FloppyMIDI driver for BeOS
(c) 2007 Cyan Helkaraxe
Version 1.0

PURPOSE
This driver turns your floppy drive into a powerful MIDI instrument. Music will be reproduced using the head stepper-motor with superb precision.
It is suitable for both casual listening, and also extreme live performance.


DISCLAIMER
This is very important to understand: THIS DRIVER WILL ALMOST CERTAINLY DESTROY YOUR FLOPPY DRIVE.
IT WILL ALSO DESTROY ANY FLOPPY DISKS INSERTED INTO THE DRIVE, EVEN WHEN NO MUSIC IS BEING PLAYED.
IF YOUR HARD DRIVE IS MOUNTED CLOSE TO THE FLOPPY DRIVE, IT IS ALSO IN DANGER OF CORRUPTION AND CRASHING FROM EXTREME VIBRATION.
This driver is therefore capable of causing both DATA LOSS and HARDWARE DAMAGE.
By proceeding with the installation, you agree not to hold the author responsible for anything that may happen, and you agree not to pursue legal action to recover damages or otherwise. You install this software ENTIRELY AT YOUR OWN RISK!
In some cases, the damage may spread further, causing hard disk damage (with the associated data loss), chipset or power supply damage, or starting a fire (with the associated data loss, property loss, and life loss). As mentioned above, this is entirely your own fault if you proceed with installation.
Also, as with any other software, especially drivers, there is always a certain risk of data corruption, system crashes, or other undesirable misbehaviour. The author accepts no responsibility for these effects either. Always make a backup of important data before installing new drivers.


HOW DOES THE DAMAGE OCCUR?
Primarily through mechanical abuse, but through many other ways as well.
The entire head mechanism is not designed to withstand the level of continuous vibration it will experience when reproducing music, and it will misalign, and eventually get shaken to pieces. Metal fragments from the head mechanism can sometimes fall into the circuitry, causing a short circuit and starting a fire.
Because the motor is being forced to step faster than intended, it will miss steps, and eventually the head mechanism will walk towards one end of the drive. When this happens, the head mechanism will eventually exceed its maximum travel, possibly stripping gears or worse.
The constant high power demand can also damage the motor controller chip on the floppy drive in some situations.
The high vibration can put hard disks mounted near to the floppy drive in danger of crashing or suffering corruption.


WHY DOES DISK DAMAGE OCCUR?
1) Mechanical abuse of the floppy drive can badly misalign / detach the heads, causing any disks to be "chewed up" and scratched the moment they're inserted.
2) If a disk is in the drive while music is being played, it will be physically chewed up by the rapid movement of the heads. This will ruin the heads even quicker. There is also the possibility of a friction fire which cannot be discounted.
3) The driver takes over the floppy controller chip, and puts it in an unusual state. When BeOS tries to read any floppy disk inserted into the drive, the unusual state of the floppy controller will almost certainly cause the disk to become corrupted. The only fix is to uninstall the driver and reboot the system. However, issue #1 remains unfixed until the drive is replaced.
4) Probably other mechanisms as well.


INSTALLATION
If you are willing to accept the damage that this driver will cause, then run the 'Installer' program -- you may have already done this. The installer program will prompt you with several warnings before it will allow you to install the driver. This helps weed-out inferior users who aren't ready to sacrifice their hardware in the name of art.
To uninstall, simply run the installer again.
After installing, you may find your system no longer boots. If this happens, try pressing space while booting (as the BeOS logo is fading in), and select 'Safe mode' or 'Disable user add-ons'. If this fixes it, run the installer again to uninstall the driver.
When that doesn't fix it, you have an interesting problem. Try replacing the floppy drive first, followed by the motherboard and power supply.


USAGE
The driver shows up as a standard MIDI device to the system. If you are not already familiar with how to use MIDI devices in BeOS, then you've got some reading-up to do elsewhere.
By downloading a fully-featured MIDI player from BeBits (I suggest 'KMidiPlay' or 'LightMIDI'), you can select the 'floppymidi' device as an output and hear the MIDI file on your floppy drive. The MIDI player that comes with BeOS R5 is not flexible enough to do this. You can also use a sequencer such as Sequitur to play the MIDI file.
To perform live with FloppyMIDI, you will need the 'Patchbay' application (search BeBits), and a soundcard with a MIDI input port. Plug a MIDI keyboard into your soundcard's MIDI port, and route the MIDI input into 'floppymidi' using the patchbay.
As mentioned previously, it is advisable to ensure no disk is present in the drive when it is playing music. However, occasionally you may come across a drive that requires a disk to produce any sound. In this case, remember that any disk you insert will be ruined, and it will accelerate the demise of the drive.


CHIPSET SUPPORT
This driver deliberately violates the specifications of the floppy controller to extract beautiful tones from its motor.
As a result, it may not work on all chipsets. In particular, you may experience tuning problems, or trouble reaching the highest notes. In some cases, the driver may appear to lock up completely, and may even freeze the entire system.
The driver has been verified to sound good on the following chipsets:
Intel 440GX (Winbond SuperI/O)
Intel P965 (ITE SuperI/O)
Via KT133A
If you have any other chipset, you're on your own.
If your CPU(s) are clocked higher than 2GHz, you MUST install cpu_fix from BeBits, otherwise you will experience major tuning problems, and other timing problems with your system.


FLOPPY DRIVE SUPPORT
Performance of the driver will vary widely between floppy drive manufacturers and models, especially with the higher notes. The design of the floppy drive's case, and your computer case also make a considerable difference to the tone.
There is only one constant -- the more you use the driver, the further the performance will degrade (as the drive begins to fall apart).
This driver is intended only for use with 3.5" 1.44MB floppy drives. Using it on any other type of floppy drive is almost guaranteed to have extremely catastrophic results (though the outlook was bad enough to start with).


BeOS SUPPORT
This driver has been tested ONLY with BeOS R5 (net_server) and BeOS R5 (BONE). If you have any other version of BeOS or Haiku, you're in even more trouble.