Now that we're firmly into the 2010s, the floppy drive has all but died a death (I can't recall the last time I have even seen one on a computer let alone used a floppy disk!). This also means that people have been chucking them into the garbage alongside their Zip drives as they upgrade to more useful storage media, such as USB thumb drives.
Recently, I've come across an interesting use of these old and discarded floppy drives, which is to hook them up to an Arduino board and shove MIDI files at them with a bit of software to get a symphony going. The raspy chuntering and clicking that is so distinctive of the medium are coaxed into making musical notes and the results are at once cute and awe inspiring.
This particular version has five drives playing Derezzed from Tron Legacy and I particularly like this one as it uses one really noisy drive to nail that bassline.
Robot rock indeed!
No comments:
Post a Comment