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A floppy-disk Walkman using a Raspberry Pi
- LeoPanthera 6y agoIf you give up on the idea of having an entire albums, a floppy disk can easily contain even a fairly long single track at nearly-CD quality.
- 867-5309 6y agoforget CD wallets, you could have a whole album in a floppy wallet
- phobosanomaly 6y agoDon't copy that floppy!
- LeoPanthera 6y agoIt's almost as if that's the origin of the term "album" for a collection of singles, huh.
- flir 6y agoThe very first mp3 I got my hands on, I took home from uni on three floppy discs. It was jawdropping that a whole song could fit in that small a space.
- edent 6y agoThat's very true. A 3 minute single compresses nicely down to floppy size using Opus - with very little quality loss. But who can be bothered changing a disk every few minutes? ;-)
- laumars 6y agoIn fairness, that would be no worse than singles released on CD / cassette / vinyl
- yiyus 6y agoOr you could store all your music files in the sd card and store playlists in the floppies. Then, inserting a disk would only be a fancy (and wonderfully inconvenient) way of choosing what to play.
- someperson 6y agoWasn't there a way for Linux to format 3 1/4 inch floppy disks beyond the standard 1.44MB all the way to 2MB? Or was that simply using a compressed filesystem?
- LeoPanthera 6y agoMany of the "extra large floppy" tricks don't work with USB floppy drives, and require a "real" drive.
- dragonwriter 6y agoA “1.44MB floppy” referred to it's standard, IIRC, FAT formatted capacity; it actually had a 2MB total capacity.
- userbinator 6y agoYes, the ultimate (unformatted) capacity of the medium is rougly 2 million bytes, and includes the sector headers as well as the gaps to account for rotational speed variance. The calculation is as follows: A 1.44M drive nominally writes at 500Kbit/s and spins at 300RPM, i.e. one track takes 200ms and 100Kbit are written. There are 80 tracks so 8000Kbit on one side, or 16000Kbit on two sides, corresponding to 2Mbit in total. By writing "long sectors" that take up the whole track, omitting almost all the overhead and gaps, and using up to 82 tracks, the 2M utility I linked in another comment here manages to reach very close to that limit.
- VLM 6y agoIn the 90s there used to be a web page for linux describing all the possible physical formats and one interesting side effect was changes in average kilobytes/sec transfer rate. Obviously more tracks simply took longer to read more data in a linear fashion but there were weird interactions where long sectors increased average bandwidth, mostly. I'm old enough to manually set interleave parameters on hard disks in the early 80s, so that was interesting. I don't remember interleave optimizing on floppies but I may just forget.
- 6y ago
- dreamlayers 6y agoI'm disappointed; I thought it would involve storing audio in analog format on a floppy disk.
- dylan604 6y agowith a tiny little needle that would touch when the metal shield was moved out of the way?
- rob74 6y agonope, magnetically, like on a cassette tape...
- bittercynic 6y agoIt's been done! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziVXF_tM4Gw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziVXF_tM4Gw
- gambiting 6y agoSimilarly, there have been photo cameras that used floppies for image storage, and I'm not talking about sony's Cybershoot cameras which stored photos as actual files - I'm talking cameras which just stored photos as analog signal directly on the floppy, in NTSC format! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G_1uy_7B5w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G_1uy_7B5w
- kevin_thibedeau 6y agoOr using MIDI "compression": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ks3ucumilU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ks3ucumilU
- rob74 6y agoCool, wasn't aware it was possible to store an analog signal on a floppy using an unmodified disk drive. However, going from how often you hear the stepper motor in the video, the disk would fill up pretty quickly - I wonder how much analog music you could fit on a floppy with some optimization (slower rotation, tracks spaced more closely until crosstalk becomes an issue, maybe a spiral track like on a CD). My gut feeling is that you could fit more than 30 minutes on there...
- quickthrower2 6y agoI love this because it's nostalgia for something that wasn't even a thing - music on floppy disks! Minidisc execpted.
- edent 6y agoNow I'm wondering if I can encode movies onto an 8-Track...
- quickthrower2 6y agoAnd then you can compress everything down to the number 42.
- crtasm 6y agoI used to bring collections of mod tracker files on floppy when I visited friends!
- hellotomyrars 6y agoThis has left me wanting to run tests to see what level of compression is required to not trigger Content ID on youtube.
- andai 6y agoA proxy for that might be running it through eg. Shazam, I think they use similar tech. From what little I've heard they make a spectrogram (frequency, intensity, time) and plot the peaks into a point cloud. Most of those should survive even the heaviest audio compression.
- scruffyherder 6y agoI uploaded the real audio encode of dark side of the moon, I had it set to the highest compression. It took over a week but it was eventually flagged, and tagged correctly. I’m guessing those stories of faint music in the background being tagged are real.
