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
