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How to Make Musical Floppy Drives

by Analogue-Chick on May 28, 2012

Table of Contents
How to Make Musical Floppy Drives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Intro: How to Make Musical Floppy Drives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Step 1: Prepare you power supply. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Step 2: Determine the needed pins for your floppy drives. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Step 3: Test you floppy drives. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Step 4: Connect your floppy to your Arduino . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Step 5: Prepare the sofwares . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Step 6: Establish a connection to your Arduino. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

File Downloads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Step 7: Open NetBeans. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

File Downloads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Related Instructables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Make-Musical-Floppy-Drives/

Author:Analogue-Chick Blog
I love internet reading. I think I have acquired more knowledge from the internet than I have and probably ever will from a standard institution of learning...

Intro: How to Make Musical Floppy Drives

My brother posted a video about this on facebook almost a year ago. Some old floppy drives playing Bach's masterpiece Toccata & Fugue and it got me really interested.
So I read about it when the author posted a how-to on his blog and did a couple of tweaking using SammyIAm's Musical Floppy program when the project gained a lot of
attention.
WHAT YOU NEED
1) Arduino - Ideally, you need the Arduino UNO but any Arduino would work. You just need to tweak something in the program with the pin assignments. In this miniproject however, I used Duelaminove, it works almost accurately just a little quieter (I don't know the reason behind that) than most but a microphone or any audio
manipulating software would make a big difference. On a side note, I didn't tweak anything with regards to the pin assignments.
2) Floppy Drives/Disks - Any floppy drive would actually work but it would be a lot easier to use the 34 pin because it's common. Other than that, you would only be
needing 6 pins from your floppy. Pin assignments are available online, particularly here . I was actually trying to acquire the 5.25 but to no avail and ebay sells them
around $20 so nevermind about that. As a result, this project is composed only of the 3.25 floppy disk drives. You also need some floppy disks for this project.
3) Power Supply - Again, it depends on you. You can use any 5-volt power supply available but since an ATX power supply is just lying around the house, it would be
pretty convenient to use it here.
4) CAT5 UTP Cable - Only because of the wires. I want my wires to be color-coded.
5) Breadboard - If you want a solderless-free project.
6) Soldering Iron/Lead - For the pin you would need to connect your CAT5 UTP cable but if you still have the flat ribbon cable then good for you. Might as well use that
to make it easier.
7) Cutter, Phillips/Flathead screwdrivers - For dismantling purposes.

Step 1: Prepare you power supply.

Again, it depends on you. You can use any 5-volt power supply available but since an ATX power supply is just lying around the house, it would be pretty convenient to
use it here. However, if you just have the power supply (without a motherboard), to activate it you need to short two wires, BLACK and GREEN as shown on the image.
Connect these two wires and your power supply is then activated.

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Make-Musical-Floppy-Drives/

Image Notes
1. Connect these two wires, BLACK and GREEN to activated your power supply without a motherboard.

Step 2: Determine the needed pins for your floppy drives.

Like what I said earlier, you only need to determine 3 pins to make the floppy drive sing. If you look at the back of your floppy drive you would see these 34 pins. Just
check on the image to determine which is pin 1 and so on. The top pins are the even pins the bottom pins are the odd pins which is the ground. The even-numbered pins
are activated by grounding them. Basically, computers have up to two floppy drives A and B. Doesn't really matter which drive you connect your wires to. If you want to
set your floppy drive to drive B, then connect wires to pins 12, 11 for the ground. If you want to set your floppy drive to drive A, then connect wires to pins 14, 13 for the
ground. But to avoid further complications, just select drive B, pin 12 and 11.
Another pin that we are interested in is the direction pin 18, 17 for the ground. Direction pin determines which direction to move, forward or backward. This movement is
actually the one causing the low-note and high-note sound coming out of the floppy drive.
Finally, the last pins we need to connect wires to is the step pin 20, 19 for the ground which basically activates the stepper motor to move.
NOTE: If you still have the flat ribbon cable then I suggest that you use it instead of soldering wires directly to the pins of your floppy drive.
Soldering them could fry the boards of your floppy but since I don't have any flat ribbon cables and connector I soldered mine. Solder at your
own risk.

