Star Wars' "Imperial March" scraped across a hard drive

Posted by John Brownlee, February 6, 2009 7:03 AM | permalink

[via Gizmodo]

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Discussion

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#1 posted by technogeek , February 6, 2009 8:03 AM

Has he just hooked up the arm driver coil to an audio source, or is this actually programmed seeks?

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#2 posted by certron , February 6, 2009 8:15 AM

Someone mentioned it on the 2nd page of comments of the Gizmodo article, but here is the 'original': http://www.afrotechmods.com/cheap/hdspeakers/hdspeakers.htm

At least, it was the first time I saw anything like it.

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#3 posted by milsyobtaf , February 6, 2009 8:16 AM

my hard drive speakers sound a hell of a lot better than that. sounds like he needs a bigger amp and a cleaner source. also, quit holding the speaker wires onto the arm, just solder them on so the arm can float freely. n00b.

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#4 posted by a random John , February 6, 2009 9:07 AM

You can do this with anything with a motor in it. I'm not sure why all the examples limit themselves to harddrives. If a device is battery powered and has a motor you can hook your speaker wires where the battery usually goes and get sound out of it.

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#5 posted by Agies , February 6, 2009 9:12 AM

The Afrotech ones are much better.

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#6 posted by Anonymous , February 6, 2009 9:37 AM

Does anyone remember a program for the Commodore-64 that would play Bicycle Built For Two on the floppy drive?

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#7 posted by obscurica , February 6, 2009 9:56 AM

Why do you even need a motor? If I'm understanding correctly that there's no read or seek functions happening at all, and you're simply using the surface of the drive as a resonator, you could use just about anything that would vibrate, motor or not. Perhaps I'm confused as to why this is so cool.

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#8 posted by nehpetsE , February 6, 2009 10:17 AM

I tried this using a 500w pa amp. The drive seemed to sound its best just before the coil sprung a leak and let all the compressed smoke escape.

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#9 posted by strider_mt2k

, February 6, 2009 10:18 AM

That was one in a million...

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#10 posted by Drhaggis

, February 6, 2009 10:31 AM

I didn't think there was a wrong way to play Star Wars music on a hardrive motor. Leave it to Boing Boing readers to prove me wrong.

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#11 posted by Anonymous , February 6, 2009 1:45 PM

my hard drive plays a variation on that theme every third time i boot up. it doesn't play the same melody per say, but somehow it instills the same sense of dread as the original.

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#12 posted by mdh , February 7, 2009 10:09 AM

You know the little tune the whirring motors in some ATM's make?

I want them to play this.

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#13 posted by Nelson.C , February 7, 2009 9:01 PM

My external just failed, and the only tune it plays now is tick-tick, tick-tick, tick-tick....

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#14 posted by murray , February 8, 2009 6:03 PM

Another awesome thing you can do with an audio signal is hook it up to a speaker. It sounds fantastic!

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#15 posted by Chris Tucker