Seeing the recently released HDD Clicker, I realized I wasn't crazy for missing the sound of the old devices inside my vintage PCs. With renewed inspiration I decided to dig up an old project of mine, this one was actually meant to become a better drive sound module for one of my Gotek Floppy Emulators. My original problem had mostly been not understanding a lot about the old floppy drive signals and trying to tackle that as well as the audio parts at the same time, was ambitious for my level of skill. Seeing that IDE could be implemented using a simple pin I integrated that as an intermediary step until the audio was working, which it now is.

So what is the module then? Depending on whether you're building it up for use with the IDE-bus (40-pin connector) or for use with a floppy drive (34-pin connector), it'll attempt to create noise based on what their original mechanical devices would have been making. The difference with this and the HDD Clicker, is that this device will be playing back recordings of these devices actually sounded like. There are some limitations, mostly because there is only so much an Arduino can do and reliably be expected to keep up with.

The following videos go through the process for assembling one of the devices for IDE, in this case intended for slotting onto a common Compact Flash-adapter though this is only one option. The second video is process of compiling and uploading the Arduino-sketch to the device.

More information about this project, source code, schematic as well as the BOM is available from this projects github-page.