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."

Data on vinyl done before

[whaley]

Basicode (Hobbyscoop) was distributed on flexi discs..

Hasn't this been done before?

[Fred Or Alive]

This page [kempa.com] has data on various vinyl records with computer data stored on them. Most of which are about 20 years old. So they're not the first to distribute computer data on vinyl.

Re:Increasing amount of data.

[leathered]

What do you mean by 'less of them'?. Most records I've seen have just 2 grooves :)

Re:Increasing amount of data.

[tidepool]

I'm not sure you're 100% correct. Judging by my vinyl collection, smaller, tighter grooves are higher frequencies and the bigger grooves are more BASS and lower frequency oriented.

That's how when you look at a record, you can see the 'break' of a record.

trance records are typically able to contain a lot more audio than Drum and Bass, etc.

peace,
bny

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Not first post...

[Fred Or Alive]

If you want weird software distribution, the BBC (and Channel 4) broadcast software through teletext services at one point as well.

Although that wasn't data as sound, teletext uses unused parts of the picture.

Its not the first.

[torpor]

In the 80's, we had magazines that would include software on plastic 'vinyl' slip-ins that were bundled on the cover .. i used to have a whole collection of these mini-records, full of software from the magazine ..

nice idea, though, to be mixing up assembly and music. take that, miss spears!! ;)

OK - so not quite vinyl, but...

[mauledbydogs]

When I worked on Commodore User (UK mag) in the 80s, we gave away a flexi-disc as a covermount. It was basically a floppy plastic record. One side was a Heaven 17 track and the other, IIRC, was a datatrack designed to be recorded onto tape then loaded on a C64.

Rainbow Magazine

[qwertphobia]

Rainbow Magazine [the-e-mall.net] used to ship with a floppy record every once in a while.

It had the same code on it that was listed in the magazine in text, but the record came without the typing and type-o-ing.

Rainbow Magazine was a magazine with content based around the Tandy/Radio Shack Color Computer. [coco3.com]

Re:Increasing amount of data.

[nickstance]

No, actually in the late 70's (could be wrong about the date) record companies started making the groove tighter on the record. This process, commonly called "groove cramming" did in fact mess with the quality of the record, making the record softer. The fact that a record had a lot of bass or not did not change the distance between grooves. It may be that the company producing the bass-heavy record wants to make sure it comes through as good as possible so they press it in heavier vinyl (180g or better) and don't cram the grooves.

Done by Computer & Video Games magazine in the

[mccalli]

C&VG occassionally came with a vinyl record containing software. The one that sticks in my mind was a dual music/software record containing a Thompson Twins' single (Doctor Doctor?) and a Thompson Twins adventure game for the Spectrum.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:Increasing amount of data.

[x2A]

Stereo records groove is a kinda V, with one channel being movements in the / direction, and the other being movements in the \ direction. So, deeper (thus wider) grooves gives you a greater amplitude range, increasing signal-to-noise ratio, however it means you have less tracks-per-inch on the disc. With noise generally being high end hiss, as well as the pops 'n clicks, on a low bit (4/8bit) and/or low frequency (eg, 8KHz) ADC, I would guess you could make the groove narrower and jam more info onto the disc before noise is a problem :-) -2A

Re:Hasn't this been done before?

[Richard W.M. Jones]

Software distribution using acetate (very flexible, cheap and light) records was very common in the UK around the early 1980s. They were the original "cover discs" on magazines!

I still have a few games, including an Othello/Reversi game for the ZX81 from "Your Computer" magazine.

The disadvantage was that you could play the acetate about twice before it got so damaged that it wouldn't play any more, so we used to record the record to tape first time.

Vinyl/acetate wasn't even the strangest way that computer software was distributed. I remember they used to broadcast games late at night on TV. You had to (carefully!) record the sound signal off the TV and onto your tape machine. Madness!

Rich.

LT-TFA

[x2A]

If you Listen To TFA, you'll realise that this isn't just software written to vinyl, this is software encoded in music, that happens to be written to vinyl. That is, the assembly code, when played back, actually SOUNDS like music. This is completely different from having a data section at the end of a vinyl disc (for all of you who have been using that as a "this has been done before with..." example).

'tho listening to some Speedy-J tracks, sounds like there some data encoded in those!

-2A

Re:Video on Vinyl

[WWWWolf]

Well, it's possible in theory, there was a vinyl-based video system called SelectaVision / VideoDisc [cedmagic.com].

Though, the discs themselves used read mechanism that was very different from LPs, and also had far higher groove density than LPs; if you store analog video on LPs, you probably get either a very short video or a very bad resolution.

distro on vynyl

[Anonymous Coward]

back in 1975/1975, a copy of 6800 BASIC
was put on a flexible record, and bound
into Interface Age magazine. You had
to play it, record it to cassette, and
load it in the machine. ..p

Re: 3 grooves

[cyber_rigger]

There was a Monty Python Album with 3 groves.

http://www.eeggs.com/items/2874.html [eeggs.com]

Not new at all

[zenst]

During the early computing days a few magazines gave away flexi-discs (records to us laymen) that had software on them. Reason was that distribution/pressing of flexi-disc records was way way cheaper than attaching a cassette tothe magazine. These that I have date back to 1981. One nice one has VIC-20, ZX81 and some PET software on the disc, also believe has track for Dragon micro but been a long long time since i dug them out. Today we have the great cover CD's (which are about as cheap to make as flexi-discs were back then), though CD's do fly alot lot further @:_).

I declare previous art

[deetsay]

The 8-Bit Construction Set record is also 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 (guinness world record for first-ever vinyl-to-software programming is currently pending)

I coded a small C64 demo and put it in a datatrack on my vinyl "Tero: Cracker's Revenge" on Rikos Records (http://www.rikosrecords.com/) a couple of years ago... Anyway, we already knew it was an old idea, I'm told there was an Apple 2 datatrack in 1981 on a record called "Kone kertoo" by a band called "Argon". I'm too lazy to read the full thread but there's probably earlier examples in the world as well... I'm pretty sure the Guinness record people will find out :-)

Re:Scannable?

[whaley]

Well, there is an optical lp player: http://www.audioturntable.com/
and there has been a previous slashdot article about the 'digital needle':
http://www.cs.huji.ac.il/~springer/

sigsaly

[an7ron]

bell labs did it with a gold disc during WW2

reply from beige

[Anonymous Coward]

hi folks

thanks for the debate on our record, hope someone likes the music anyway. obviously not the first data on vinyl [just never bothered to change the webpage in 5 years] and actually not the first time the 8-bit construction set has been slashdotted. but nonetheless it's always a pleasure to see what people think.

we received an anonymous and very interesting email in early 2002 detailing some patents regarding software distribution on vinyl. i'm appending it below for interested parties.

thanks again
& peace out nerds

paul
paul AT beigerecords DOT com

*****
Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2002 23:59:03 -0500

Distribution of computer programs on vinyl records
was done in the early 70's by several different
researchers. First, a guy named
Allan B. Chertok. He has several patents in this field,
which I would recommend that you guys read:

US Patent 3,662,350 (1972)
US Patent 3,740,733 (1973)
US Patent 3,662,354 (1972)

Also- Norman L. Harvey. This guys was a real genius.
Check out his patent: US 3,755,792 (1973).

This is not to say that your work is not "original"
and "cool". But please- give credit where credit is due!
*****

Bollocks!

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to get magazines in the 80's and they had plasticcy records on them that were supposed to be Sinclair Spectrum games. They never worked :P but hey!
Try and patent it you bastiches! I dares ya!