Although many have made some sort of music with improvised electronics, few sound as cool as this Imperial March from Star Wars played by two floppy drives. According to [Pawel], “It’s nothing new” and quite simple. This may be true as we’ve featured an Imperial March-playing floppy drive here before, but it was only one drive. Although it may not be the London Symphony Orchestra, the two drives together sound quite good!
According to him, the FDD has a fairly simple interface. To move the head, one simply needs to pull the DRVSB pin low and then activate the STEP pin on a falling edge. This will make the head move one direction dependent on the DIR pin state. In this case, an ATMega microcontroller is moving everything. An explanation of the pins used in this hack can be found here.
Although it may look like an intimidating hack on the surface, something like this might be a neat project to try with some old hardware and an Arduino or other controller! [Pawel] did have the idea to hook up a 5 1/4″ and 8″ drive to make a full FDD orchestra, so we can’t wait to see what he comes up with!
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHJOz_y9rZE&w=470&h=315%5D
Cool! if there were a way
if there were a way? their is a way and im working on doing the same thing right now.
Ahhhhhhh! Loved it!!! :-)
oh my geek! so cool!
Now what we need is someone to make one that reads the song to be played from the floppies in the drives…
Thank you for your contribution, Art Garfunkel.
Absolutely fabulous hack. This reminds me of some app in Amiga that did the same, but that was only mono due to lack of more than one disk drives.
Don’t fall behind on your ‘quite quota’: “quite simple” and “quite good”.
Ugh, that’s awful.
What is it with HaD writers’ obsession with “quite”? Can anyone there type two dozen words without using (or misusing) “quite”?
Different guy, but there’s some 5 1/4 drives in the mix
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmoDLyiQYKw
PJ Allen, You should learn to crochet so you can pick knits all day. I would imagine that if HaD thought they where posting articles that where merely, “good” then more people would complain. As it is, they only need to call the whaaambulance for you.
…the term is “nit-picking”, as in searching for head lice eggs (nits) in someone’s hair.
Yes, I know I’m doing the same thing, but your comeback was just too terrible to ignore.
It’s quite terrible.
I knew it was incorrect, but the point stands. I think PJ might try quitting HaD to quiet the quites.
Wasn’t that the point?
Maybe he can get a Zip drive or two for some percussion.
I dunno where you’d find an 8″ drive, but hook up two 5 1/4″ drives and you’d wind up with something like what this guy’s got:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmoDLyiQYKw
http://georgewhiteside.net/projects/diskette-organ/
Holy crap – that is really impressive!
that is so ruff ,in the best possible tense
Present progressive?
I’d like to see this integrated into a retro computer rebuild and still keep them functional. Maybe run a few switches to switch between usability and awesomeness.
I did something similar with my arduino, if someone is interested in code/schematics:
http://elettrofonesi.blogspot.com/2010/09/how-to-drive-floppy-with-arduino.html
An external controller is just cheating. Do it using the original system hardware for MAXX SCORE.
How about one drive to read midi files and one drive to play them!
It should be possible to do this entirely in software on a normal PC. Good luck finding a modern motherboard with floppy drive ports though.
While searching the tubes for one, I did happen upon this little gem: http://www.directron.com/crwflp2.html?gsear=1
That may just make it into my next computer build for nostalgia reasons. :)
If you look around more, you can find a high speed floppy drive over USB. It should be capable of a higher frequency response, though it looks like drivers are sketchy for USB floppy drives.
I assume the music “data” was a MIDI file? How do you go from MIDI data to the driving the stepper?
How about printers?
[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/16207657 w=400&h=225]Symphony #2 for Dot Matrix Printers – [The User] from Undefine on Vimeo.
As it happens I have three 5 1/4″ drives here as well as a pile of 3 1/2″
Reading from the disk is feasible but very complicated, you’d need to use most of the program memory on a high end PIC just to read.
There is a small chance that you could use 4000 series logic here, as the commands to read from the FDD could be stored on the disk itself. It would be a lot of work but pretty neat if someone could pull it off.
Gave this a quick go today but couldn’t get much clarity, I need to work on the tones.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWmmfee9OWE
excellent thank you
Twin Floppy Drives…. only used for one thing…. copying from disk to disk, truly the dark side.
Pompey Pirates 4 eva.
oh young skywalker!
you don’t remember the dark days of the floppy.
having two floppy drives is essensial for a jedi knight.
otherwise the frustration of switching floppies will lead you to the dark side.
Zajibiesta!
That would have scared the bejebus out of me if my computer were to start playing that out of my floppy drives all of a sudden. Would’ve been a great virus back in the day.