[HN Gopher] The Floppotron 3.0
___________________________________________________________________
The Floppotron 3.0
Author : perakojotgenije
Score : 560 points
Date : 2022-06-13 17:59 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (silent.org.pl)
(TXT) w3m dump (silent.org.pl)
| mNovak wrote:
| Those floppy stacks sound delightfully like a harpsichord
| jonstewart wrote:
| Someone get this man a daisywheel printer!
| robbomacrae wrote:
| I've often wished there was a way programming could produce art
| as a by product. That way we could see something more tangible
| for our efforts, have a landmark system for help recalling it
| all, and show progress to our non technical family members.
|
| This has made me think that making music as a by product would
| also be pretty neat.. being able to hear different sounds for
| different functions would be a much more intuitive way of
| inspecting the overall health and performance of your system than
| trudging through logs.
|
| If anyone knows of anything like this I would be happy to pay for
| it!
| ajford wrote:
| So it's not exactly what you're talking about, but the Parkes
| radio telescope used to have it's control system wired up with
| speakers and the control software used Australian animal sounds
| for various statuses and errors. So when things went well it
| would sound like a peaceful wilderness.
|
| Supposedly after a while, you could tell how things were going
| by the shift in the animal sounds, even for minor shifts from
| normal operation. And of course the various alerts used loud
| noises like panicked Kookaburra (if I'm recalling correctly),
| so those definitely got the attention of even novice operators.
| nikanj wrote:
| Are you familiar with the demo scene?
| jahewson wrote:
| What's that awful noise in the background, getting louder and
| louder?
|
| Oh, that? We just ignore it. They call it technical debt.
| GuestHNUser wrote:
| This idea is hilarious. If only every function was given a
| sound so you could hear a cacophony of mistakes every time it
| was run. Imagine a programmer Bach, someone who could somehow
| weave a beautiful rhythm into their standard library function
| calls.
| shdon wrote:
| I love it for sheer we-can-do-it-just-for-the-heck-of-it-ness,
| though I admit I'm a bit nostalgic for Floppotron 2 as the new
| one sounds a bit _too_ smooth for my tastes, losing some of that
| charm.
| gffrd wrote:
| This had me smiling the whole time ...
|
| I love it when projects go so far beyond beyond what was
| intended, well beyond where most people would have stopped or
| lost interest, and in to the land of the absurd and hilarious.
|
| This reminds me of the joy in the fun things I've done just for
| the sake of taking them as far as they could be taken.
|
| Thanks for sharing.
| anyfoo wrote:
| You will love Tom7/suckerpinch's stuff then, if you don't know
| him already. Here's a good one for the start, though really,
| they are all fantastic:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar9WRwCiSr0
| devenvdev wrote:
| Came here to post this | Tom7's Uppestcase and Lowestcase
| Letters [1] is one of the most entertaining (and educational)
| experiences I had lately
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLRdruqQfRk
| naikrovek wrote:
| that guy is amazing and i fanboy out a little when I think
| about what i'd talk to him about if I ever met him. he's not
| even famous, he's just everything I want to be. i'm not as
| smart as him, or as clever, or as educated, or ... etc.
| kibwen wrote:
| "NaN Gates and Flip FLOPS" is my personal favorite:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5TFDG-y-EHs
| hermitdev wrote:
| Wow, that is amazingly absurd. I love it!
| benoliver999 wrote:
| I love that he made it use MIDI, it makes it so flexible
| user3939382 wrote:
| I would predict that he's either single or his wife is rolling
| her eyes :D I LOVE it
| zackkitzmiller wrote:
| Ahh yes. The two male companionship choices. Single, or married
| to a woman annoyed with his hobbies.
| [deleted]
| superb-owl wrote:
| This is incredible. There's something about the convergence of
| technology and art that I find super satisfying.
| sigmonsays wrote:
| i'm pleasantly surprised and amazed. I've seen these through the
| years but the sound quality on this is absolutely amazing!
| criddell wrote:
| I'd love a spatial audio recording. I'd love to hear it as if I
| were sitting in the middle of it.
| mgdlbp wrote:
| Awesome, the 2.0 decommissioning last week had scared. There's a
| spectacular variety of ways that music has been made in
| unconventional electromechanical ways--on the head motors of
| floppy drives 3.5", 5.25", and 8", on hard drive voice coils,
| scanner carriage motors, steppers wherever the're found in CNC
| devices, dot-matrix printheads, pulsed laser cutters, tesla
| coils, all the way back to radio interference generated by the
| IBM 1401 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPk8MVEmiTI).
|
| The 1401 video I actually saw in an older related HN submission;
| lots of comments linking out to different examples in these
| threads. Here are a couple, someone might be able to aggregate a
| bunch more:
|
| "Eye of the Tiger" played on a dot-matrix printer:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9286555 (2015, 62 comments)
|
| "Imperial March" on a single floppy drive:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2230849 (2011, 27 comments)
|
| Both the news site and original video of the second submission
| are lost to time, but luckily our saviour (of web content)
| Brewster Kahle has graced us with a copy in the Internet
| Archive.[1] The Wayback Machine also remembers a time when
| YouTube recommendations bore greater relevance--those on the
| archived video page from 2011[2] are entirely of videos of
| computer hardware music. Some might even still be up today.
|
| [1] https://web.archive.org/web/0id_/wayback-
| fakeurl.archive.org...
|
| [2]
| https://web.archive.org/web/0/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
|
| "Imperial March" was also what was played on the first
| incarnation of the Floppotron, with an impressively full sound
| from only two floppy drives
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHJOz_y9rZE).
