GURPS High-Tech: Electricity and Electronics

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Anthony

'Sounds right' is a weird requirement, because it's suddenly a degree instead of an absolute. Music cards in PCs existed as early as the Apple II in 1978, which is significantly before GUIs were a thing in the PC space (the original Xerox PARC windows stuff was early 70s, but the first computer-generated music was 1951..).

Could they play a full musical work like those I cited, with understandable voices and multipart harmony and complex timbres? Or were they simple musical tones that could play the notes of a score?

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Could they play a full musical work like those I cited, with understandable voices and multipart harmony and complex timbres?

Memory requirements for that were high (though you could put a cd-rom drive on a PC in 1984), but why are you requiring that for audio and not similarly requiring high resolution video?

[Eukie]

One of the things that really excited me about this book was the way it simplified and enabled creating and/or producing prototype gear. However I couldn't find a list of all the things the book allows you to create, so I made one:

TL5
Voltaic Pile (TL5), p.16
Leyden Jar (TL5), p.18
TL6
Geiger-Müller Tube (TL6), p.12
Arc Converter (TL6), p.29
Alternator (TL6), p.29
Photophone (TL6), p.30
Electric Organ (TL6), p.31
Singing Arc (TL6), p.32
TL7
Resonant Cavity Microphone (TL7), p.44
The bombe (TL7), p.48
TL8
Lab-on-a-Chip (TL8), p.13
Celldar (TL8), p.35
Non-Nuclear EMP (TL8), p.50
Active Denial System (TL8), p.50
No TL Given
Analog computers, p.13
Inductive Charging, p.19
Rectenna, p.19
Prototype Advanced LED Bulb, p.22
Brain-Computer Interface, p.41

I found this immensely useful and I'd love to see more. The TL8 inventions that had been proven but had no mass production year were especially interesting because they provide excellent opportunities for modern-day characters to live on the cutting edge of technology.