> From: Russell Allen [mailto:russell.allen at firebirdmedia.com]

> >From: Peter Crowther
> >Does anyone know of earlier *dedicated* sound hardware than 
> this on any computer?  IIRC the 1900 series was c. 1965.

> The Australian CSIRAC computer (built 1949) had a speaker, 
> which was used to play "music" in 1951

OK, I lose :-).  Thanks for the information --- looks fascinating.

[...]
> 	RAM			768 words
[...]
> The best thing about this computer is the memory - Mercury 
> Delay Lines 
[...]

Pretty standard technology at the time.  One of the big problems was that
they *weren't* random-access; if the word you wanted at the time was
half-way down the tube, you had to wait for it to come round.  At a 10kHz
clock and a 960us delay line length, you could be waiting 10 clocks for the
word you wanted to fall out of the end of the delay line.  Not even Pentiums
are (quite) that bad!

MDLs made it easy to do arithmetic, though; just make sure the words come
through LSB-first, and you can make a serial adder that adds two bits,
remembers the carry, and waits for the next two bits to come through.
Doesn't use much hardware, and is adaptable to any word length.

Lousy visual pun: the Manchester University coat of arms includes a snake.
Way back when other students had waistcoats with the University coat of arms
on, my father had one with a diagram of a serial (half-)adder on the back.

		- Peter