Ok well, I need to find time to understand the radio stuff, so I'm gonna park that for now and move on to Floopy Drive Music. Ok yes, its been done before (as has most of the stuff I'm doing), but I haven't done it yet.
So what is floppy drive music? Well by stepping the drive's motor at different speeds we can get different pitches from it. Combine the different pitches and you get music.
I'm going to use the Arduino Uno to start with but I may program a PIC chip to do the same later.
After a bit of reading on the web, it seems the Arduino will not have enough power from the +5V supply to power the floppy drive. Its recommended to use another power source.
So I have an old PC power supply handy which should do the job. However, when its disconnected from its host PC's motherboard, its does nothing when plugged into the mains. Fortunately you can fake this by shorting the PS_ON# pin to it's adjacent COM (see http://www.smpspowersupply.com/connectors-pinouts.html for pin details).
Of course using a PC PSU (Power Supply Unit) means it come with all the connectors to connect to the power pins of floppy drive, and andthing else you might want to plug in.
Pins connected, plugged in and powered on. Fan on the PSU starts and floppy drive makes a short whirring noise.
