3 ms·
>In fact, until well into the 1980s microcomputers ran slowly enough (and had poor enough RF shielding) that this was common knowledge: you could put an AM radi
by mikewarot 3y ago
>In fact, until well into the 1980s microcomputers ran slowly enough (and had poor enough RF shielding) that this was common knowledge: you could put an AM radio next to one and get a clue when it was doing something unusual, because either fundamentals or major subharmonics of the clock frequencies were in the 20Hz to 20KHz range of human audibility.
Oooh boy is that wrong. Even the IMSAI ran at 1 Mhz or better.
- bitwize 3y agoHe's kinda wrong, but not when you take into account RF modulation. The first "useful" application for the Altair was having it play music by making it run various delay loops at different speeds that generated RF frequencies that could be picked up as tones on a nearby AM radio. You could even faintly hear the CPU or the video chip working on old bitty boxes like the Commodore 64, VIC-20, or TI-99/4A because it would leak through to the audio portion of the RF signal to the television. VICE even has an option to emulate this for a more authentic feel of using an old Commodore machine.