Il 01/04/19 12:24, Matteo Croce ha scritto:
These are all cases when the aural errors framework comes to help. This
framework adds to the kernel a generic library to play sounds, which can
be used to report errors or generic events.
hello Matteo,
this reminds me of a hack that Mr. Ferruccio Zulian (chief system
architect for Olivetti, General Electric, Honeywell and IBM from 1965 to
1990) told us about during an interview we made for our computer art
exhibition "bin/art"
When testing the hardware of a new system, back in the mid-60s, the
engineers hooked audio output to circuitry for debugging purposes.
They kept in mind how a set of correctly executed operations
**literally** sounded like and therefore they were able to detect errors
in later executions when something sounded "wrong".
This was way more easy than looking at the light panels commonly used
for similar debugging activities, as listening to sounds does not force
you to be in a particular place, looking at a particular object.
As explained in the interview, an interesting side effect of this hack
led to the early computer music experiments with Pietro Grossi (a real
giant in contemporary and electronic music) that ended up in the
recording "GE-115 concerto" 7 inch vinyl, distributed as christmas gift
to all Olivetti/General Electric employees in 1967.
here's the link to a webpage with the interview (in italian)
https://binart.eu/ge-115-concerto/
and to the recording itself
side A: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXosSsSekaU
side B: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bf8jMA_zizc
...so, what does this curious anectode say to us?
it looks like history is on the side of this patch :-)
hope it gets in the mainline code!
Ciao!
Emiliano Russo
---------------
Museo Interattivo di Archeologia Informatica (MIAI)
Museo dell'Informatica Funzionante (MusIF)
Computer Musea :-)
