Vintage cassette tape holds Apple I BASIC, killer modem tune

Fair warning: this here post is nerdier than usual, and those who begin to feel nauseous at the mere mention of data-bending may want to refrain from continuing on. For you brave, hardened souls that are following through, feast your eyes on the "first piece of software ever sold by Apple." The Apple I BASIC cassette wasn't even included with all of the 200 Apple Is produced eons ago, but a few engineering souls have managed to extract the data and create an MP3 of the wave structure. Not surprisingly, the tone resembles that of a 1200 Baud connection, and if we should say so ourselves, would make for a wicked ringtone. Believe us, it gets even weirder in the read link, but you'll have to determine whether venturing down is something your brain can handle.

[Via BoingBoing]

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 20th 2008 5:12AM]

AAARGH, I just cant handle the nerdieness *head explodes*

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 20th 2008 7:24AM]

Cassette tape???

I think my parents used to own one of those....

:-P

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 20th 2008 8:25AM]

@SINNN,

We only want the choir here. Now get out !!!! Blasphemer !

How dare you say that the Emperor has no clothes !

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 20th 2008 11:57AM]

If you are running linux (any distro should work) and want to 'listen' to your data, run this command in a terminal:

sudo cat path/to/file >> /dev/dsp

it will start playing the file to your sound card.

A fun one is /dev/mem which contains all the data in your RAM
use like this.

sudo cat /dev/mem >> /dev/dsp

you can hit CONTROL+C to stop it.

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 20th 2008 2:43PM]

Very Cool

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 21st 2008 2:00AM]

this is cool

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 21st 2008 5:56AM]

...and so begins the next genre of music - data. I'm drawing the line here and will now go sit on my porch, in a rocking chair, with some lemonade, and a banjo, yelling at kids to get off my lawn. AND TURN DOWN THAT DATA!!