# What would happen if you played a software cassete on a tape recorder? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 9, 2014, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-you-played-a-software-cassete-on-a-tape-recorder/683289 "2014-03-09T19:56:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![SpyOne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/82dd89/32.png) [@SpyOne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SpyOne)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2014, 6:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-you-played-a-software-cassete-on-a-tape-recorder/683289/41 "2014-03-28T06:59:54Z")
> [@tracer](#): > > EDIT: Wait, how did you get the TRS-80 to make sounds in BASIC? A FOR loop on OUT255,1 and OUT255,0 wouldn’t run nearly fast enough to make any recognizable tones – I had to do all my sound in machine language. As I recall, there was a command that would push the speaker cone out, and another to pull it back in (probably the ones you mentioned). Sticking a FOR/NEXT loop in between as a delay controlled the frequency. At it’s slowest setting, it made a clicking sound. Shortening the FOR/NEXT loop turned the clicking into something that sounded (to me) like a helicopter. Making it really short turned it into a humming sound. I never played music with it, as just making the helicopter sound was cool enough for me. But I did learn a lot about how sound works, so that I now sort of understand how a tesla coil can play music: anything that makes a clicking sound (like thunder) could play music if you can control the frequency. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-you-played-a-software-cassete-on-a-tape-recorder/683289.md?page=2)