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Singing floppy drives

T

Tupin

Experienced Member
Joined
Jun 7, 2009
Messages
436
Location
St. Louis, MO

I bought an Arduino months ago but haven't gotten around to using it much. I tried making one of these with two drives, even though it needs at least three to sound good. I guess I'll just have to look for a bunch of IDC connectors and spare drives.

This guy actually has a tutorial. I know this is nothing new, but this is the first guy I've ever seen with a tutorial on how to do it.
 
Part of me is fascinated, part of me cringes. And yes, I'm old enough to have experienced "Drive Music" on the 1541 etc in the late 1980's. The sound has a bit of bassoony feel, at least the lower register. I know my bassoon playing friends would disagree about that though.
 
Heck, there was "drive music" in the 60s (tape drive, that is--a vacuum-column drive can be coaxed into making all sorts of interesting noises).

What nags me about this is that this really has nothing per se to do with disk drives. Relays would work just as well as noisemakers.
 
Chuck(G) said:
What nags me about this is that this really has nothing per se to do with disk drives. Relays would work just as well as noisemakers.
Click to expand...
I agree. To my sensibilities using an existing or non-artificial setup to make music has some merit, but that's not what this is. I think it actually lacks the artistic touch. If one is to go to the trouble of making something like this, then much better and varied sounds can be made using either appropriated or easily made pieces of electromechanica. That's not to say that floppy drive parts are not useful for this endeavour, but much more can be done than shown in this video.

PS: Sorry to be a bit negative, but it was put out there for comment. :) Nice to see people fooling around though.
 
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