Talks to Watch

The Floppotron: Sweet Dreams

4.6M views · Oct 14, 2017 · 2:24 · 0 HN recommenders · 4 mentions · discussed 2019–2025

The Floppotron plays a cover of Eurythmics' Sweet Dreams using an orchestra of old computer hardware such as floppy drives, hard drives and scanners, driven by microcontrollers. It is a short music performance rather than an explanation.

Why Hacker News points people here: HN uses it as the go-to example of music played on obsolete computer hardware, linked whenever floppy drives, odd sounds or machine music come up.

“Animusic: CG animations of fantastic machines playing music. The animation is parameterized to the MIDI input.”HN comment, 2019

What Hacker News said 4

Cites itbitwizeApr 2019

“The Floppotron: Music played on old floppy drives, hard drives, and scanners.”

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See also: The Floppotron: Music played on old floppy drives, hard drives, and scanners. this video Animusic: CG animations of fantastic machines playing music. The animation is parameterized to the MIDI input. Attempts to build real-world working models of these machines or machines like them have been made, with varying levels of success: link Compressorhead: An all-robot heavy metal band. Famous for Stickboy, the band's four-armed, headbanging drummer, or at least Stickboy is what I remember most about the band. link

in “Moritz Simon Geist’s robots make technical techno” · view on HN
Cites itbitwizeNov 2023

“See also the Floppotron”

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> Super cool that the motors can be used for things other than moving the vehicle. It reminds me of how ESCs for RC vehicles use the motors to generate audible chirp tones to indicate status. > Motors are multi-purpose devices! In WALL-E , one of the robots following the title character, lacking any audio output, spins its motors at different rates to play the tune from Hello, Dolly! that it had learned from WALL-E. See also the Floppotron: this video

in “Tesla Normal Operating Sounds” · view on HN
Cites ittwicFeb 2025

“Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) is also a good fit”

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Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) is also a good fit: this video There's a good version on Tesla coils too: link Interestingly, there's no Floppotron version of Bad Apple! - i think that tradition comes from a later era of internet stunt music.

JoketehbeardDec 2021

“I can't help but imagine it as working similiar to the Floppotron...”

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> some weird SCSI card (soundblaster with SCSI, I think) I can't help but imagine it as working similiar to the Floppotron... this video

in “Why I stopped releasing EasyOS as an ISO file” · view on HN