Something a little different here — for those who grew up in the early days of PCs and remember with some affection the mechanical noises associated with them, even if they were rather temperamental at the time — the HDD Synth prototype.
In particular, the HDD Synth recreates the sound of mechanical hard drives spinning up, accessing data, and spinning down at the end of a session. It stores real samples of a number of classic mechanical drives and other sounds on a compact flash card which is then read at the appropriate times by the controller, which can be fitted into a PC.
Designed by Peter Bridger using a Raspberry Pi Pico 2, it’s great for both modern devices and vintage PCs which may have had their hard drives replaced by flash storage.
The HDD Synth is designed to be plug and play, responding to the system and playing the appropriate files. The unit comes with three sound packs already, and the user can choose which one is loaded directly onto the Pico at any time. The sounds need to be on the Pico for speed of access.
Two models are planned.
The HDD Synth 1000 features the SD card with multiple sample packs, spin down playback when PC is turned off, and true plug and play.
The cost-reduced HDD Synth 500 will have a single sample pack on board (no SD card reader), no spin down sounds, and no ISA-based HDD detection.
Check out this video from The Retro Collective which demonstrates the HDD Synth.
Features
- Sample based recreation of mechanical hard disk drives operating sounds
- Spin up when PC is turned on
- Idle hum whilst standing by
- Access clicks and crackcles
- Spin down when PC is turned off
- SD card to hold multiple HDD sample packs, to recreate the sound of different mechanical hard disk drives
- Volume control to make it very loud or silent
- HDD detection via HDD LED or ISA bus for true plug and play
Specifications
The specifications of the prototype (which are of course subject to change) are:
Pi Pico 2
- Processor: Dual-core 32-bit ARM Cortex-M33 or Dual-core 32-bit Hazard3 RISC-V
- RAM: 520K on-chip SRAM
- Flash Memory: 4MB on board QSPI flash
- GPIO: 26 multi-purpose GPIO pins (with 4x ADC channels)
Adafruit I2S 3W Class D Amplifier
- Output power: 3.2W at 4?
- PSRR: 77dB @ 1KHz
- I2S sample rates from 8kHz to 96kHz
Adafruit Micro SD SPI Card Reader
- Supports microSD up to 2GB formatted as FAT16
- Supports microSDHC 4GB to 32GB formatted as FAT32
HDD LED detection
- PC817 optocoupler phototransistor
- Decouples PCs HDD LED power from HDD Synth
Spin down power reserve
- 1.5F 5.5V 0.18? super capacitor
- Allows HDD to play spin down sample whilst power is turned off.
Volume Control
- 10k? potentiometer
More information and progress can be found at the official site: https://www.strifestreams.com/hddsynth
