Phantom of the Floppera

via www.youtube.com

This is ridiculous and awesome.

Comments

[katerizero]

how is this even possible?

[Sam Kimbrel]

It works because disk drives use a particular class of motor called a stepper motor to move the read/write head around the disk.

Stepper motors don't have a continuous range of motion; they have a discrete increment of movement that's the smallest they'll do, and moving them a larger distance than that means doing that single motion over and over in one direction or the other. Since they're not exactly quiet, and they make the same noise every time they move one step, you can do stuff like this by writing a program that steps them at different rates to produce different frequencies, and then sequence those frequencies to pay a song. Pretty neat!

[me.yahoo.com/a/tqh3VyIS2fn01nHTd6mnyYm4gOOSplDe9GI-]

This is the perfect instrument for that piece. I wish it were a little stronger on the high notes though.