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Make-Musical-Floppy-Drives/

Step 3: Test you floppy drives.

Connect your floppy to your power supply and test the stepper motor. Notice that if you connect your floppy drive to the power supply nothing is happening, that is
because you need to connect pins 11 and 12 to activate it. To activate your floppy, you need to permanently connect the drive select pins 11 and 12, so you can go on
twist those wires or solder them. You can easily determine if you have the wires connected. Once you connect the wires attached to pins 11 and 12, the light of the floppy
drive should turn on.
Next thing you need to do is check on the direction and step pins. Connecting the green wires together pins 17 and 18 would make your stepper move forward. To
activate the stepper motor you just need to tap the blue wires which is connected to the step pins. Moving the stepper motor backward, all you need to do is disconnect
your green wires then activate your stepper by tapping the blue wires.

Step 4: Connect your floppy to your Arduino

Connect pins 11 and 12 (Drive Select) to activate your floppy drive. Connect pins 17 and 19 (ground pins for the direction and step of your floppy drive) to the ground of
your Arduino. Connect direction pin 18 to pin 3 and step pin 20 to pin 2 of your Arduino.
For the second drive, all you need to do is connect the direction pin 18 to pin 5 and step pin 20 to pin 4. Third drive's pin 18 to pin 7 and step pin 20 to pin 6 and so on...

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Make-Musical-Floppy-Drives/

Image Notes
1. Connect step pin 20 to pin 2 of your Arduino.
2. Connect direction pin 18 to pin 3 of your Arduino.
3. Connect this to activate your floppy drive.
4. Connect pins 17 and 19 together to the common ground of your Arduino.

Step 5: Prepare the sofwares

WHAT YOU NEED
1) Arduino Software - You can download the software on their website .
2) Timer1 - You can download the following here . Once done with the download, you need to copy this to the library folder under Arduino.
3) JDK 7u4 with NetBeans 7.1.2 - You can download the following here .
4) Moppy Software (Java/Arduino Code) - Program developed by SammyIAm. You can check it out here .
5) RXTXcomm Serial Driver - Download the following here .

Step 6: Establish a connection to your Arduino.

Once you're done downloading and installing everything, especially the Arduino software, Java with Netbeans, establish a communication between your Arduino and
computer. You may also need to set-up everything on the hardware side. Connect your floppy drives and power supply.
Before copying the code, make sure that the Timer1 file is saved to the library folder of your Arduino.

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Make-Musical-Floppy-Drives/

File Downloads

Timer1.txt (6 KB)
[NOTE: When saving, if you see .tmp as the file ext, rename it to 'Timer1.txt']

Step 7: Open NetBeans.

Open your NetBeans and load-up the MoppyDesk project developed by SammyIAm. You can choose to open it at via his website or just download the folder below. Just
make sure that once you download the following file, copy the file to the NetBeansProjects folder usually located at My Documents for Windows. Once you have the
MoppyDesk project open, run it by clicking on the green play button. This is where you would encounter the RXTX problem, if not then good for you. A new window
should appear of you don't encounter that RXTX problem. However, if you do encounter it, download the RXTXcomm,jar and the rxtxParallel.dll / rxtxSerial.dll files via this
website . After downloading, just be sure that you copy the following to its respective folders:
RXTXcomm.jar goes in \jre\lib\ext (under java)
rxtxSerial.dll goes in \jre\bin (under java)
If you still encounter the problem, just message me and we'll try to sort it out or your could just google for this rxtx issues. I'm sure you'll find solutions to this online.
If all goes well, a new window will appear. The MoppyDesk window will then ask for the Arduino port. Just choose the correct port for your Arduino, load the midi file and
hit on START.
Congratulations!!! You have now a musical floppy...
Some tips on midi file:
Choose the simplest midi file as possible. It would be ideal to choose something which is moderate at speed and something that does not sustain a note for too long.

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Make-Musical-Floppy-Drives/

File Downloads

MoppyDesk.rar (206 KB)

[NOTE: When saving, if you see .tmp as the file ext, rename it to 'MoppyDesk.rar']

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http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Make-Musical-Floppy-Drives/