Anyone interested in old (PDP-8 driven) Radio Automation hardware?

[Paul Anderson]

opps, that was supposed to be off list....sorry.


On Tue, Dec 8, 2015 at 9:56 PM, Josh Dersch <derschjo at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi all --
>
> I have recently acquired a PDP-8/m system that was used to drive a radio
> automation rig (very very similar to this:
> http://www.bowkera.com/kcbs1.htm
> ).
>
> My understanding is that this system hooked to banks of what were
> essentially 8-track tape drives, each of which held a short loop of tape
> (containing a song, an ad, call info, etc.) and the 8/m was programmed with
> a playlist of sorts so that even in the early 70s you didn't need to have a
> real DJ on premises to run a radio station.  (I had no idea this sort of
> thing went back that far!)
>
> This one was used at KRDU (Fresno's Christian Radio).  At any rate, it's
> neat hardware.  All I have is the 8/m, a custom front panel (as seen in the
> pictures on the site I linked above) and a bank of Omnibus backplanes
> holding cards that would drive the tapes and mix audio.
>
> I really have no use for the tape-control / audio mixing hardware since I
> don't have the tapes and I'm not *really* planning on running an automated
> radio station out of my basement (though it does sound fun).  I'm not about
> to scrap the stuff (it's at least useful for parts) but I thought I'd see
> if anyone out there could actually make use of it for its intended purpose.
>
> - Josh
>