department-head perk of a rug so he
could stamp his cigarettes out on the vinyl floor.
John came from Visual and Acoustics Research, where
digital signal processing pressed the frontiers of
computing. Among his publications was the completely
synthetic recording of "Daisy, Daisy" released
circa 1963.
Kelly electrified the computer center with a
blockbuster prank a year or two before that. As
was typical of many machine rooms, a loudspeaker
hooked to the low-order bit of the accumulator
played gentle white noise in the background. The
noise would turn into a shriek when the computer
got into a tight loop, calling the operators to
put the program out of its misery.
Out of the blue one day, the loudspeaker called
for help more articulately: "Help, I'm caught in
a loop. Help, I'm caught in a loop. ..." it
intoned in a slow Texas drawl. News of the talking
computer spread instantly and folks croweded into
the machine room to marvel before the operators
freed the poor prisoner.
Doug
12 Jul
12 Jul
1:58 p.m.
New subject: Monitoring by loudspeaker (was: BTL pranks)
(This should probably be on COFF because I don't think this has much
to do with UNIX.)
On 11 Jul 2020 22:22 -0400, from doug(a)cs.dartmouth.edu (Doug McIlroy):
a loudspeaker hooked to the low-order bit of the
accumulator played
gentle white noise in the background. The noise would turn into a
shriek when the computer got into a tight loop,
How did that work? I can see how tying the low-order bit of the
accumulator to a loudspeaker would generate white noise as the
computer is doing work; but I fail to see how doing so would even
somewhat reliably generate a shrieking sound when the computer is in a
tight loop. Please, enlighten me. :-)
--
Michael Kjörling • https://michael.kjorling.se • michael(a)kjorling.se
“Remember when, on the Internet, nobody cared that you were a dog?”
3:25 p.m.
New subject: Monitoring by loudspeaker (was: BTL pranks)
On Sun, Jul 12, 2020 at 7:59 AM Michael Kjörling <michael(a)kjorling.se>
wrote:
(This should probably be on COFF because I don't
think this has much
to do with UNIX.)
On 11 Jul 2020 22:22 -0400, from doug(a)cs.dartmouth.edu (Doug McIlroy):
I would imagine a cap as a low-pass filter and a transistor as a poor-man's
analog comparator triggering a tape player on loop.
- Dan C.
a loudspeaker hooked to the low-order bit of the
accumulator played
gentle white noise in the background. The noise would turn into a
shriek when the computer got into a tight loop,
How did that work? I can see how tying the low-order bit of the
accumulator to a loudspeaker would generate white noise as the
computer is doing work; but I fail to see how doing so would even
somewhat reliably generate a shrieking sound when the computer is in a
tight loop. Please, enlighten me. :-)
4:58 p.m.
New subject: Monitoring by loudspeaker (was: BTL pranks)
When the computer is in a tight endless loop, the accumulator takes the
same series of values every time it's in the loop. Thus, instead of
white noise you get a sound whose frequency is the clock frequency of
the machine divided by the number of cycles spent by one loop iteration.
That's how you know that the machine is stuck in an endless loop: if it
was doing something useful, the values would change every iteration and
you would get white noise again.
Yours,
Robert C
On Sun, Jul 12, 2020 at 11:58:11AM +0000, Michael Kjörling wrote:
(This should probably be on COFF because I don't
think this has much
to do with UNIX.)
On 11 Jul 2020 22:22 -0400, from doug(a)cs.dartmouth.edu (Doug McIlroy):
--
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/\ - against html email - against proprietary attachments
a loudspeaker hooked to the low-order bit of the
accumulator played
gentle white noise in the background. The noise would turn into a
shriek when the computer got into a tight loop,
How did that work? I can see how tying the low-order bit of the
accumulator to a loudspeaker would generate white noise as the
computer is doing work; but I fail to see how doing so would even
somewhat reliably generate a shrieking sound when the computer is in a
tight loop. Please, enlighten me. :-)
--
Michael Kjörling • https://michael.kjorling.se • michael(a)kjorling.se
“Remember when, on the Internet, nobody cared that you were a dog?”
6:09 p.m.
New subject: Monitoring by loudspeaker
On 7/12/20 7:58 AM, Robert Clausecker wrote:
That's how you know that the machine is stuck in
an endless loop: if it
was doing something useful, the values would change every iteration and
you would get white noise again.
Computers are capable of generating PWM speech with a single bit output
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIejqWEV_8w
is an example on the Apple II
or multi-voice music using multiple bits
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTaVffknxEY
the sound is not 'white noise' which implies totally random output
any loop in the code will produce a unique sound when it is running
10:10 p.m.
New subject: Fwd: Monitoring by loudspeaker
On the CDC 3800, the top three bits of the accumulator were scaled and summed by a set of
three resistors, then fed into the console speaker. Generally, this produced noise of
very little interest (except to indicate that the machine was running).
However, when I ran my Shellsort (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shellsort
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shellsort>), the speaker made a very distinctive
sound. It was a series of rising tones whose durations got shorter and shorter.
Something like Vwooooooooooop, Vwooooooop, Vwooooop, Vroop, ...
-r
23 Aug
23 Aug
10:58 a.m.
New subject: Monitoring by loudspeaker
Robert Clausecker <fuz(a)fuz.su> writes:
When the computer is in a tight endless loop, the
accumulator takes the
same series of values every time it's in the loop. Thus, instead of
white noise you get a sound whose frequency is the clock frequency of
the machine divided by the number of cycles spent by one loop iteration.
A buddy and I did something somewhat related back in the early eighties,
when we were teaching ourselves programming, using, among other things,
his Tandy TRS-80 home computer. We discovered that a cheap "transistor
radio", sitting close to the computer, would be affected by the noise
generated by it, and then we figured out that if we didn't tune it to a
radio station, we'd get only the noise. Leaving that on as we worked on
a program, we got familiar with the sound of the code, and became able
to follow the execution by the changing patterns -- and if it did get
stuck in a loop somewhere, we'd not only hear it, but we would also have
a pretty good idea where it happened.
-tih
--
Most people who graduate with CS degrees don't understand the significance
of Lisp. Lisp is the most important idea in computer science. --Alan Kay
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6 comments
7 participants
participants (7)
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Al Kossow -
Dan Cross -
Doug McIlroy -
Michael Kjörling -
Rich Morin -
Robert Clausecker -
Tom Ivar Helbekkmo