Big Ideas: Don't get any -- by James Houston
Why Hacker News recommends it
It is the canonical example HN brings up in threads about music hacks on floppy drives, printers and other junk hardware.
What it is
James Houston's entry to Radiohead's Nude remix contest, performing the 6/8, 63bpm song on obsolete hardware such as hard drives, a dot matrix printer, a scanner and a ZX Spectrum.
Recommended by 1 HN commenters across 1 different months, 2011 to 2022.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec torme · 2011-02 · on “Star wars theme played by a floppy disk hack.”
If you haven't seen this yet, this is probably the best example of a hack like this that I've seen. It was submitted for a contest that radiohead held, and I believe was the winner (it takes about a minute to get rolling): [this video] The sound of the scanner is pretty awesome. And the original by radiohead in case you need some context. [LINK]
Cites sspiff · 2015-03 · on “Dot matrix printer playing “Eye of the Tiger” [video]”
This is brilliant. It reminds me of the old HP ScanJets, which came with SCSI commands to play musical notes[0] (someone at HP must have had too much free time on his hands ;)). Some videos of the scanners are at [1] and [2]. Another interesting hardware hack to produce music is the "hard drive speaker". You can see some of them in action in a rendition of Radiohead's "Big Ideas: don't get any" [3], as well as various printers and other devices used for their auditive side effects. [0]: [LINK] [1]: [LINK] [2]: [LINK] [3]: [this video]
Cites esaym · 2016-02 · on “Hacked Together 118 GB Floppy Disk”
Ah, disappointing. I was expecting some giant array of them all running in unison and making beautiful "music". Sorta like the radiohead hardware hobbyist video [this video]
Cites ciabattabread · 2020-04 · on “Academics steal data from air-gapped systems using PC fan vibrations”
For a brief second I thought your link was the Radiohead cover that used old computer equipment, including hard drives as speakers. Here’s that link: [this video]
Cites LegitShady · 2022-06 · on “The Floppotron 3.0”
Not exactly the same thing but it reminds me of James Houston's cover of Radiohead's Nude on hard drives, a dot matrix printer, a scanner, and a sinclair ZX Spectrum. [this video] This says 14 years ago.