[HN Gopher] The Floppotron 3.0
___________________________________________________________________
The Floppotron 3.0
Author : perakojotgenije
Score : 1315 points
Date : 2022-06-13 17:59 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (silent.org.pl)
(TXT) w3m dump (silent.org.pl)
| bencollier49 wrote:
| This is incredible and what a project! But the retrocomputing
| enthusiast inside me winces a little at all that lovely old
| hardware being wrecked..
| 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!
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| A cool one is Gource, which creates a fancy visualization of
| your codebase's history: https://gource.io/
| robbomacrae wrote:
| Looks pretty cool. Thanks!
| StillBored wrote:
| I guess you just need a PC from the early/mid 1990's with a
| soundblaster/clone sound card. Those cards overwhelmingly
| didn't have good power filters on their audio amps/etc and when
| the gain was turned up a bit you could hear the ISA/PCI bus
| noise.
|
| I remember my PC made very distinct noises when scrolling text,
| compiling, and various other operations.
|
| I vaguly remember a reading somewhere a couple years ago that
| someone had hooked up a click noise to linux syscalls and
| context switches for this basic purpose.
|
| I just wish machines still had disk I/O leds. My laptop (a
| dell) is one of the last machines I've seen with a disk
| activity led, because it switches the charge led to disk
| activity with a fn key combination.
|
| Also, if you want satisfaction there are various industries
| where computers are used to control mechanical devices. I
| worked in one where a large robot was being controlled by our
| software. Nothing more exciting than writing some code and
| hearing that think whirl and clunk away. Or somewhat frequently
| banging against end stops and the like when we had bugs.
| 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.
| astatine wrote:
| A colleague of mine had set up an audio alarm which would go
| off every time a build failed. It made everyone a lot more
| cautious when they checked in their code.
| nikanj wrote:
| Are you familiar with the demo scene?
| robbomacrae wrote:
| A little. Isn't the point of the demo to be the visual? Which
| to be fair, is like how the original post purpose is the
| music itself. But I was thinking something that happened as a
| happy accidental extra result of whatever you're doing with
| auto generated visual representations of how your code fits
| together like some Escher contraption.
| vintermann wrote:
| The demoscene exhibits and competes on music and hardware
| as well as graphics. There are a couple of demos which do
| all three, running on homemade or modded hardware.
| grog454 wrote:
| > I've often wished there was a way programming could produce
| art as a by product
|
| That's pretty much what computer graphics programming is.
| jachee wrote:
| Check out [Sonic Pi](https://sonic-pi.net/). It's a self-
| described "code-based music creation and performance tool".
|
| I've noodled around with it a bit, and it's pretty cool.
| 867-5309 wrote:
| wow, that's quite something!
|
| >a friendly tutorial
|
| >54,019 words 307,466 characters
|
| it's basically a flat file docs
| robbomacrae wrote:
| Yes I suppose sonic pi could be used to map logs to an audio
| stream. I might have to tinker with this. Thanks!
| 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.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Hold an AM radio next to your motherboard sometime. There
| were certain elders, long passed to the Grey (Beard)
| Havens, who claimed they could debug their programs that
| way.
| ajuc wrote:
| My uncle made alarm go off when somebody opens a gate in my
| parents fence years ago. He used old auto alarm. It sounds
| like a submarine about to launch torpedoes:)
|
| We learnt to ignore it in a few months, but it's funny when
| guests hear it for the first time.
| fractallyte wrote:
| Programming producing art - something like this?
| https://dgopstein.github.io/articles/ioccc-ascii-art/
| tiborsaas wrote:
| There's this Twitter hashtag for buggy D3 code that generated
| some art by accident :)
|
| https://twitter.com/search?q=%23d3brokeandmadeart
| niffydroid wrote:
| If you like things like this then check out "look mum no
| computer" he does similar things
| https://youtube.com/c/LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER
| magic123_ wrote:
| Yes ! He's really talented and inventive, and if you live in
| the UK I highly recommend paying a visit to the museum he
| created: https://this-museum-is-not-obsolete.com/
| 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.
