Commodore 64 Program on LP

tomswift2002

Well-Known Member


Found this interesting. In 1984 this LP was issued with a Commodore 64 program in the outtro groove, and it apparently went unknown for 35 years.

I never thought that I would hear of a LP holding a computer program, but I guess it makes sense since audio and videotapes can hold digital information, and in the 80’s and 90’s computer modems used analog sound to send digital information along phone lines.
 
It certainly wasn't unusual or anything new--quite a few records had digital data encoded on them. Of the records I own, Tomita's album The Bermuda Triangle had sound effects that were, per the jacket, readable by a computer "programmed to the Tarbel system" (which may have actually been Tarbell, a cassette tape interface for computer data). I highly doubt some YouTuber's claim it was hidden for so long--there was no Internet back then where it could be publicized, but anyone with minimal knowledge of computers back then would instantly realize that this was computer data. Aside from that, it's an amusing artifact of the late 70s through the 80s. Some actually had games encoded into sound effects on the vinyl!

More on Tomita and others here: Vinyl Data | Kempa.com

Interesting read!
 
From what I can find, the few vinyls with computer tracks were mostly for the Sinclair Spectrum. Commodore 64 programs are unheard of.
 
Back
Top Bottom