- refresher 6y agoSimilar in size to many portable setups you already see on HeadFi.
- jmull3n 6y agoIt's even got a headphone jack!
- edent 6y agoHa! Perhaps I should have used a Pi Zero and Bluetooth dongle.
- codetrotter 6y agoNext step might be to have the SD card store only the bootloader, and have said bootloader load Linux into RAM from one or more floppy disks. Don’t know how small you can make Linux but for example there is https://hackaday.com/2020/07/08/the-latest-linux-on-a-floppy-in-a-486/ https://hackaday.com/2020/07/08/the-latest-linux-on-a-floppy... and also there are some Linux distros for routers etc that can be made very small such as OpenWRT
- ngcc_hk 6y agoOriginally I thought someone fit a pi zero into a floppy with some lipo power and a ...
- userbinator 6y agoThe sample 64k MP3 is 452KB, or over 1/3 of a floppy, yet is less than 57 seconds long and corresponds to a rate of 8KB/s. The fact that Opus can encode the same quality (or lack thereof...) with less than 1KB/s is amazing. To me, it sounds only slightly worse than music played over a POTS line.
- comradesmith 6y agoI think the author may have gone: wav -> opus -> MP3. With the MP3 bitrate chosen to ensure no further quality loss. I don't think from the provided MP3 we can tell if that is equivalent to the encoded opus format. We would need to encode to both from wav to make that comparison
- edent 6y agoYes, that's what I did. Opus plays in all browsers except Apple's. So I went for an mp3 bitrate which didn't degrade the sound any further.
- dspillett 6y agoCould you not just unpack the opus file into a pure uncrompressed .wav which I'm pretty sure all browsers will support. Or if you don't mind dropping legacy-IE support, FLAC would be an option. Or would the extra bandwidth be enough to be a worry?
- ngcc_hk 6y ago“ buffer-underruns” choke me neatly. Those were the days of cd based Walkman. Not sure it happens to cassette tape one.
- Daniel_sk 6y agoYou could also fit many MIDI soundtracks from old DOS games onto one floppy disk.
- terinjokes 6y agoIf you excuse the self-promotion, I started working on this in 2018, that I'm still hacking on. I'm happy to answer any questions people might have. Blog post: https://terinstock.com/post/2018/09/Hardware-MIDI-Player-Part-One/ https://terinstock.com/post/2018/09/Hardware-MIDI-Player-Par... FOSDEM Talk: https://terinstock.com/talk/2019/02/Building-a-Hardware-MIDI-Player/ https://terinstock.com/talk/2019/02/Building-a-Hardware-MIDI...
- ionwake 6y agoThis looks great
- daniellarusso 6y agoImpressed with your kernel patch, nice story.
- terinjokes 6y agoThanks! I spent over a week trying to track down when the bug was introduced and ended up git-bisecting to the commit I already thought was interesting. My mistake for not checking first. If it had taken any longer, I probably would have lost all momentum for the project.
- unicornporn 6y agoNSF files! https://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/NSF https://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/NSF
- lostgame 6y agoThis reminds me of the days in high school of compressing the hell out of my MP3's to 64kbps or such just to fit as many on my 64(?)MB generic MP3 player at the time. What an adorable project.
- vertis 6y agoTangent. I had a Minidisc player for a while circa 1997 (bit hazy). It was so awesome. I spent a lot of time putting tracks on the minidiscs. I always wanted to be able to use it with a computer to store files as well, alas that required a special drive. While it existed never really took off (at least in Australia). Memory chips might be the future, but minidiscs still look cooler. Cool enough for Neo to sell one in the Matrix :D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kU3BceoMuaA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kU3BceoMuaA
- SergeyDruid 6y agoI always loved that scene! that minidiscs used for data in underground, illegal things sounded so cyberpunk-ish!
- vict00ms 6y agoThey released a 1gb "Hi-MD" disc in the same form factor in 2004 that never took off.
- hn3333 6y agoI believe Minidisc was also the medium of choice in "Strange Days", a pretty good and still very relevant movie that gets mentioned rarely for some reason.
- mhd 6y agoI always thought that "Strange Days" was one of the prime examples of "underrated movies", so it often gets mentioned that it gets rarely mentioned ;) (Another movie I'd put in this group, Arnold Braunschweiger's "Last Action Hero" incidentally also has some mini disc usage)
- dijit 6y agoI had exactly the same desire. It’s crazy how locked down the minidisc ecosystem was though. I remember playing with the Sony software to put tracks on my minidisc player, encoding then with AAC to get better compression. The thing felt great to use, much better than early MP3 players (the USB thumb drive style ones) but they were superior in nearly every way that mattered. (You could store files on them, more tracks, more battery life). Anyway. That was a nostalgia trip.
