[geeks] So what is a "Frankenmac"?

[Bill Bradford]

On Thu, Jul 26, 2001 at 02:56:23PM -0400, joshua d boyd wrote:
> Some people have done similar things with Win9x, but they used only one
> soundcard as far as I know.  Winamp can use multiple soundcards (one copy
> of winamp per card of course).  Some people have also done similar things
> with BeOS, but complained that some components were missing for actually
> station use.  And again, I think they were using only one soundcard.

I worked in radio for 4 years from '91-'95.

Most systems you see in radio stations are going to be highly customized,
turnkey systems built around comoddity PC hardware.  Back in '92-93, I
helped install an automation system at the station I worked at.  Was a
386-33 system, 8meg RAM (I think), with a whopping *600 meg* hard drive.
Used some kind of compression scheme (I could never get real technical
details on the box, as it was a turnkey system) to fit an amazing amount
of recorded commercials/sounders to the hard drive.  Had two keyboards
and monitors (monochrome VGA), altho these were just on a "splitter", so
you could either be recording commercials (in the studio) *or* playing
them back at the same time.

Also had a fancy serial and relay interface to control our "jukebox" -
a 72" cabinet rack full of 18-disc CD changers (standard 6-disc 
magazines, 3 magazines per changer).  I think they were Pioneer or 
some other commonly-known brand, altho this was a TEENY step above
what you could buy at Best Buy at the time.

We didnt play off "normal" albums - the station subscribed to a service
where they got CDs once a week that had all the "new/hit" songs for that
week; compilation discs.  This maximized "playable" music without wasting
CD slots for stuff we'd never play.  The hardest part was being the schmuck
who had to sit in and enter all the song/cd info for each track into the
computer so it knew where everything was. (e.g, player 1, mag 1, cd 1, 
track 12..)

Of course, for random stuff or things not in rotation, we had two 
normal consumer-grade (I think we *did* get them at circuit city) wired
up so that the buttons on the control board could serve as the "play"
button.  Audio was standard line-level out, run into the mixer board, etc.

Along with all this hi-tech gear we had a couple racks of "carts" - 
technology from the 50s!  Most station liners and IDs, and some short
PSA commercials were played with these machines.  Basically they looked
like transparent 8-track tapes, and were endless-loop, usually in
30/60/90 minute lengths, and were insta-start.  You could put one in,
hit the PLAY button, and you'd *instantly* have audio, with no "lead up"
time.  A *lot* of stations still use these, although things were moving
towards all-digital by the time I left the industry.

One thing that a lot of people *dont* know - a DJ at a radio station
VERY rarely ever chooses the music (unless its an "all request hour"
or somesuch).  We had playlists printed out a *week* in advance, according
to complicated rotation/promotion schedules.  I got to pick maybe one
song an hour, and then only rarely.  Radio scheduling software is a BIG
niche industry. 8-)

I think the coolest parts of that job were:
1.  Getting paid to read books, do homework, and play CDs
2.  Being the person to turn off the 100Kw transmitter *over the
    phone* (voice-response system with access codes) each night.

I did 6pm-midnight 3 days a week, and noon-6pm friday and saturday,
from when I was 15 till shortly after I turned 19.  It was neat.

(yes, country and western.. eeeeuch, but it wasnt working at mcdonalds..)

Last time I was in town ('98), they'd moved to a touch-screen system 
instead of a keyboard and monitor, but it was still basically the
same.  Last I heard from my mom, the local station had all but shut
down and was mostly satelite-fed and automated (except for local news/
farm reports, etc) now.  Sad. 8-(

Bill

-- 
Bill Bradford
mrbill at mrbill.net
Austin, TX