|
| And perhaps related are those videos of the pleasingly periodic
| percussion of uncontrolled devices like (broken) washing
| machines, electronic typewriters, and air conditioners.
| MBCook wrote:
| I just randomly saw 2.0 decommissioning video last week. I
| hoped he was working on a new one (no idea it was ready!) but
| figured it may just be the end of the Floppytron era.
|
| Very happy to see this.
| Vladimof wrote:
| Probably the best one of it's kind, so far.
| kinnth wrote:
| I've never seen anything like this, nor will I ever see it again.
| Thank you. Please gift this to a museum when you're ready!
| injidup wrote:
| I saw a version of this over 30 years ago. One the geek kids in
| our group who could program assembly found it a giggle to turn
| the computer lab into a musical instrument via floppy drive seek
| commands. Next trick...turn a Tesla into a musical instrument via
| the motor drives.
| aidos wrote:
| in the same vein, I always loved this Radiohead Nude remix
| https://vimeo.com/1109226
| MBCook wrote:
| A great many years ago (early 2000s) I tried to get a number of
| computers to play a simple melody in harmony using PC speaker
| beeps.
|
| To try to keep them in sync I used broadcast Ethernet packets.
|
| It worked. Sort of. Then fell out of sync. They were generally
| on time (thanks to the sync) but had enough difference to be
| easily noticeable and kind of annoying.
|
| Not unlike a first school band recital.
|
| It was fun. Half the project was getting the speakers to beep
| because that's a Win16 function I was calling from a Win32
| context and I had to thunk into it.
| [deleted]
| rzzzt wrote:
| Siemens Taurus locomotive engines have some musicality hidden
| in the power switching section: https://youtu.be/-SDYdHzT7Qw
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| I wonder what's actually making the noise. PWM on the
| transformer windings, or PWM on the motor windings
| themselves, or did they just use speakers? I have so many
| questions.
| rzzzt wrote:
| Overhead power lines are 15 kV, 16 2/3 Hz AC in Austria;
| the drivetrain is of the variable voltage-variable
| frequency (VVVF) kind, and conversion to three-phase power
| is done using solid state components. Comments say these
| switching elements (IGBT or GTO thyristors) apply lower
| frequency to the motor at start, then gradually increase
| once it is in motion. So I'd say the "glorified coil whine"
| comes mainly from the motor windings.
|
| More singing:
|
| - https://youtu.be/llBI_L21d3g
|
| - https://www.reddit.com/r/trains/comments/ilxxt7/these_tra
| ins...
| speed_spread wrote:
| Montreal's Metro old cars had a similar three-note signature
| sound. The notes have preserved as the "door closing" chime
| in the new cars: https://youtu.be/Hu_1JM_UiuA
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| > Next trick...turn a Tesla into a musical instrument via the
| motor drives.
|
| Renault did it some years ago to demonstrate how much control
| they have on their F1 engine drivetrain:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRXwWbo_mX0
| recursivedoubts wrote:
| not all heroes wear capes, but this guy needs a cape
| justin_oaks wrote:
| This reminds me of the Device Orchestra channel on YouTube:
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDwMh0pu1iSXeKx7qmqjIQA
| mftb wrote:
| This is brilliant! It reminds me of the anecdote Steven Levy
| relates in Hackers about Steve Dompier of the Homebrew Computer
| Club writing a program for the Altair that created music through
| electrical interference[0]. Awesome!
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers%3A_Heroes_of_the_Compu..
| .
| loudthing wrote:
| That retro looking CLI gui is pretty slick.
| layer8 wrote:
| TUI, not CLI.
| pkaye wrote:
| They should add SSDs to the mix.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Those would be exceedingly well-suited to some John Cage.
| ruined wrote:
| an ssd would greatly improve playback time. seriously, a single
| modern nvme drive could probably beat this whole setup. so
| pointless...
| YakBizzarro wrote:
| My question is: where did he find 512 floppy drives??
| Forge36 wrote:
| eBay? "Floppy drive Lot"
| supportengineer wrote:
| Amazing project. I remember having a C64 program that would play
| a tune using the 1541 disk drive.
| anyfoo wrote:
| I remember that. There used to be all kinds of warnings about
| possibly damaging your drive and what not, that,
| retrospectively, were mostly overblown. But I guess the
| computer magazines of the time (almost my only source for this
| stuff back then) didn't want any liability in the rare case
| when.
|
| I also fondly remember one program that made the drive's red
| access LED pulsate really softly on and off. Not only was I
| blown away that the drive can do that (I didn't know what pulse
| width modulation was back then), LEDs were still somewhat new
| enough at the time that I might not have seen a softly
| pulsating one before. It was really pretty.
| Agingcoder wrote:
| This is utterly insane, and absolutely amazing.
| frizkie wrote:
| I want very badly to listen to a bunch of old N64 game tracks on
| this thing.
|
| This is the stuff of legends, nice work Pawel!
| adamredwoods wrote:
| Wow. How loud is it?
|
| Also, why didn't he use any SSDs? (j/k)
| Forge36 wrote:
| The clicking noise was probably too quiet
| alkaloid wrote:
| I'm curious as to why the resettable breaker for each eight
| drives . . .
|
| I presume this was trial-and-error, but how could someone tell
| that the current is too much for a disk drive which is being, uh,
| overdriven (to make noise!)?
|
| Or maybe this was a "just in case" situation...?
|
| So cool . . .
| MBCook wrote:
| He must have enough experience by now of knowing how floppies
| can fail (especially when doing something so odd) to know it's
| useful.
|
| Probably just hard won knowledge that almost no one else would
| ever have.
|
| Kind of cool in a way.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-06-13 23:00 UTC)