I don’t know if it’s the circuit board lying innocently to the side or the scratchy 8-bit sounding Star Wars anthem coming from the floppy drives but something in this video has stirred up the geek inside me. Perhaps it’s all the ribbon cable lying around or the way the LEDs flash in sequence but YouTuber sh4doww90 is a genius.

I won’t pretend to know how he’s achieved this minor musical miracle but he does offer up an explanation on his blog:

It’s nothing new and it’s very simple. The sound comes from a magnetic head moved by stepper motor. To make a specific sound, head must be moved with appropriate frequency.
FDD has a simple interface – the description may be found for example [ HERE ]. To move the head you need to activate the drive by pulling the DRVSB0 or 1 (depends on the cable you have and the connector – notice the crossover on the FDD ribbon cable) pin low and then falling edge on STEP pin makes the head move one step in direction dependent on DIR pin state.
An ATMega microcontroller is generating those frequencies and it makes the drives play music.

Check out the rest of his blog at:  Silent.it.cx