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Software Distribution By Vinyl

townxelliot writes "Beige Records is home to the intriguing 8-Bit Construction Set. Their record has the distinction of being "the first ever use of the vinyl recording medium for software distribution - the inside tracks are audio data which can be dubbed to cassette tape and booted in your respective atari or commodore 8-bit computers". Samples of their music ("entirely programmed in 6502 assembly language") are available for download."

28 of 279 comments (clear)

  1. does this mean by Festering+Leper · · Score: 5, Funny

    that we'll start getting floppy 45's in magazines again?

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    1. Re:does this mean by bessel · · Score: 2, Funny

      This is nothing. The druids used rocks to store the null character '\0' many hundreds of years ago.

  2. Ahhh the good old days.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    when copyright infringement of computer games could be done with a double cassette deck.

    Some good decks could even reliably copy games in high speed dubbing mode.

    Whoohoo!

    1. Re:Ahhh the good old days.... by BearJ · · Score: 5, Funny

      So back then, we used equipment for music to copy computer programs. As opposed to today, when we use computers to copy music. What an age we live in!

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    2. Re:Ahhh the good old days.... by acariquara · · Score: 4, Funny

      Yep. The turntables were turned.

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  3. don't play it backwards by circletimessquare · · Score: 5, Funny

    if you play it backwards you can briefly hear a voice say "6502 is dead"

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    1. Re:don't play it backwards by lakerdonald · · Score: 1, Funny
      Microsoft implants subliminal Messages:

      Linus is Dead! Linus is Dead!

  4. vinyl is for sissies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Real Men use eight tracks.

    1. Re:vinyl is for sissies by cosmic_0x526179 · · Score: 5, Funny
      Real Men use eight tracks.

      Screw that. Gimme a nice solid deck of 5081 cards any day. Now that was data ! Back when a Megabyte was enough to make your back sore. 1MB = 1,048,576 bytes = 13,108 cards = ~6.5 boxes of cards (at roughly 10 lbs/box) = ~65 lbs. Were talking serious data here.

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  5. ahh... by CdBee · · Score: 4, Funny

    but I need to know before I buy - is the record DRM-laden ?

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  6. Imagine... by IversenX · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...if you wrote DeCSS in this. Perhaps the MPAA and the RIAA would sue each other over who has the right to sue you, thus annihilating themselves into pure energy?

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    1. Re:Imagine... by Capt'n+Hector · · Score: 3, Funny

      I'm sure they'd both sue you...

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  7. AOL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    that we'll start getting floppy 45's in magazines again?

    AOL will of course be the first and largest user of this new medium.

  8. 6502 Assembly Language by bigtallmofo · · Score: 3, Funny

    * = $C000:.MEM
    LDA #115
    JSR $FFD2
    LDA #108
    JSR $FFD2
    LDA #097
    JSR $FFD2
    LDA #115
    JSR $FFD2
    LDA #104
    JSR $FFD2
    LDA #100
    JSR $FFD2
    LDA #111
    JSR $FFD2
    LDA #116
    JSR $FFD2

    SYS 49152

    I wonder if slashdot has ever been output in 6502 assembly language before?

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    1. Re:6502 Assembly Language by kb · · Score: 2, Funny

      If it has, I bet it wouldn't crash the system afterwards... unlike your version ;)

      (anyone else missing an RTS or JMP $FFD2 instead of the last JSR here? ;)

  9. Hah! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I've been joking about LP-ROMs for years :)

  10. Terminator X by FidelCatsro · · Score: 2, Funny

    This is a cool idea aslong as you dont have public enemy over to have cucumber sandwiches too often, i can imagine that Terminator X and his scratching antics could cause some problems

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  11. When I was a kid... by marsu_k · · Score: 4, Funny

    and the C64 was oh-so-popular, the local radio station used to send freeware C64 programs over radio so you could record them on a tape and use with your Commodore. It was good listening also, if you happened to like industrial/noise.

  12. Re:TI-99/4A by skurk · · Score: 2, Funny

    My debut was on the Oric 1 back in 1983. Now, loading games from tape was pretty time consuming, but the Oric had an option that made it even slower.

    For those of you who ever tried an Oric, you may remember the default load command; CLOAD "". But if you prepended ",S" it would go into something called a slow mode. ON A CASSETTE.

    Loading "The Hobbit" in slow mode took about 25 minutes, and I'm not even kidding here. It was so slow that you could almost hear every bit and tell wether it was a cool game or not before typing "RUN".

    --
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  13. Scannable? by zerblat · · Score: 2, Funny

    Now the question is, if you don't have a gramophone, can you read the data with a scanner?

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  14. Great.Now who makes A/V software for my turntable? by Powertrip · · Score: 2, Funny

    Great. Now who makes A/V software for my turntable?

  15. This story should have been posted later by RockClimb · · Score: 4, Funny

    A story like this should have been posted later in the day.... I woke up, went to slashdot, read the story and for a brief second thought the last 25 years of my life had been some type of twisted dream and that I was late for school. Gee thanks guys.... I nearly had a heart attack ;)

  16. Music on cheese? Whoa. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    As a somewhat musical engineering grad code monkey geek from Wisconsin, I must say, Keanu-style, "Whoa."

    So, let's see... easy listening can go on Neufchatel, rock would obviously be cheddar (classic rock on mild, alternative on medium, and hard rock on sharp in order to be able to support the modulation), and country would be Swiss (if only so that there will be breaks in the asinine monotony).

  17. Re:Increasing amount of data. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    less of the "musics"?

  18. Re:Increasing amount of data. by GeckoX · · Score: 2, Funny

    You used mobius records I presume? ;)

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  19. Audiophiles... by tonywestonuk · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...Of course, there are many of us who truly believe the quality of software distributed by Vinyl, will always be higher than that distributed by CD-ROM.

  20. Old spectrum joke by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    me:I got a great new game for the speccy!
    friend:wow, can i get a copy?
    me:sure
    boooooo boop
    boooooo booop
    booble de booble de booble
    boobde boop

    the long winter nights used to just fly by :-)

  21. Re:Pirating Over College Radio Waves by flyingsquid · · Score: 2, Funny

    That's nothing. We used clay tablets to record our binary. It really sucked if you spilled water on your programs and they would just turn into a pile of mud. We transmitted these programs using huge drums made out of mammoth hide which would boom the code out across the frozen hills. You'd sit in your cave (where the cave walls amplified the transmissions) and copy the code down onto your mud tablet and then set it by the fire to dry. Sometimes when you were gathering the mud it would get stuff in it like spiders and ants and you'd have to pick them out and then they'd sting you; and that's how we invented debugging. And once our code got dry we sat around and got really depressed because computers hadn't been invented yet. So we'd go outside and trudge uphill through the snow for six miles. We didn't even trudge to school uphill six miles, because school hadn't been invented yet. We just trudged because that's all there was to do to keep your mind off the fact that computers didn't exist. We once tried to invent a computer. We got a mammoth skull and figured the hardware would go inside the skull and the big hole in the skull where the trunk came out could hold the display, so it would be an all-in-one form factor. But then we didn't get much further than that. We couldn't decide whether to use mud, or sticks, or flint for the CPU. Vinyl disks? You modern, post ice-age geeks just don't know how good you have it.