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| It's stuff like this that makes me question the meaning of life
| and the point of "worthwhile pursuits".
|
| Pure art. I hope this ends up in a museum.
| softcactus wrote:
| With this many floppies capable of creating discrete tones, I bet
| you could synthesize human speech. Running a Fourier Transform
| for some speech clip and then having each floppy play a different
| frequency.
| durnygbur wrote:
| This is the future.
| 867-5309 wrote:
| Floptimus Prime
| AndrianV wrote:
| If you can read any MIDI file, you should seriously consider
| hosting a twitch broadcast where subscribers may upload their own
| MIDI files and hear them played live by the floppotron.
| Gys wrote:
| I also thought the MIDI makes this complex system very
| accessible. However:
|
| > Even if there is an existing MIDI for a specific song, re-
| arranging it for The Floppotron is still a time consuming
| process. Every ,,instrument" in the setup have its limits and
| the track must fit the note range it can play. Making a track
| sound good on the stacks of FDDs or a scanner usually involves
| a lot of tweaking.
|
| > Making one arrangement for 3.0 usually takes me 3-4 evenings,
| which is a little longer than for the older Floppotron 2.0.
|
| Maybe there could be an kind of offline version that people can
| use to tweak their own MIDI and ultimately play it on the real
| machine?
| 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.
| tirwander wrote:
| I feel like it's this little shit that really bring happiness.
| 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
| tambourine_man wrote:
| This was amazing, thanks for sharing.
|
| Edit: his whole channel is awesome, what a great find. He
| also sorted all of StarWars dialog, manually, as one does:
|
| "This is the Special Edition to troll Han-shot-first purists.
| Everyone knows the orig is the most legit."
|
| Someone who really invests in his trollage.
| 5- wrote:
| tom7 is great!
|
| his perhaps lesser known, but fantastic and way more
| interactive creation is his icfpc'06 work,
| http://www.boundvariable.org/
|
| i don't know of any worthy english-language writeups, perhaps
| they will be posted in replies to this comment.
| cbm-vic-20 wrote:
| "Tetris is an inventory management survival horror game."
| 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.
| alexb_ wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcJSW7Rprio
|
| Harder Drive is one of my favorite videos.
| 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!
| ryan77627 wrote:
| Made an account just to say this: anyone who hasnt heard of the
| SIGBOVIK conferences should look up the minutes from this year
| and read through some of the papers submitted, maybe even go
| through a few years.
|
| And yes, Tom7 is a frequent contributor :)
| kilroy123 wrote:
| Absolutely, the same.
| reaperducer wrote:
| The earliest iteration of this sort of thing that I know of is
| the Commodore 1541 being programmed to play Bicycle Built for
| Two.
|
| Are there earlier examples?
| krallja wrote:
| In 1948, Alan Turing programmed a diagnostic loudspeaker ("the
| hooter") in the Manchester Baby to play different tones:
| https://spectrum.ieee.org/alan-turing-how-his-universal-mach...
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Aged 11, around 1982, Richard David "Aphex Twin" James used a
| (per se mute) Sinclair ZX81 to have the (video) connected
| television produce sound through video signals; it is not clear
| if he also coded music using that trick. He would buy his first
| synth the following year.
| 7402 wrote:
| It's not exactly the same but in the early 1970s PDP-8
| computers could play music by generating radio frequency
| interference in a manner that could be picked up by a nearby AM
| radio. The sound was not mechanically generated, but it had the
| same hacker spirit to it.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMsyvBxEcSc
| LegitShady wrote:
| Not exactly the same thing but it reminds me of James Houston's
| cover of Radiohead's Nude on hard drives, a dot matrix printer, a
| scanner, and a sinclair ZX Spectrum.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmfHHLfbjNQ
|
| This says 14 years ago.
| pygy_ wrote:
| That rendition is brilliant
| 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.
| tomcam wrote:
| Intonation surprisingly good!
| Yizahi wrote:
| Pawel is doing amazing work, no questions. But I also like to
| promote lesser scale projects, like this one for example (only 5
| sound sources):
|
| Floppy Music Robo-Band. Rondo alla Turca (cover)
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICMXnnb_xqI
| 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.
| narven wrote:
| amazing work and pacience
| 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.
| rkagerer wrote:
| That "Eye of the Tiger" on the dot matrix is beautiful.
| allset_ wrote:
| Love the Floppotron, glad to see it alive and well! Keep it up!
| 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
| dannersy wrote:
| This has stayed in my bookmarks for 14 years. Great stuff.
| 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
| globalnode wrote:
| this was amazing
| Ice_cream_suit wrote:
| So very cool !
|
| (Pardon my immature gushing, but it really is very, very cool !)
| [deleted]
| justin_oaks wrote:
| This reminds me of the Device Orchestra channel on YouTube:
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDwMh0pu1iSXeKx7qmqjIQA
| nicce wrote:
| Fascinating, why I have never seen this one.
