modrobert @modrobert@qoto.org

A meteor, the Milky Way and Mount Fuji captured by photographer Hayata Suzuki.

Back in 1987, Karsten Obarski released Ultimate Soundtracker for Amiga. Soon after, the program was disassembled and reworked by various developers. One of these groups was The Jungle Command. And in March 1988, they released their own reworked SoundTracker II.

It appears that the Jungle Command peeps knew that the code would be further disassembled and hacked by other developers (and it did). Dozens of clones and variations of SoundTracker would appear, and it all kicked off the Amiga tracker scene (which is still very much alive today). Knowing this, the developers hid some code inside the SoundTracker II replay routine.

Earlier today, Heikki "shd" Orsila pointed out some curious code he discovered inside the SoundTracker IV replay routine. It seemed to have some easter egg in it that was cleverly disguised as data. The code would normally not be referenced directly, but a strategically placed eor instruction (exclusive or) would modify the code in a way that the data would get called as a subroutine.

So what does the subroutine do? I disassembled it to find out. If both control key and joystick button are pressed down during playback, the music player code will stop and start displaying a full screen alert message forever:

SoundTracker V2
© The Jungle Command

The fact that this code survived from 1988-03-01 until today (nearly 38 years) is quite remarkable. The code has now been patched away from the replay routine.

- The Ultimate Soundtracker by Karsten Obarski:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_Soundtracker
- SoundTracker II by The Jungle Command:
https://demozoo.org/productions/221272/
- Reversed easter egg code: https://gitlab.com/uade-music-player/uade/-/merge_requests/67#note_2867819662
- mod.echoing (classic soundtracker module by Fab) rendered with UADE oscilloscope: https://zakalwe.fi/uade/oscilloscope/chip/mod15/mod.echoing.mp4 (original https://janeway.exotica.org.uk/release.php?id=59992)

#demoscene #retrocomputing #trackermusic #hacking

Saw this on #LinkedIn

#AI #GenAI #DangerWillRobinson

true

It's difficult for me to think of a more badass woman than Sigourney Weaver as Ripley -- all the men follow her naturally because she's an incredible leader. "I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit... it's the only way to be sure." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9aM4rH692M

You wanna know what time it is?

𝑨𝑴𝑰𝑮𝑨 time!

Dammit Robin, get your head on straight!!

Вы готовы, дети?
Да, капитан!

News from our pressing plant 😍

-- stay tuned for more infos -- ✅

https://hardfloor.tumblr.com/post/798737850423230464/news-from-our-pressing-plant-stay-tuned-for

We're getting close to the end of #MODtober 🙁 so before we run out of time, we'd better get this up into the Mix. A demo soundtrack so large it wouldn't fit in memory all at once.

Eon -> https://youtu.be/PlLWrqL9sjc