Introducing Noisy Disk
Do you miss the iconic sounds of mechanical click-clacking from original Apple II floppy drives? Does the familiar rattling of a boot floppy bring a smile to your face? Today I’m introducing a new product called Noisy Disk. This board uses a mechanical relay to create authentic-sounding disk head movements for the BMOW Floppy Emu disk emulator. Sure it’s useless, but it’s useless fun.
The Noisy Disk board attaches inline with your existing Floppy Emu cable, using the provided 6-inch extension cable. When Floppy Emu is configured to emulate a 5.25 inch Apple II floppy drive, the Noisy Disk onboard relay snaps open and shut whenever the emulated disk steps from one track to the next. It creates a symphony of disk noise that will bring back memories of 1979.
Noisy Disk is compatible with Apple II family computers while using Floppy Emu in 5.25 inch emulation mode. Nothing will be harmed if Noisy Disk is used with other computers or emulation modes, but you’ll hear strange clacking noises that don’t match the disk activity. It’s recommended to use Noisy Disk in 5.25 inch emulation mode only.
The product includes the Noisy Disk board with 2 x 10 pin rectangular input and output connectors, and a 6-inch extension cable for connecting to your Floppy Emu board.
Noisy Disk is available now at the BMOW Store.
8 Comments so far
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Wonderful. Just wonderful. Kudos!
This deserves some kind of award
Ooh, very nice; perhaps I’ll be able to reclaim the breadboard with a relay that I currently have performing this function
Brilliant. Love that sound.
Amazing – I’ll pay handsomely for a Mac version.
Just got mine today. Simply awesome!!!
Curious if you’ve given any thought to producing an enhanced version that uses audio samples from a real drive. While I’d love to have audio feedback when a drive is active, I’d *much* rather it sound like a real drive than a bunch of clicking sounds. I’d pay more for an enhanced version. Being able to replace the audio samples would be a bonus so that the community could come up with sounds of the highest quality and accuracy. I’m guessing that different drive models also have somewhat different sounds so people would be able to choose the sounds that most closely match the drives they’re used to.
This sounds great! When will stock return again?