Author: Sam Archer / Source: Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers
It started as a bet: The “Phantom of the Floppera” video was making the rounds at work and a co-worker was sure that the video was fake.
“They just dubbed audio over a video of some old computer,” he said.
“Nonsense,” I said. “It’s not even that hard!
I bet I could go home tonight and do it!”After many hours and a lot of trial and error, my salvaged floppy drive eked out the first few bars of “Ode to Joy,” only a little bit out of tune.
Floppy disks have several “tracks” of information on their circular media, and the drives that read them have a head that can step one track at a time across their surface. The position of the head is controlled by a stepper motor, and floppy drives have a convenient interface that moves the head one track at a time with a signal pulse to the right pin. Pulse this signal at a specific frequency and the drive’s vibrations give off sound like a speaker driven by a square wave.
After getting a glimpse of the potential musical floppy drives had to offer, I dug out an Arduino, mooched a grocery bag full of floppy drives off a friend, and set to work making beautiful (or at least recognizable) music. The result? A Java application and Arduino sketch that, as this article will show you, can be used to make floppy drives sing.
Hardware Assembly
First you’ll need your Arduino, floppy drive(s), power supply, and the floppy drive ribbon cable or jumper wires.
If you’re using a ribbon cable, cut off one end of the cable leaving enough cable to work with (some cables have a twist in them; avoid the twist side to make it easier to follow the wires).
The floppy drive pins are arranged in pairs: odd pins are grounded and even are data. Signals are sent to the data pins by grounding them. There are three data pins that we’re interested in:
The Drive Select pin is used to activate the drive so it will respond to signals. When the drive is powered and activated, its LED indicator will light up. The Direction pin determines if the drive’s head moves forward or backward. And each time the Step pin transitions from ungrounded (floating or at 5V) to grounded, the drive will move the head one step in the direction of travel.
If you’re using a ribbon cable, separate the wires; if you’re using jumper wires, connect them to the pins on the floppy drive directly. The Drive Select wire should be connected to its matching ground (either 12–11 or 14–13). Some drives will work with either pair connected, but some…
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