Music on the PDP-1

Published on 2003-08-13 by Mark VandeWettering

A couple of years ago, Tom Duff approached me with the notion that he was going to write a simulator for the ancient PDP-1 so that he could run SpaceWar!, widely regarded as the first real video game. We both wrote simulators for the PDP-1, and enjoyed playing around with such a bizarre machine.

Lately I’ve decided to resurrect this code and make a nice version using the [Simple DirectMedia Layer][1] library. Toward that end, I dug up some of the old links documenting the PDP-1, but ran accross [Dan Smith’s PDP-1 Music][2] page. He has links to ten different mp3 files which were made from original tapes he made at the time.

I liked them enough that I made them accessible here:

As Time Goes By…
- Assorted Christmas Carols
  - Downtown
    - Goldfinger
      - Bach’s Little Fugue
        
        Chopin’s Minute Waltz
        
        Bach’s Passacaglia and Fuge
        
        Shiela, by Tommy Roe
        
        We Shall Overcome
        
        The Winston Cigarette Jingle