- ionwake 6y agolove it
- Theizestooke 6y agoReminds me of the Neuromancer computer game sound track by DEVO https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNmpTIMxmrU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNmpTIMxmrU (granted this was only heard during the intro, the actual game ost was a chiptune remix)
- 082349872349872 6y agosome 80's tracks suitable for encoding on 1,44 MB disks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cI3tE9wNL5s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cI3tE9wNL5s (1985, JP) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjOvzWJbFdA&t=20 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjOvzWJbFdA&t=20 (1989, SU) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=notKtAgfwDA&t=40 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=notKtAgfwDA&t=40 (1985, US) (ok, he doesn't really have the hairstyle, but he does wear gloves)
- Theizestooke 6y agoNice selection, haven't heard Megazone 23 in a while.
- 082349872349872 6y agoHatsune Miku (時祭 イヴ) concerts are a thing now, as is synthwave (retro 80's). Now all we're missing are manipulative governments engaged in secret wars, and the mecha?
- menybuvico 6y agoI suddenly feel the need to build a Floppy-drive Walkman that plays mods and MIDI files on the inserted floppy.
- 082349872349872 6y agoafter that, add visuals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNCqrylNY-0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNCqrylNY-0
- severak_cz 6y agoI found it funny that it actually sounds like crappy AM radio.
- anfractuosity 6y agoCool :), I've been working on a 3d printed case for a floppy disk walkman, for old PC floppy disk drives - https://github.com/anfractuosity/turbodrive https://github.com/anfractuosity/turbodrive I had the case 3d printed, but need to finish the electronic side of things. I bought some music from - https://strudelsoft.bandcamp.com/ https://strudelsoft.bandcamp.com/ (which comes on a floppy disk :)
- bArray 6y agoI really like this! I want to see it get a little easier to be carried around, but I want to build one! I'll be able to use my Sony Mavica to take pictures on floppy disks and my floppy-walkman to listen to music from floppy disks! Now I also wonder what other horrendous uses of floppy disks there could be... I'm thinking it could be fun to store server web pages (without caching)... Or maybe to play some video feedback?
- alt219 6y agoAround 1996-97, there was a Linux-based firewall/router that booted from a single 1.44MB diskette. iirc, it needed a very small amount of RAM too, something like only 8MB. The diskette could be used with write-protect enabled to prevent accidental (or malicious for that matter) modifications to the diskette contents. I believe it also had an SMTP relay. It was particularly useful for sharing dial-up and DSL connections at a time when commercial solutions would’ve been much more expensive than a stripped down repurposed spare computer with no hard drive. A bit hard to imagine now, but back then it was pretty fantastic to have an Internet connection shared between computers on a home or small business network. Edit: Found its Wikipedia page! [0] [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Router_Project https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Router_Project
- flyinghamster 6y agoBoy, does that bring back memories. I used precisely such a repurposed PC with this back in the day, to juggle two DSL circuits into our office. Of course, a thumb drive can host a far more sophisticated router these days.
- timonoko 6y agoI saw floppy-disk Walkman in 1961 in Helsinki. It was a dictaphone using brown circular pieces of floppy plastic. A doctor was using it, trying to decide if I had tuberculosis or tapeworm. I had rickets.
- dspillett 6y agoThat has a certain deformed beauty that appeals… > Sadly, the Pi Zero doesn’t have an an audio out jack. But the USB floppy drive is pretty big, so we don’t lose much space by going for a full-sized Pi. You could use a ZeroW which has bluetooth, and a bluetooth-to-3.5 adaptor to allow a wired connection. That would take less space than a full-bodied Pi and add extra parts to the hack for a bit more "dear [deity], why would you?" goodness!
- edent 6y agoI looked at getting an HDMI to Audio converter. But I couldn't find one which could be powered by USB.
- soonoutoftime 6y agoDo they need power? I use an hdmi to rca and it's not powered. Edit: it did come with a usb cable to plug into it, but I never needed it. Unfortunately I don't know enough about hardware to know what's going on.
- gruturo 6y agoGetting audio out on a pi0 requires a little bit of hardware hacking, but it's not at all impossible - the signal is there, you need a handful of components and some device tree settings: https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-the-raspberry-pi-zero/audio-outputs https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-the-raspberry-pi-zero...
- thecureforzits 6y agoFWIW, PCM5102 boards off ebay are about $5 and work perfectly with the pi0. They don't support hardware mixing or volume control, but the sound quality is surprisingly good.
