How do people make songs from hard drives/floppy disk drives?

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How do they make them produce different tones? Do they write up a code? Are there different types of drives? Is it like when you blow into a bottle and depending on how much liquid is in there it’ll make a different sound so the heavier to disk is the deeper the sound it’ll produce?

Edit: spelling

In: Technology

2 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Floppy drives use stepper motors to move the read/write heads. Stepper motors are a special kind of motor that don’t just start spinning when you apply power, but instead they work more like the hands of an analog clock. They move in small steps like the second hand, and each step produces a kind of ‘tick’ as well.

If you control the speed of the stepper motor just right, it will move a certain number of steps per second, and that’s the noise you hear. If the motor is moving at say 160 steps per second, you hear a 160 Hertz tone.

By making the motors spin at different speeds, you can make them produce different tones. Normally this is done with a microcontroller like an Arduino that’s programmed to move the motors at the speeds that are required to play a certain melody.

Anonymous 0 Comments

It’s servo motors (not the spinning ones, but the ones moving the arm to different spots on the disk). Depending on how fast you want to move them, you send them more steps per second – they move in steps, like a person moves in steps. A little distance at a time.

Music works with frequencies.

If you move the motor 440 Steps per second, that’s 440 hertz, or an A. Move it at 220 Steps per second, and it’s an A, just an octave below.

Truly explaining this like you’re five would take a lot longer, but i guess you should get it this way 🙂