Inspiration
The dream was to play vaporwave's most well known artist, Macintosh Plus, on my actual vintage Macintosh Plus.
What it does
It plays what is probably the most popular song in vaporwave, リサフランク420 / 現代のコンピュ, using the Macintosh Plus' built-in speakers.
How I built it
Brian transcribed sheet music for リサフランク420 / 現代のコンピュ into MusicWorks, the world's first computer-based music notation interface. The application, from 1984, is still remarkably modern, and it let us play the song with a computer-simulated kazoo, which is a huge plus. To amplify the sound, we plugged a speaker into the computer's 3.5mm audio jack.
Challenges I ran into
The final implementation was largely different than the initial idea. I had hoped to transfer the actual Floral Shoppe sound files onto floppy disks and play them from the Macintosh speaker, but this was not technically feasible for a variety of reasons: the 800KB size of the floppies, the anemic 8MHz processor, and the lack of software support for any modern sound files. I was lucky to find sheet music for リサフランク420 / 現代のコンピュ and someone who is well-versed in reading music notation, making the project possible.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
It's so meta
What I learned
With its window-based and mouse-driven interface, there's practically no learning curve for using this computer from the 1980s. Fascinating.
What's next for Macintosh Plus on Macintosh Plus
All of Floral Shoppe? Nah, probably not.
Built With
- musicworks
- system-7
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