- mhd 6y agoI wonder what other interesting audio delivery/distribution formats we could build players for: - game boy cartridges (or even larger cartridge formats) - zip discography disks (i.e. one disk per artist) - small internal ram, transmission via infrared - eprom chips
- simias 6y agoMost Game Boy cartridges are just a NOR chip accessed through a parallel interface, so the only difficult part would be building the connector, then you could just bitbang to get to the data. Unless of course you want to actually play the audio on the GameBoy, in which case the very weak CPU and unsuited SPU will make it difficult to achieve anything resembling proper audio. Of course that didn't stop people from trying, with quite impressive results given the limitations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQLTYe0Gn70 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQLTYe0Gn70
- andai 6y ago> small internal ram, transmission via infrared Sneakernet, yet contactless, nice! The devices could exchange their most-listened tracks and overwrite the least-listened tracks.
- k__ 6y agoBack in the days, I had a miniCD mp3 player. 250MB per disk and only half the size of a regular CD mp3 players, which were the way to go back then, because everything else didn't have enough space or was too expensive.
- kedikedi 6y agoAh, I was working on a similar idea when I was in upper secondary school. But I was unable to do get what I want with my very limited electronics knowledge back then :) I was thinking of storing and playing the data in an analog way, pretty much like a regular compact cassette meant for audio. I thought it was a better idea after seeing audio casettes can store 60/90 minutes of audio but they can hold only very little digital data (I had a commodore that I found in my grandma's cellar and those casettes were my unit of measure)
- Jedd 6y ago> A floppy disk can hold a maximum of 1,457,664 Bytes. Ahhh, the kids of today. Having started with the 133mm 1541 on the Commodore 64, with its double-your-disk-capacity-with-a-hole-punch, and then onto the Amiga with its 89mm disks of 880KB capacity, and then working on Honeywell front end processors in the early 1990's with their 203mm disks with around 240KB ...
- tssva 6y agoAhhh, you kids that started with the Commodore 64/1541 and 170k of capacity. I started with a TRS-80 Model 1 with a Shugart SA-400 drive connected to an expansion interface. 85K capacity.
- Jedd 6y agoWell, I started with a VIC20 and a tape drive -- but in terms of floppy disks, that wasn't until sometime after the C64 arrived. My neighbour was a developer working in assembler, producing games for the TRS-80, and my first 'real' (as in monies being handed over) job was as a tape-copying, paper-folding, inserting-both-into-a-ziplock-bag monkey.
- rasz 6y agoC64 tape with turbo holds ~1MB
- tssva 6y agoThe original comment was regarding floppy drives so I mentioned the first computer with a floppy drive I used. The first computer I would have used was my father's Heathkit ET-3400 microprocessor learning system in 1976. That required each time typing in the machine code for the high/low game I played on it. The TRS-80 Model 1 was purchased a year or so later and originally had a tape drive.
- Symbiote 6y agoRISC OS is the original OS for the ARM chip, and the Raspberry Pi can run it natively. It apparently doesn't support floppy disc drives (the Pi lacks the interface, and USB drives appear like USB memory sticks to the OS). If it did, the ADFS (Advanced Disc Filing System) would format discs to 800 or 1600KB. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Disc_Filing_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Disc_Filing_System (PS, it's 90mm. Odd that even outside the USA we said 3½ inches.)
- grishka 6y agoMy first thought when I saw the title and the picture: oh, it won't be that bad — you could use Opus to compress a song with passable quality to fit on a floppy. Author: uses Opus but puts an entire album on there.
- dwighttk 6y agoI remember downloading my first mp3 from Napster (Star Wars Opening Fanfare) and thinking it wouldn't quite fit on a floppy. Also deleting it a few days later to save space on my 4GB HD.
- agumonkey 6y agoas horrifying as tempting
- pimlottc 6y agoClearly this should be called the Floppy Diskman. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discman
- pridkett 6y agoThis really makes me want to see someone recreate the Sony Mavica digital camera using a Pi and a USB floppy drive. Those things were awesome back around 1999. Would be pretty straight forward.
- nullc 6y ago> (I’ve re-encoded it to MP3 in order for it to play in the browser.) Opus plays fine in browsers that aren't apple-patent-lock-in-ware.
- scruffyherder 6y agoWhen real audio 2.0 was released it was possible to get the encoder. So back in the mid 90s I ripped Dark aside of the Moon to wave (I had a massive SCSI disk) and transcoded it to the smallest settings. I got it down to two 5 1/4” disks. I revisited the experiment a few years ago here: https://virtuallyfun.com/wordpress/2017/04/20/getting-first-side-dark-side-moon-onto-floppy-diskette/ https://virtuallyfun.com/wordpress/2017/04/20/getting-first-... Now I’m wondering why I didn’t go all the way and make a custom player...