Scanjet Music

Popadopolis writes "Hack a day is reporting that HP Scanjets have a hidden ability to play music. According to the article, "The HP ScanJet 3c/4c have a variable speed scan head that is driven by a stepper motor. The Play Tune command can be used to move the head at different frequencies." They also have a video of a scanner playing "Fur Elise.""

And printers too

And so can printers [suso.org]. (2000)

Yes, yes, I'm in the process of doing a remake this year along with some other simular songs.

Re:And printers too

And you can use your mouse as a scanner while you're playing music on your real scanner.

Re:And printers too

Musical instruments don't come cheap, it's no wonder the cartridges cost so much.

how old is this?

yesterday, this link was posted in a comment [slashdot.org] as part of the discussion to a story "guy makes scanner out of optical mouse" [slashdot.org]. a couple of other posts pointed out that hackaday.com has lots more stuff like this.
today it makes the front page.
slow news day?

neat.

That's like the guy who made speakers out of some old hard drives. [afrotechmods.com]

that's nothing

The same guy also made slashdot out of paper and crayon [afrotechmods.com]

My C64 floppy could do that!

I could do that on my Commodore 1541 Floppy Drive.

Fuck, I'm old. Sigh.

-

N3P [n3p.se]: Two-year college level training in how to become a successful Project Entrepreneur in Open Source [n3p.se]!

Re:My C64 floppy could do that!

"I could do that on my Commodore 1541 Floppy Drive."

You had a floppy drive? Upstart newbie. I had a tape drive on my PET2001, and the only way we could make music with it would be to record a BASIC program, then play the cassette in an audio tape player.

Of course, this meant that any music we made had only two tones. Which wasn't so bad, considering the #1 album at the time was "Thriller."

Re:My C64 floppy could do that!

The drive head on the 1541 gets out of alignment fairly easily, particularly when playing "music" by banging it repeatedly against the the end of the track it was on.... (only a screw to adjust, but it was a real pain to deal with)

Ye Gods, but that brings back memories. I worked part time at a computer store in Virginia. One of my co-workers was a Navy Master Chief named Bob. I remember a father and son bringing in a 1541 floppy drive for alignment and Bob, with a very serious face, asked the son if the drive was out of alignment from playing games with copy protected discs - or from copying games with copy protected discs - "it takes a different kind of alignment process, don't ya know...". I thought the kid was going to burst into tears right there rather than admit to piracy in front of his father.

That Bob was a funny guy. He would straighten out a paperclip and drive it lengthwise down the center of a cigarette so the ash wouldn't fall off while he was smoking - then he would walk around the store and demo all the different types of computers we sold (Leading Edge brand PC clones, Commodore 64, Commodore 128 and Commodore Amigas!) the whole time with this cigarette ash getting longer and longer...

He's also the guy who taught me the trick for people who work in high-security areas. If you work where people wear an ID badge on a lanyard around their neck - and it's magnetically encoded (hey, this was a long time ago - long before RFID badges became common), you can go down to the local craft store and buy a long roll of magnetic craft tape the same width as the thickness of a desktop surface, and then run a length of magnetic craft tape down the whole front edge of someone's desk and every couple of days they'll find their ID badge has stopped working - again!

Bob worked at the Navy Research Labs in Washington D.C. and one of his co-workers there asked him to take advantage of his computer store discount and buy him a copy of The Haley's Project, an educational astronomy program that was similar to "Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?". The manual was made up to look like an important government document, complete with fake "TOP SECRET" stamps on most of the pages. Problem was, they worked in a secure government laboratory and the security guards weren't too keen on Bob's coworker trying to take home a manual stamped "TOP SECRET". Last I heard, he ended up having to stuff it in his underwear to sneak it out of the building... Oh, that Bob...

Re:My C64 floppy could do that!

I remember there was a cricket game for the BBC Micro that used the 'click' of the relay used for the cassette remote control to approximate the sound of leather on willow. (If your cassette player had a remote control socket you could connect it to the c

TRS-80 click

A similar techinique was used by the LeScript word processor in the TRS-80 model 3/4. The cassette relay clicked on the keystroke to simulate typewiter sound. If I remember correctly, the device independent I/O on the model 4 (TRSDOS 6) permitted inserti

Re:My C64 floppy could do that!

Or maybe you have bad taste in scanners.

Für Elise / For Elise

Not "Animal Skin Elise".

Old BBS flashbacks

This reminds me of a program for probably 15 years ago (or maybe 18?) that used an Epson dot matrix printer to make music by printing. I think it only played 3 approximate notes, and really slowly at that. Does anyone recall this software?

I always figured those motors could be used in this fashion -- whenever you hear them operating you can definitely hear a musical quality.

HP versus the RIAA, who will win?

Old news guys...

Old news... I discovered this some 8 years ago! There was some software on the install floppy that came with it that played several different songs!

Re:Old news guys...

Yep, and I think they later removed it, since we lost the original floppy and I could never find that app again in any of HP's downloads. Mind you, I think this goes back more than 8 years--when was the 4c relased again?

Wow. This is kinda old.

I worked for an outsourcer doing HP printer/scanner pre-sales in late 99. We knew this then, and used the trick to impress the new guys. I found it on the net then, not even from an HP site. I'll have to hit the wayback machine to see if I can find the original place.

It must be a slow monday. There is either nothing happening, or this has been in queue for over 6 years, and just got approved. Explains why my stuff never gets approved.

Linux Kernel

If you print the linux kernel, it sounds like angels crying.
--
United Bimmer - BMW Enthusiast Community [unitedbimmer.com]

Re:Linux Kernel

Play a Windows CD backwards and you will hear Satan. It gets worse: play it forward and it'll install Windows.

Inspirations...

I was wondering: where the hell do they come up with these ideas?
Then I saw the server name:
ganjatron.net.nyud.net
The GanjaTron...
Ok, question answered...

Latest in a long line of such hacks

For instance, as early as 1964, the IBM 1403 line printer was programmed to produce music. Here is a page with a song [computerhistory.org] sheet. While I cannot find a reference, I remember someone else at IBM who used multiple tape drives as a kind of orchestra, also in the 1960s.

So did Sinclair ZX80

In the 80's, the nerd thing to do was to write assembly programs for the Sinclair. IIRC, you would convert the opcodes (which we all knew by heart) to ASCII, write a REM line with that, and run it (which I don't recall how).

I'd write loops inside loops, with changing and interdependent step sizes, and it would generate sounds on a FM radio sitting on the computer top (I KNOW my Z80 clock was 3.57MHz, way below FM; it was most probably due to harmonics interference or the radio IF).

I could get beats and interesting disco-like effects, and make alien phony calls. Then computers started shipping with speakers and sound processors and spoiled all the fun.

Old news: this was reported in the HP Journal!

HP was happy enough about this that their old "HP Journal" -- a monthly tech. magazine that would go in-depth into HP technology -- had an entire sidebar about the exact escape sequences needed to play the music. It was a sad day when they stopped publication; it was a fun read.

The same issue had, as its cover story, an article about how strap-on heart monitors work. Very cool, and the cover picture, of a small baby with a monitor on its foot, was striking. The same technology was put onto my oldest several years later when she was in the hospital right after being born.

ScanJet 4p song in firmware

My ScanJet 4p has "Ode to Joy" embedded in the firmware. If you set the SCSI channel to 0 and hold the green "scan" button on the front while switching on the power, it will play. I always thought this was a neat easter egg..

Re:Marry Had a Little Lamb

Why yes.... yes you can :}

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Amaze your friends!