back to article Floppy disk drives jam James Bond theme

Reg Hardware Retro Week Logo Most techies would struggle to find a use for old floppy drives, instead either throwing them out or leaving them to gather dust in the attack. If you had enough time on your hands, though, you could always piece several together and program them to play... music. Built for display at Purdue …

COMMENTS

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  1. Elmer Phud
    Thumb Up

    Hmmm . . .

    They should have exploded (in slo-mo) at the end.

    1. Anonymous Custard
      Joke

      Re: Hmmm . . .

      Nah, you're thinking of the follow-up which plays the Mission Impossible theme...

  2. Z-Eden
    Thumb Up

    Brilliant

    Ahhh, the grind of floppy disc drives. I miss the sound for some reason...

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hmm. Not Sammy1Am? Looks the same setup he uses. Or used to use, before going for a more conical layout.

    I still can't get the software to do that to work :(

    Floppy music is awesome, and the phantom of the floppera or whatever it's called on youtube is awesome.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    made we want to play Goldeneye on the N64

  5. Andy E
    Black Helicopters

    "...leaving them to gather dust in the attack."

    Is this a slow motion attack on the human race?

  6. Matthew Glubb
    Happy

    That's Nothing

    http://vimeo.com/1109226

    1. bazza Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Re: That's Nothing

      Yep, I completely agree - James Houston has definitely topped the floppy drives!

  7. DrXym

    Pretty neat

    Looks like they have to work on the treble though.

  8. Lee Dowling Silver badge

    Just think - in 30 years when we all have been using USB flash disks and SSD's, the kids won't be able to do anything like this with our old junk hardware. Hell, they won't even be able to play with CRT's, or hard disk magnets, or RAM/ROM that you can bit-bang, or even mice you could steal the balls out of.

    Maybe that's a GOOD thing. I'm not sure how many hours were wasted trying to do this (not that I haven't wasted a thousandfold as many hours myself on similarly worthless jaunts) but I'd have expected something better.

    Strangely, if you'd managed to read some data back based on the sound of the floppy under normal access, I'd be more impressed (e.g. side-channel attacks like the smartphone "I know what button you pressed by what the acceleration sensor read" attack).

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Sounds like a challenge

    I wonder if my "mouse organ" is still in the shed?

  10. Darryl
    Thumb Up

    My favourite (so far) is still "What is Love" from A Night at the Roxbury

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk_XaJ7gE4Q

  11. Mostly_Harmless Silver badge
    Coat

    old vs new tech

    I can play John Cage's "Four minutes, thirty-three seconds" on a USB drive

  12. b166er

    Shame DAT drives weren't a bit noisier. 'this tape will self-destruct'

  13. Graysonn

    people have been doing that for a while.

    Daft Punk's Derezzed on floppy drives.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1plg_yYsCQM

  14. sisk

    Epic

    Nothing more need be said.

  15. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Thumb Up

      Re: This stunt was quite common on Commodore 1541 disc drives...

      True - back in the day I remember someone getting their 1541 to play "Daisy Daisy" - thoroughly buggered the alignment of the read/write heads, though ;-)

    2. Graham Marsden
      Thumb Up

      Re: This stunt was quite common on Commodore 1541 disc drives...

      Yep, I heard one playing Amazing Grace many years ago.

  16. overloaded
    Angel

    Ode to Joy

    Has anyone tried this on their HP Scanjet by selecting SCSI ID 0, then hold down the green 'scan' button on the front whilst powering on the scanner. Its pretty easy to do requiring no tech knowlege at all just remember to set your SCSI ID back:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKeXOa2sYSw

    1. Darryl

      Re: Ode to Joy

      Sometimes it's Für Elise

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kj7-Bev6HuY

    2. Graham O'Brien
      Thumb Up

      Re: Ode to Joy

      Scanjet Plus came with instructions (and API IIRC) to program the tunes yourself - dead cute

  17. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge

    Used to be able to do this on the Amiga

    By stepping back past track 0 the head would "ping" against the end stop. Do that at the correct rate to generate a note, and you could get quite a wide range of music. Tended to trash the drives if done too much though, so people would only demo it once or twice. The progarm was called something like "drive music" I think.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Gets a bit iffy at the end

    It seems to get a bit iffy there at the end of the video.

    They need to get some 8 inch drives, some 3.5 inch drives, and maybe an old dot matrix printer, so they can get a better range.

    Maybe even an old daisy wheel, or better still, an old band printer.

  19. TheRealRoland
    Happy

    The Bells of St Mary (@ac 13:52)

    The Bells of Saint Mary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9nGyPz9uT0

  20. Alan J. Wylie

    Flying robot quadrotors

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sUeGC-8dyk

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I've been meaning to do something like this with servo motors for a while now. Three part harmonies on a motion platform.

    IIRC, the Renault F1 team programmed their engine to play 'we are the champions'. And I mean *engine*. This was back before the ECU and general F1 creativity ban had accelerated - at that point the engines would go to 20,000+ RPM, and with essentially no flywheels they could switch between RPMs almost instantly. Nutty stuff - a 900hp music box, and probably a $50,000 performance...

    No youtube link as I'm writing from my playbook and am too tired to slog through that sort of thing.

    (...and a hearty 'fuck you' to the FIA, for emasculating F1 so much that in a few years the engines will barely be turning over faster than a carbeuretted pushrod V8 with a cast iron block does now in NASCAR...)

  22. CPE Bach
    Happy

    CPE Bach

    Wonderful! The daftest thing I've seen or heard in a very long time.

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