Scanjet Music 240
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 (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, yes, I'm in the process of doing a remake this year along with some other simular songs.
Re:And printers too (Score:4, Funny)
Re:And printers too (Score:2)
Yeah, but then you'd need to set up a pair of linearly independent highly-directional speakers hooked up to your sound card, pointing at a microphone you slide across your desk as a pointing device.
Re:And printers too (Score:2)
OMG how hold is this? (Score:2)
how old is this? (Score:3, Informative)
today it makes the front page.
slow news day?
Re:And printers too (Score:5, Funny)
Mirror (Score:2, Informative)
Here's a mirror in case it goes down: http://slashdot.whatsmykarma.com/scanjet-elise2.mp g [whatsmykarma.com].
2000? How about the Manhattan Project? (Score:2)
Re:And printers too (Score:2)
I remember playing Jingle Bells on an old Epson MX-80...and a pr0n program for the Apple ][+ that used the floppy drive for sound effects!
ttyl
Farrell
neat. (Score:5, Funny)
that's nothing (Score:5, Funny)
Re:that's nothing (Score:2)
My C64 floppy could do that! (Score:4, Funny)
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! (Score:5, Funny)
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: (Score:2)
Re:My C64 floppy could do that! (Score:2)
Re:My C64 floppy could do that! (Score:2)
Re:My C64 floppy could do that! (Score:2)
Re:My C64 floppy could do that! (Score:2)
Of course, the tape drive was much fun on the C64 as well - you could use it as a one bit sampler, for instance, though the sound quality wasn't exactly great.
Worked sur
Re:My C64 floppy could do that! (Score:5, Funny)
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! (Score:2)
Re:My C64 floppy could do that! (Score:2)
The V&A Museum has a working 401 & 803 at the Blythe House, I might check it out next time I'm in London...
Did you work with the 803 professionally, or just tinker with it?
Re:My C64 floppy could do that! (Score:2)
Feh! Kids! (Score:2)
*Luxury*
If *we* wanted to make music, we had to write PL/1 code that would overdrive the IBM 026 card punch while hand-feeding it rolls of paper towel (the old bleached white thick stuff too, none of this modern namby-pamby recycled "natural finish" crap neither) to generate Duo-Art player piano reels!
We used to *dream* of having tape drives!
DG
Re:My C64 floppy could do that! (Score:2)
I hate to tell you this, but getting music out of a cassette tape could have been done much more easily than this.
Re:My C64 floppy could do that! (Score:2)
Re:My C64 floppy could do that! (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, I saw a program published in 'ZX User' or something like that to play music on the ZX80. Despite the fact that the Sinclair ZX80 has no sound chip. I don't know whether it w
Re:My C64 floppy could do that! (Score:2)
Almost all the I/O on the Sinclairs were produced with bit bang [comedia.com] tricks.
TRS-80 click (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:My C64 floppy could do that! (Score:2)
I also remember the aforementioned original drive music software for the C64 and the infamous 1541 drive. Oh, those were the days when hardware features were shamelessly used for weird tricks.
Re:My C64 floppy could do that! (Score:2)
Re:My C64 floppy could do that! (Score:2)
My TRS-80 Model 1 could do that! (Score:2)
Later I typed in a Basic program (we had a tape drive but no floppy) and played the theme from this great big hit movie from a couple years before -- Star Wars.
That was 1980. I was in 9th grade. Yeah, I'm feeling old.
Re:My C64 floppy could do that! (Score:3)
Für Elise / For Elise (Score:3, Funny)
For the umlaut-challenged... (Score:2)
Fuer Elise is also acceptable.
Re:Für Elise / For Elise (Score:2)
Old BBS flashbacks (Score:3, Funny)
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?
Re:Old BBS flashbacks (Score:2)
Re:Old BBS flashbacks (Score:2)
The content is real, I update all my blogs 6-7 days a week with fresh, original content. What is spammy about that?
Re:Old BBS flashbacks (Score:2)
P.S. your advice on your teh 733t 8lo9 to pay off the smallest credit card first is crap, you should pay off the debt with the highest interest rate first.
Re:Old BBS flashbacks (Score:2)
When you take on extra work to pay off debt, you want to pay off the smallest debt first -- it gives you a feeling of accomplishment, it gives you one less bill to pay in the future, and it cuts back on one possible collection attempt if you're in that pit. I've helped dozens of friends and re
Re:Old motor flashbacks (Score:2)
The boot sequence on my old Laser Turbo XT would boot with (I swear) the opening tones of the "Night Court" theme song. It would play "whirrr-thunk", "whirrr-whirr-thunk-thunk-thunk". I was always disappointed that my drive didn't start into the rest of the song.
You can hear the Night Court theme song here [barbneal.com]. Just try to imagine those first bassy notes as a loud Winchester drive.
Old news guys... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Old news guys... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Old news guys... (Score:2)
Bank of America ATMs do this (Score:2)
Wow. This is kinda old. (Score:5, Funny)
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 (Score:4, Funny)
--
United Bimmer - BMW Enthusiast Community [unitedbimmer.com]
Re:Linux Kernel (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Linux Kernel (Score:2, Funny)
Worse, play it forwards and all of your base are belong to us.
