
Conway's Game of Life on Dec PDP-7, Type 340 Display, & Am Radio ByteBeat Music - DonHopkins
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hB78NXH77s4
======
DonHopkins
Here's a photo of John Conway playing Life on a PDP-1:

[https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-
images/Guardian/Pix/pict...](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-
images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2015/7/22/1437585075275/0874b6b2-7ace-4752-b81d-dbf5282946cd-2060x1236.jpeg?width=620&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=d1905baf3c55b861f567992eb2af6b76)

>Conway playing Game of Life, which he invented in 1970. Photograph: Kelvin
Brodie/the Sun

From this article:

[https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jul/23/john-
horton-...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jul/23/john-horton-
conway-the-most-charismatic-mathematician-in-the-world)

>John Horton Conway: the world’s most charismatic mathematician

>John Horton Conway is a cross between Archimedes, Mick Jagger and Salvador
Dalí. For many years, he worried that his obsession with playing silly games
was ruining his career – until he realised that it could lead to extraordinary
discoveries

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DonHopkins
Listening to a PDP-7 with an AM radio isn't exactly ByteBeat (since you're
technically only allowed one line of code), but it sure sounds a lot like it:

Meet Bytebeat: A Brand New Electronic Music Genre

[https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qkzakx/meet-bytebeat-a-
br...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qkzakx/meet-bytebeat-a-brand-new-
electronic-music-genre)

>Become a slave to the algorhythm.

>Heard about the latest computer music genre sweeping the internet? It’s
called “bytebeat” and if this comes as news to you, don’t despair, the thing’s
only about five months old, so you’re still ahead of the curve. Bytebeat is
algorithmic music created from one line of code and was discovered/invented
while Finnish low-tech artist and programmer Ville-Matias Heikkila (aka
Viznut) and his friends were experimenting with the computer programming
language C code and creating one line formulas that could produce an audio
output (see below).

Bytebeat: Music from very short programs - the 3rd iteration

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCRPUv8V22o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCRPUv8V22o)

Bytebeat - Music from math formulas

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25aVWtNcAm0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25aVWtNcAm0)

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DonHopkins
Munching Squares and Spirograph with an AM radio is also quite pleasing:

DEC PDP-7 w/ Type 340 display running Munching Squares and Spirograph

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4oRHv-
Svwc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4oRHv-Svwc)

>Two display hacks run on PDP-7 serial number 129 with the Type 340 XY display
option. The 340 has a P7 phosphor has a slow decay which gives Munching
Squares an eerie afterglow. Both programs read the left switches to modify
patterns. A small AM radio was used to pick up RFI from the Type 347
controller. For the MIT AI lab hackers the Munching Squares "music" was
referred to as Munching Tunes.

Here is the 340 Vector Graphics Display Programming Manual:

[http://bitsavers.trailing-
edge.com/pdf/dec/graphics/7-13_340...](http://bitsavers.trailing-
edge.com/pdf/dec/graphics/7-13_340_Display_Programming_Manual.pdf)

The amazing retro-hacker Lars Brinkhoff has been working on emulating the 340
and its beautiful P7 phosphor with GLSL shaders for the simh PDP-7 emulator:

[https://github.com/larsbrinkhoff/crt-
simulation](https://github.com/larsbrinkhoff/crt-simulation)

[https://hackaday.io/project/168401-type-340-remake](https://hackaday.io/project/168401-type-340-remake)

------
DonHopkins
>Here is an implementation of John Conway's Game of Life on an 18 bit DEC
PDP-7 with a DEC Type 340 X/Y point display. Patterns are stored on and can be
called from our new JK09 PDP-7 storage device which is what we use for UNIX
V0. We have set a few starter patterns including Bill Gosper's Glider Gun.

>The sounds you hear are from the Type 347 display controller. They were
received using a Yaesu FT1XD radio in AM mode.

>The world supports 1296 points (36 x 36). We are attempting to increase this
to 72 x 72 or 5184 points.

