Old Computers Resurrected As Instruments At Bletchley Park

arcticstoat writes with a snippet from bit-tech.com; musician Matthew Applegate "plans on assembling a virtual orchestra of 20 retired relics of computing at the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park. The choice of venue will even allow Applegate to feature the infamous Colossus Mark 2 computer in the event, which was used for code-breaking in World War II and was recently reconstructed at Bletchley Park in 2007. ... A wide selection of computing fossils be used in Applegate's final musical presentation, which is called 'Obsolete?' This includes the Elliot 803 (a 1960s machine with 4KB of memory), the aforementioned Colossus Mark 2, a Bunsviga adding machine (pictured) and a punch card machine. As well as this, there are also some machines that will look nostalgically familiar to kids who grew up with the home computer generation, including a BBC Micro, an Atari 800XL, a Dragon 32 and an Amstrad CPC464." The article's list of the members of this "orchestra" makes an interesting checklist of computer hardware history.

Comments

Symphony for Dot Matrix Printers

[eyrieowl]

I highly recommend "The Symphony for Dot Matrix Printers", by The User. You can find it on eMusic I think (probably elsewhere as well). It's like being in the computer lab of yore, but with style. :)

Re:Can they run Linux?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

... and do they boot it faster than Vista on current PCs?

Speaking as a former Atari 800XL owner, no. In fact, it got to a point where you could memorize the exact pattern of beepbeeeepbeenbeepbeeeeenbeepbeepbebp..*drive rev.. drive rev*...*beep beeeeep been beeeeen beep...*... and have your own little internal count-down. And, on top of that, it booted into the app you were using. Wanna start another app? Turn off machine, insert new disk, turn it on and hold down the Option key.

In short: your quip was incredibly cheap and utterly unfunny to anybody who actually knows anything about the topic.