Re:Linux Kernel (Score:2)
s'funny. sounds more like flying furniture to me
Re:Linux Kernel (Score:2)
Great...Now I Don't Need a 7.1 Surround System (Score:2)
Then again, that's the true spirit of "hacking" -- and I am old enough to remember when a hacker was someone who took hardware like this and made it do something that it was not "intended" to do and quite often, novel applications and entire product lines were born as a result.
Still, I doubt that this will be attached t
Re:Great...Now I Don't Need a 7.1 Surround System (Score:2)
Inspirations... (Score:5, Funny)
Then I saw the server name:
ganjatron.net.nyud.net
The GanjaTron...
Ok, question answered...
Marry Had a Little Lamb (Score:2, Funny)
Man am i bored to pot to this. Oh well.
Re:Marry Had a Little Lamb (Score:3, Informative)
3212333 222333 3212333 22321
Amaze your friends!
Re:Marry Had a Little Lamb (Score:2)
Re:Many more songs.. (Score:2)
Output. (Score:2)
Re:Output. (Score:2)
Bah.... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Bah.... (Score:2)
Check out the link. They have streams of audio samples available. This was featured on slashdot a year or three ago.
Latest in a long line of such hacks (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Latest in a long line of such hacks (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Latest in a long line of such hacks (Score:2)
Back then it was
- read in a box of 2000 punched cards, 500 cards at a time
- wait 15 minutes for the job to complete
- wade through 500 pages of paper output
- no profit
- correct/duplicate some cards
- repeat ad nauseam
Using printers to play music (Score:2)
Floppy drive voice synth (Score:2)
The speed wasn't anywhere near high enough for music, but somebody had written a freeware program that could use them to create a kind of gravelly
So did Sinclair ZX80 (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:So did Sinclair ZX80 (Score:2)
Wow, cool. (Score:2, Funny)
I'm waiting for
Re:Wow, cool. (Score:2)
Re:Wow, cool. (Score:2)
Re:Wow, cool. (Score:2)
My dog can burp the theme to Jaws. Well, the first note or two anyway.
Her farts don;t make any noise. It would be much cooler if they did. The just stink so bad that even she leaves the room.
Beautiful old beasts, but beware the SCSI errors.. (Score:2)
However, they have some nasty problems. Mine keeps causing errors on the SCSI bus, which is very hard to recover from. Apparently even with the cheap supplied ISA SCSI card (Sym53416?) and HP cabling, it still throws a lot of errors. Under Windows the errors were handled pretty transparently. Fedora Core 2
The USER and Xenophonics (Score:2, Informative)
The User - Symphony #2 For Dot Matrix Printers:
http://www.emusic.com/album/10735/10735064.html [emusic.com]
Xerophonics:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00008NGDB/qid=1
Too Much Spare Time... (Score:2, Funny)
Don't kow about the dogs? Google it! It is probably on the same site as dogs barking Jingle Bells.
Re:Too Much Spare Time... (Score:2)
You young whippersnappers... (Score:2)
...when I was a kid, we used to make music on dot matrix [sat.qc.ca] printers.
This is my favorite kind of hack... (Score:2)
Old news: this was reported in the HP Journal! (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Band which uses old computers/printers etc... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Band which uses old computers/printers etc... (Score:2)
i catch them live whenever i can here in Dallas. Their cd has a track that you're suppose to record onto tape and use in a c64. It's a snyth. they wrote or something.
man or astro-man? (Score:2)
Straying from the topic a bit.... (Score:2)
Für Elise (Score:2)
It was not free
Of that I'm sure.
The money, all in cash, came from Elise
Thus it was she
He wrote it Für.
(sung to the tune of Für Elise, of course)
Temperature Monitor and a G5 (Score:2)
http://www.bresink.de/osx/HardwareMonitor.html [bresink.de]
IBM 1130 + Punch Cards + Transistor Radio = Music! (Score:2)
We used to impress visitors at my high school's open house with this trick until the Apple ][ and Commodore PET arrived.
Industrial motors can (probably) play music, too (Score:2)
Huge HDD Requirement (Score:2)
ScanJet 4p song in firmware (Score:4, Informative)
The old Palantir scanners could do Wagner (Score:2)
But along with the original Internet toasters (two implementations in 1987) the Palantir scanners seem to have vanished.
Got rid of my 3c... (Score:2)
I said 'screw that' and purchased a whole new flatbed scanner for only slightly more, much later
( I actually got it running under 98 by disabling the DOS device drivers - but it was quite flakey; only scanned once in a series of attempts. )
That said.. I miss the 3c. It was relatively fa
Tree Wave did this with a dot-matrix printer... (Score:3, Interesting)
Check them out here [treewave.com]
Re:9 comments and already slashdotted (Score:2)
Yep. (Score:2)
Yep. It'll come with SSSSPMT (Super Silly Secure Scanner-Played Media Technology)
Re:Isn't it amazing ... (Score:2)
Re:Video doctored? (Score:2)
A friend of mine (who magically turned in to my brother-in-law) told me a lot of years ago, brought the scanner over and showed me, it was cute