I obviously find vinyl records with programs less and less easily, but from time to time, I discover them. This time, it’s a vinyl by Björn Skifs, known for his cover of Hooked on a Feeling. And on the cover of the album If … Then …, there is PETSCII.
Instead of repeating all the previous articles each time, I’ll refer you to the dedicated page, which explains what I do with vinyl records and lists all the pages containing programs, explanations, etc.
I didn’t find it on my own; it’s 8-Bit Show And Tell who talks about it in a video, and I advise you to subscribe to his channel. PETSCII is a character set derived from ASCII and used by Commodore computers from the seventies and eighties, including the PET (logical) and the Commodore 64. PETSCII includes « graphic » characters that can be used to build pseudo-images, and if you know The 8-Bit Guy, you probably know Attack of the PETSCII robots, which was built based on these characters.
On the cover
On the leaflet
Now to the point: on the cover, there is a line with PETSCII, just like in one of the leaflets in the cover. It’s not directly computer code; in reality, it’s more of a substitution code: each character corresponds to a letter on the keyboard. The easiest way to read it is to use a real Commodore 64, especially a C64C: the keys have dual impressions. On the early Commodore 64, this is also the case, but the graphic characters are on the front part of the keys. In my case, with an emulator, I used VirtualC64 which has a virtual keyboard. You need to click on shift with a right-click to permanently display the graphic characters. To avoid confusion, I also used the reference sheet from Wikipedia.
Virtual keyboard
Reference sheet
First, I typed the line at the top of the cover. Once the PETSCII is entered, you need to hold down shift and press the Commodore key (to its left) to display the transcription. The message says « IF ITREALLYHAPPENS THEN ITMUSTBEPOSSIBLE ». Obviously, you can add spaces: « IF IT REALLY HAPPENS THEN IT MUST BE POSSIBLE. »
The second message on the leaflet is longer: « ANDIFITSPOSSIBLETHENYOUCANMAKEITHAPPENAGAIN! », which translates to « AND IF IT’S REALLY POSSIBLE THEN YOU CAN MAKE IT HAPPEN AGAIN! »
I find it more fun when there is computer code on the vinyl itself or on the cover, but it’s still amusing to see what artists of the time were doing (even if the message is worthy of a current Facebook post).
