Entering Service Mode on the Protracker Music Box...

..or, how to see cool menus in 1682.

There are some Easter Eggs on the Protracker Music Box. The first one that is really useful is the tone and noise generator. To get to this, you need to enter Service Mode first. To do so, let the Protracker Music Box wind down completely, then wind it up (preferably to full capacity), then hold down Play and press the following keys: FF,FF, REW, REW, FF, REW, FF, REW, Pause, Pause. Then let go. The multifunction display should go crazy with a few seconds of (364x43 pixel) test patterns, then you should be in Service Mode.

Use the FF key to scroll down to "DAC Check" and press play. Before you do this make sure that the main volume is low. You will hear an organ-like tone with a fundamental of 440 hertz. Pressing the channel number keys mutes and unmutes the channel of the number you press. If you would just like a sine wave, mute all but one channel. Pressing FF and REW changes the pitch up and down, respectively.

The Sample Text button changes the wave to a sine wave, the Over-Sampling button changes it to a square wave (loud!), Loop Pattern is a triangle wave, PAL/NTSC is a ramp (sawtooth) wave and loop module is white noise (pretty loud).

So you were wondering what Display Check does? Well it does the SAME test pattern that you see when you enter Service Mode, but lets you cycle through them manually to see if any of the mechanical pixels are stuck. For the insatiably curious, here they are to the right:

If you press and release  the Play button, it will cycle through all the test patterns as fast as possible. This usually unjams a stuck pixel.

Stop is the panic button. It releases the test mode as well as the other modes. The Playback Speed mode can either double or half the rate at which the module is played. This only works if the song doesn't use octave 0 (for half) or octave 4 (for double) in any of the notes.

Back to Ivan the Ignorant gets a Protracker Music Box.