Play that floppy music white guy: Music with old drives

Kevin Hofer

30.7.2019

Translation: machine translated

The Sleeper PC is finished, but I'm far from it. Today I'm doing hardware recycling with the leftover old parts of Sleepy: programmed music with floppy drives.

Why throw away what I can still use? Apart from the yellowed look, Sleepy's floppy drives are still in pristine condition.

You can still take part in the competition to win the Sleeper PC up to and including 1 August. You can find out how to win in the article mentioned above.

You can make all sorts of things from old optical drives. I have the musical talent of a lindworm on crack, but I still like making music. That's why I'm realising a project that I've had my eye on for a while: Music with floppy drives. That way, I can start a career as a floppy DJ and you certainly won't suffer any hearing damage from my talentless self.

What you need for floppy music

Thanks to Sleepy, I have almost everything I need for the project:

• Floppy drive(s)
• An old power supply
• An Arduino (I use the Arduino Nano)
• Various jumper cables

I still have an Arduino from a previous project. I only need the jumper cables. By the way, I am relying on this guide on GitHub. I am therefore not providing step-by-step instructions here on how to realise your own project.

Here we go

I connect my first drive to the Arduino. The pins of floppy drives are arranged in pairs. The pins in the top row are even and those in the bottom row are odd.

Even pins are for data and odd pins are for grounding. For the project, I need pins 12, 18 and 20. pin 12 is the drive select pin. This is used to switch on the floppy drive so that it reacts to signals. Pin 18 is the direction pin. This instructs the stepper motor of the drive to move either forwards or backwards. Pin 20 is the step pin. Each time this jumps from earthed to unearthed, the motor moves one step in the direction instructed by the direction pin.

To make the drive run, I connect the drive select pin to its earthed counterpart, i.e. pin 12 to 11. I connect the direction pin to the digital PWM pin 3 of the Arduino. The step pin is connected to PWM pin 2 on the Arduino. Now I just need to connect the earthed counterpart of the step pin, pin 19, to the GND pin of the Arduino and the first floppy is connected.

I want to try it right away to see if it works. But before I can do that, I need to supply the floppy drive with power. In order for my power supply unit to be able to do this, I have to bridge it. The best way to do this is to use something. I solved it differently, but my method is not recommended, which is why I won't tell you how I did it.

Great, the status light of the drive comes on. Now I just need to flash the Arduino and download the software. As I said, you can find the DIY instructions here if you want to make your own floppy music.

Now there's music for your ears

Moppy Control, as the software is called, offers three midi song samples. In order for the floppy drive to play music, I have to load music files in Midi format into the software. The programme cannot do anything with other file types. I select the Tetris song and press play.

Yes, it runs. I want more, more floppy drives. Moppy Control can control several floppy drives and squeeze sounds out of them. If I want to connect several drives, I have a problem: I have to connect pin 19, the ground pin of the step pin, to the GND pin of the Arduino. However, I only have one available on the Arduino. I solve the problem by serially connecting pin 19 of the other drives via a breadboard and finally connecting it to the GND pin of the Arduino.

After I have connected everything, I try it again with the Tetris melody.

Yes, yes! The melody sounds even better this way. I want to connect even more floppy drives and get some more without further ado.

In total, I connect five floppy drives and try out different midi songs.

Here's Tetris with all the necessary instruments. A maximum of three of the five floppies are playing. So the midi file only seems to send the appropriate signals. I'll try another sample song: Kirby's theme.

I'm going to try another sample song: Kirby's theme.

I don't know about you, but I think it sounds really good. The melody reminds me of when I used to make the pink hero Kirby swallow all kinds of enemies in order to acquire their abilities.

But on with the music. Recently, my employees at digitec and Galaxus tried out children's instruments and played Seven Nation Army by White Stripes on them.

Although I almost laughed myself to death from the video, especially from the borderline-debile faces, I think my version sounds better.

Glitch music draws its inspiration from the sounds of electronic devices, among other things. That's why I'm trying to translate the glitch song Fortune Days from glitch back into floppy.

Well, I still have a lot of catching up to do compared to the original. Maybe it will work better with more floppy drives or maybe the midi file is just not that great.

I'm not letting this brief setback get me down and am continuing to try things out. I'm currently playing the Switch version of Final Fantasy VII on the train, so I'm letting my floppies play the boss battle theme song.

My floppies deserve a thunderous applause for this. That's all you get for a level-up in our shop. The heroic melody lets me escape from everyday life in my thoughts. Speaking of which: do you know when the days are all the same? It's really frustrating and makes everyday life really tedious. Bill Murray has it even worse in the classic film Groundhog Day and has to relive the same day over and over again. The worst thing about the film: every time the stupid polka that tune plays. Thanks to my floppies, it's definitely less annoying from now on.

Last but not least, the theme music to one of my all-time favourite series: Pinky and the Brain

I still want more

Floppy music really puts you in a good mood. I've only scratched the surface with my little project. There's still more to it. I'm continuing to experiment and will share my musical escapades with you in further articles. If you really want to hear a particular song, write it in the comments column and I'll see what I can do.

Kevin Hofer

Senior Editor

kevin.hofer@digitecgalaxus.ch

From big data to big brother, Cyborgs to Sci-Fi. All aspects of technology and society fascinate me.

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