Programming Floppy Drive Music

Development Code
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Hey Tek,

I'm in my final year of secondary school (The Netherlands, unsure how UK/USA educational systems work) and attend IT classes. All students are supposed to do a little project for the duration of this year. There are a few standard options, such as making a game in gamemaker or integrating an SQL database into a PHP site, but I want to build and program a floppy drive setup to play music (like the well known videos on YouTube).

In class, we got very spelled out tasks. We learned HTML, CSS, PHP, SQL and GameMaker (GUI, not GML), but all for a clear purpose. I.e. PHP to make interactive forms on a site.

Because of this, I still don't know how to build something from scratch, which I have to do know if I want to do something outside of the standard projects. We never learned any language like C++ or Java or Python that is broader and able to do lots of different things, not just build a site or build a game.

So, in short: What do I need and where do I start if I want to build a floppy drive setup to play music?

 

Pathemeous

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6tuMn5sPyM

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im in the middle of class, so ill try and find the video later... but i built the whole floppy drive music setup. you need a soldering iron, some wire (cat5 works well), an arduino, at lease 2 floppy drives, and a computer with java on it). the java code and arduino code is already online... https://github.com/SammyIAm/Moppy

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I came across that video, but I want to write the code myself.

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look into how stepper motors work. then find what frequencys it makes when you move it at a certain speed.

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Thanks, I'll study that for a bit and see if I need more help. You'll hear from me when I make progress or get stuck!

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Hello again,

I have read up a bit and have some questions on the hardware side of things:

- Do the floppy drives need to have a floppy disk inserted?

- Never having worked with an arduino before, what do I need to power the Arduino?

As far as I understand, I need the arduino, the floppy disk drives and the cables to connect the drives to the arduino.

I'm guessing there's some source of power and I'm also reading things about installing the arduino on certain OS (Windows, Linux), which sounds a lot like it has to be connected to a pc. I thought, however, that the Arduino was basically a mobo with all components (cpu etc) on it, like a mini computer that can run on its own.

Edit: Also, I can just buy any floppy drive and strip it down, right?

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I just received my two floppy drives and my arduino UNO.

When I look at the pins though, most of the ground pins are lacking.

The ground pins that do exist are 1, 11, 21, 29 and 33.

I bought the following drives: Samsung SFD-321B/LFBL1

Anyone who knows what is going on? I do need the ground pins as well afaik.

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you power the auduiino thorough a usb cable and yes you need a floppy disk inserted

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someone watches computerphile ;)

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This is not a Computerphile thing, though I do watch it :p.

Anyway, Still stuck on the pin issue. Not sure I can use these drives, although simply using the even pins for their pulses might work.