How To: Play Music Using Floppy Drives

Arduino Music
How To: Play Music Using Floppy Drives
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We’ve seen these videos pop up all over the internet over the past few years. We’ve even shared a few on Make’s blog. The most prolific poster of these videos showing floppy drives playing music is youtube user MrSolidSnake745. He’s got this down to an exact process and seems to enjoy sharing his work almost as much as we enjoy watching it.

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Over the years, he has gone through various amounts of floppies for each song, Seen above are 5 floppies playing some Daft Punk, and up at the top you can find 8 floppies playing the game of thrones theme. He was even hired by a museum to produce a 16 floppy display, which you can see below playing the theme from Final Fantasy 7. If you want to find them all, you should take some time to browse around his youtube channel.

YouTube player

Invariably, people always ask how this is done. What kind of magic and trickery are necessary to make a floppy drive sing? From MrSolidSnake745’s FAQ we can find that he gives the majority of the credit to another youtube user named Sammy1Am. This is not only where the easiest software comes from, but Sammy1Am shared detailed plans on how to set up your own singing floppy disk drive!

YouTube player

Sammy1Am also has videos of floppy disks playing sons on his channel if you haven’t had your fill by now.

Of course, now that you now how to make one, you should go put one together and send us a link to the video you made!

2 thoughts on “How To: Play Music Using Floppy Drives

  1. Sampleso says:

    Check out Sampleso Floppy Disk Synth for Kontakt
    https://www.sampleso.com/shop/floppytron

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I get ridiculously excited seeing people make things. I just want to revel in the creativity I see in makers. My favorite thing in the world is sharing a maker's story. find me at CalebKraft.com

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