| listenfaster wrote:
| Bravo. Anyone else destroy their friend's Commodore 1541 running
| drive songs?
| kube-system wrote:
| I bet this sounds awesome in person. I hope this ends up in some
| sort of museum some day so I can hear it.
| 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..
| .
| jecel wrote:
| Here is a video of a recreation of that using an actual Altair:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EPmWvqZ0Rw
| loudthing wrote:
| That retro looking CLI gui is pretty slick.
| layer8 wrote:
| TUI, not CLI.
| loudthing wrote:
| You must be fun at parties.
|
| Edit: :P
| 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...
| mikehollinger wrote:
| It's like a new kind of pipe organ. I love it. :-)
| koyao wrote:
| But why?
| mdp2021 wrote:
| As they said of Engelbart.
|
| Not only the demo has its technical worth: that "synth" can
| sound amazingly.
| afroisalreadyin wrote:
| I am in awe of the completeness and entertainment factor of this
| thing; you have to admire the dedication that went into bringing
| it to such a level. Probably the most entertaining thing I've
| ever seen done with computer hardware.
| sam537 wrote:
| The internet can still be a beautiful place.
| 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.
| jansan wrote:
| Yes, it was "My Bonnie is Over the Ocean". We played it only
| once or twice because we were afraid that this could break the
| disk drive and there just was no money for a new one :)
| 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.
| vintermann wrote:
| LFT, a Swedish demoscene guy fairly well known on HN due to his
| impressive exploits, has some lower key projects as well. One
| is for playing live music on the C64, and in this video he
| hooked up a 1541 as well:
|
| https://youtu.be/mbhQ36bd870
| lqet wrote:
| I would pay significant amounts of money to see a live
| performance of this contraption.
| spread_love wrote:
| This would sell out instantly in Yuppie Brooklyn (I use that
| term endearingly) at at least $40/ticket.
|
| The real challenge would be moving it from tour stop to tour
| stop without breaking it, if I had to guess.
| agentbellnorm wrote:
| Was thinking the same! They should do a tour where they play
| music but also talk about how it all works, q&a etc.
| Phileosopher wrote:
| I'm fairly certain HN has almost enough people that they
| could make it a viable venue (geography-contextually,
| naturally). Add some meme marketing to it with some vague
| overtones about making the world love something they didn't
| love before and it'll get memorialized as a TEDtalk.
| s0rce wrote:
| The computer history museum in Mountain View should host.
| 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
| kube-system wrote:
| They'd be perfect for playing the rests.
| nickwanninger wrote:
| Not long till can we have a GB of floppys on one table. Imagine!
| dbqpdb wrote:
| This should honestly be in an art gallery
| malikNF wrote:
| Love this!!! Thanks op!
|
| For some reason this reminded me of chiptunes (
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rf_p3-8fTo0 [Pretty sure some of
| you will recognize some of these tunes] )
|
| ---Edit--
|
| There's more here if anyone's interested.
|
| http://keygenmusic.net/
| Maursault wrote:
| There's just too much time involved here. How many man-decades?
| It's because of the hardware. You have to appreciate anyone that
| would take the time to get one floppy working. _One._ Someone
| should virtualize all this for him so he has time for other
| things.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| Is this hobby-shaming? O_o
| Maursault wrote:
| By having an idea of the often frustrating labor involved in
| working on floppy drives, and being astounded by the sheer
| volume of work and time involved revealed by and culminating
| in a short video of a performance, and showing concern for
| the artist not being able to, you know, have time to sleep,
| eat, fap, etc., you somehow think I may be "shaming" what you
| call his "hobby?" No, of course not, but I will shame your
| straw man for the fallacy that it is, and I will shame your
| inaccurate and insulting labelling of a mechanical and
| digital many-threat masterpiece as a "hobby."
| peterkelly wrote:
| This needs an old-school theatre organ console hooked up to it
| 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 . . .
| porbelm wrote:
| The video has clips from the previous iterations, in
| remembrance, and one of them shows quite a bit of smoke in the
| room...
| 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.
| wrycoder wrote:
| I think I'll just go home now...
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| By having his devices (say, the floppies) driven in columnar
| groups (controlling number of active devices for volume), did he
| accidentally create a phased array speaker?
| yetihehe wrote:
| No, they are only enabled/disabled to run simultaneously. To
| create phased array, you would need to control phase (delay in
| time) of each drive separately. It could be probably done with
| this setup, but I don't see a good reason to do phased array
| using devices which do not emit clean enough sound.
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(page generated 2022-06-14 23:02 UTC)