Floppy Tape Delay/Granulator - First Build

Finally after a long time of trying to figure out the method of modifying a Floppy Disk Drive to record and play audio, I got it done!

Go to www.openmusiclabs.com and find the Floppy Audio Project in the forums, for guides how to do this hack!

But it goes something like this:

On the floppy's IDE ribbon cable, you ground pins 14 (activate Drive 0), and 10 (start spindle motor)
then send a HIGH or LOW to pin 18 for read direction and a pulse to pin 20 for stepping.
I soldered some wires to the heads, and ran it through the tape head of an old Fisher Price tape recorder :)

I got the idea, originally from Jeri Ellsworth, and the guide/forum on Open Music Labs.

I wanted to modify the drive so I could control the speed of the spindle motor, as this guy did:

http://www.instructables.com/id/floppy-drawbot/step7/adding-platter-speed-con...

but I ended up f**king something up, I guess, so the motor jammed.
I decided discarding this particular drive, and already have another old drive ready for building into a casing, with op amps (for gaining the signale) and 555 timer for the pulse, instead of the arduino.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• floppy
• disk
• drive
• tape
• delay
• reverb
• granulator
• fdd

[Gaia1986]

My comment in the beginning is danish and goes:

"After 3 to 4 days.... and it all looks like.... pretty much crap!" ;-)

[demcanulty]

That sounds great! And very cool looking.

[Gaia1986]

@demcanulty thank you! it wouldn't be there, had it not been for your great guide. I will dig so much deeper into this. I just need to find a way for controlling the speed of the spindle motor. (check my post on the openmusiclabs forum)

[jeriellsworth]

Cool.

[TheMasterThe19]

Would it also be able to still play gdi disk

[ObiTrev]

I saw Jerry Elsworth attempt this, but I'm having trouble finding documentation on the method described. Also, I want to do the same with a Zip-Disk, do you have any thoughts or suggestions?

I have currently taken the platter assembly off of a Zip-Disk driver board, but that is all.