Control by a dedicated microcomputer has been applied to a system previously developed for violin normal mode measurement [Weinreich and Arnold, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Suppl. 1 67, S84 (1980); Arnold and Weinreich, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. (to be published)], increasing its usefulness in several ways: (1) operator attention is required less frequently, enabling data to be collected more efficiently, (2) a sequence of operations may be repeated without error, (3) error conditions may be monitored and acted upon, (4) useful statistics may be compiled and displayed, and (5) the system behavior may be modified easily through program control. Present-generation microcomputers with internally-resident high-level language interpreters are nearly ideal for such purposes: the Zilog Z8671, used here, provides a crystal-controlled time base, frequency synthesizer control, data management, error monitor, and terminal interface. Potential future applications will be discussed. With component costs of about $100 and relatively little assembly and programming time, the computer may offer new possibilities within the constraints of microbudgets. [Work supported by NSF.]