Bringing Floppy Back
The retro-inspired MIDI Blaster rocks floppy disks, big buttons, and boombox vibes, proving that old-school cool never goes out of style.
It seems like everything can play music these days. Phones, computers, TVs, smart speakers, cars, smartwatches — you name it, it plays music. But none of these gadgets have got any style. Whatever happened to the boomboxes that graced our tables and entertainment centers a few decades back? Now that is how you rock out in style! And with a mere few pounds of size D batteries, these rectangular wonders could even adorn the shoulders of their owners while they were on the move.
YouTuber Luke The Maker was recently inspired by an oddball music player from yesteryear — the Roland MT-90S. This tower of retro power played MIDI files from floppy disks, and had plenty of buttons and knobs to endlessly tweak music playback. Most importantly, it had some serious style. Unfortunately, the floppy drive was on its last leg. With no replacements available, Luke decided to build a new music player, called the MIDI Blaster, that is roughly based on its design and capabilities.
The MIDI Blaster has a boombox-esque appearance, with a large 3D-printed case and oversized speakers on each end. Large, colorful buttons control the device, and a backlit character LCD serves as the display to give it a good retro feel. In the middle is a 3.5-inch floppy drive, which awkwardly protrudes well beyond the rest of the back of the case. A Raspberry Pi 4 Model B is hidden inside the case, and serves to power the device.
As the name implies, the MIDI Blaster plays MIDI file albums from floppy disks. About 100 SoundFonts come preloaded on the device and they can be changed on the fly. For those unfamiliar with SoundFonts, they contain recordings of instruments and other sounds that are played as instructed by a MIDI file. So by changing the SoundFont, the entire feel of a song can be altered.
It could be seen as either an annoyance or part of the retro charm that the MIDI Blaster takes around three minutes to boot up. There is some work that has yet to be completed as well. For example, continuous play is not supported — you have to pick each song manually to get it to play. Also, the “pause” button is actually a “stop” button in disguise. Luke is hoping to make some updates in the future, however, to address these issues.
If you don’t mind spending a few weekends working on it, all of the files needed to make your own MIDI Blaster are freely available for download. But if you would rather take a shortcut, you can buy a pre-assembled unit for $270. Assembled units also come with a MIDI floppy album thrown in. You could certainly buy a higher-quality music player for that price, but it wouldn’t have a floppy drive, now would it?