The official definition of an organ describes it as a wind instrument, but electronics have a different opinion. This isn't the first time we've heard music based on floppy drives (and we hope it won't be the last), but the difference is that the Floppy Orgel raises the complexity level notably by combining 49 drives connected to an Arduino platform.
The 3.5-inch floppy, also known as a floppy disk, has been relegated to very low-level functions. Even the smallest pen drive available today surpasses a floppy's capacity by more than 700 times. While it hasn't lost its usefulness for technicians who urgently need to access a pure DOS environment, there's already an entire generation that only knows the 3.5-inch disk from the save-file icon in many programs. Some enthusiasts have started creating different objects using them as a base, and we've also seen musical projects that recycle their drives. The world was amazed by the Imperial March from Star Wars on just two drives, and then we came across the main theme of Pirates of the Caribbean with forty units. What we'll see today goes much further.
The members of the club Toolbox Bodensee e.V. in Germany designed Floppy Orgel, a 'digital organ' that combines old floppy drives with 3D printing and Arduino hardware. In total, 49 drives were used, 84 3D-printed parts (30 hours of work split between two printers), and 360 solder points. Initially, the plan was to use just four drives, but at some point over the three months the project took, the final design of Floppy Orgel became a 7x7 configuration. One of the most complicated parts was actually finding 49 floppy drives. After exploring dark basements, several abandoned machines became donors for Floppy Orgel. The most positive aspect of its design is that it can be used as a player, or as an organ for playing in real time. Despite the inevitable latency, the result is nothing short of astonishing.
The main theme of Titanic, River Flows in You by Yiruma, the Tetris theme, and the aforementioned Pirates of the Caribbean song are part of the repertoire in the video. I imagine some kind of world record could arise that recognizes the largest number of floppy drives used as a musical instrument, and we also shouldn't forget that many enthusiasts are starting to develop similar projects with hard drives.
