Scanner Plays Beethoven’s Ode to Joy

By Alex in Music, Science & Tech, Video Clips on Jun 10, 2008 at 6:48 pm

Miss C recently posted the floppy disk drive that plays Imperial March – turns out, that’s not the only computer peripheral that can play music. Here’s a HP scanner that plays Beethoven’s Ode to Joy: hit play or go to Link [YouTube]- Thanks Greg Bulmash!

Previously on Neatorama: Take a Stroll Down Computing Memory Lane


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  1. CheeseDuck
    Jun 10th, 2008 at 7:20 pm

    Eh? I want to know how it does that.

  2. otterly
    Jun 10th, 2008 at 8:58 pm

    I love that scanner. I wish all of the ugly and mundane things around here did something charming like that. Now is it supposed to play music or is it just expressing itself?

  3. Blaze
    Jun 10th, 2008 at 9:38 pm

    This is why I love this site! One silly little video leads to me learning about easter eggs and google translated into Klingon! Man do I have a lot of time on my hands!

  4. Larry Sheldon
    Jun 10th, 2008 at 10:35 pm

    [Tried to log in--something is broken]

    How technology has progressed.

    Down stairs some where I have a program deck that will make a 1403 printer play “She’ll be comin’ around the mountain”.

  5. Jeff Greco
    Jun 10th, 2008 at 10:44 pm

    This is even more amazing: Radiohead’s “Nude” performed by old computer parts. http://www.vimeo.com/1109226

  6. seekshelter
    Jun 11th, 2008 at 4:55 pm

    yet another neatorama post that reminds me of the band Man or Astroman… maybe not a household name, but nowhere near being an unknown band… they have to have one of the few things that you can’t find on the internet… they would actually mic up a dot matrix printer to have it play live… mix that with their 8 foot tall tesla coil and you had yourself an awesome live show…

  7. manik
    Jun 11th, 2008 at 4:59 pm

    Let’s not forget Man or Astroman, the band most famous for the Mystery Science Theater 3000 “love song”. They recorded a song “a simple text file” on their album Spectrum of Infinite Scale. They played it by, well, printing a simple text file through a dot matrix printer that they lugged around many live events. I could not find a decent vid or MP3 to share.

    Thier shows were fun, the grand finale was normally a couple blasts of lightning from their 6′ Tesla Coil that looked amazingly like this “http://www.mgvolt.com/tesla_coil/tesla-coil-sparks5.jpg”

  8. CKS2996
    Jun 11th, 2008 at 6:36 pm

    That is done by the controller IC in the scanner, invoked by a secret button combination.

  9. manik
    Jun 11th, 2008 at 7:29 pm

    Man, seekshelter and I were on the same page.

    I don’t really know whether the Tesla Coil was 6′ or 8′ tall.

  10. stanley
    Jun 12th, 2008 at 9:29 am

    My previous post may not make it through because of this response: “Oops, something in your comment triggered the blog engine to request a moderation. Don’t worry – someone will take a look at it manually soon! There’s no need to re-submit the comment.”

    Here’s a paraphrase: Horsetwaddle. Arsewash. Flydung.

    Of all the ridiculous things flying around the web this is the closest to matching Chriss Angel and Derren Brown that I’ve seen in its breathtaking (and correct) assumption of stupidity by its audience. Congratulations to all.

  11. Rob P.
    Jun 12th, 2008 at 6:37 pm

    In the era of 8-bit computing, there was a hack for the Commodore 1541 disc drive that would vibrate the read/write head in varied frequencies to play the song “Daisy”. It was aptly called “Drive Music” and was notorious for destroying or misaligning drives after only one play.

    Here is a link to a video of it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gnMgmlKi_o


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