Comments on: The Imperial March on Floppy Disc

By: heather

heather — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 20:21:54 +0000

Darth Vader lives! And he’s in floppy disc format! This is what i love about sites like these. You log on every day and find the coolest, weirdest stuff you can’t find anywhere else.

By: Nastia

Nastia — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 00:22:06 +0000

que?

By: CKS2996

CKS2996 — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 23:33:14 +0000

They just software “twiddle” the step/dir lines on the floppy controller with software, with pulses equating the frequency they need, but they cannot get to high a frequency.

In the scanner, its stepper motor is directly driven by the micro (with a driver IC of course), and can directly pout any frequency it wants on the motor.

By: JamesM

JamesM — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 05:00:33 +0000

@v.dog: If you listen to ‘Nude’ again ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmfHHLfbjNQ )you’ll hear that this sounds more like the printer or the scanner (both of which use stepper motors) than the HDD array.

Holy smokes, dude. That was effin brilliant, no matter how “bad” it sounded.

By: v.dog

v.dog — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 01:11:22 +0000

Ugh. What’s with the advertising links in the comments? having the spam in the article is bad enough, without making us feel like spammers.

By: CheeseDuck

CheeseDuck — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 00:38:13 +0000

Psh. I can do that..

By: jmp478

jmp478 — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 22:59:25 +0000

any other song would have been cool.
Otherwise, bleh to nerdy

By: Frank

Frank — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 22:55:38 +0000

Useless. But nice.

By: emanuel lewis

emanuel lewis — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 22:18:42 +0000

kind of great but not really,

By: DOJ

DOJ — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 21:59:37 +0000

now play something on a dial-up modem!

By: vmos

vmos — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 21:46:45 +0000

this is ringing bells with me, I seem to remember a game on the amstrad cpc that used the built in tape motor to make sound effects. Although it was a good two decades ago and it may actually have been the disc drive I had attached to it

By: v.dog

v.dog — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 20:36:29 +0000

@ericbarbour: I’ve pulled a few FDDs apart, and they don’t use a voice coil. because of the small slot, the head moves in a straight line, using a motor and a worm gear (which is part of the reason they are so slow).

If you listen to ‘Nude’ again ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmfHHLfbjNQ )you’ll hear that this sounds more like the printer or the scanner (both of which use stepper motors) than the HDD array.

By: Thomas

Thomas — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 20:22:11 +0000

I never thought of using the annoying sounds of a floppy drive to make music. Wow.

By: ericbarbour

ericbarbour — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 20:10:40 +0000

Every floppy (and hard) drive uses a voice coil to move the head arm in and out. It’s a little different from a speaker voice coil, and usually has a different impedance, but uses the exact same principle. You can drive a disk drive’s coil from any audio power amplifier, provided the impedance is in the range the amp needs to see for a load. Very simple. That guy who did a remake of Radiohead’s “Nude” did the same thing with those 8 hard drives. All he did was take the covers off, and wire the head voice coils together (probably in parallel), then drive them from an audio amp. It sounds awful, of course.

By: Justin

Justin — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 19:55:27 +0000

lol!

By: Algonkin

Algonkin — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 18:52:09 +0000

Wow!