Someone programmed a 65-year old computer to play Boards of Canada's 'Olson'

The article discusses how someone programmed a 65-year-old Programmed Data Processor-1 (PDP-1) computer to play the song "Olson" by Boards of Canada. The PDP-1 is known for being the home of Spacewar!, one of the world's first video games. The process involved using a "Harmony Compiler" created by engineer and Computer History Museum docent Peter Samson, which was originally used to play classical music through the computer's lightbulbs. Samson repurposed four of these lightbulbs into square wave generators to reproduce the "Olson" song. The signal from each bulb was then downmixed into stereo audio channels, transcribed via an emulator, and manually punched into the paper tape that was fed into the PDP-1. Although it was a laborious process, the result is the ability to hear Boards of Canada's nostalgic music played on an even older classic computer, which is considered a unique and impressive achievement.