Driving 20 Floppy Drives works, 40 does not.

Other Hardware General Electronics
1

Hello,

I'm doing floppy drive music with the Arduino Mega 2560. My project published so far is this: Floppy Nyan Cat - YouTube

I'm driving the floppy drives using a computer PSU and I'm connecting 3 pins on the drives. This means, that the Arduino doesn't have to power the motors itself because each floppy drive has its own driver in it (of course).
This works with up to 20 floppy drives. That's where the blue light on the Arduino starts flashing as the music plays. I think the arduino doesn't have enough current to supply all IO pins of the 40 floppy drives, because 40 just doesn't work.

I could put a driver IC on the breadboard to supply all the IO pins of all floppy drives but then again I'm afraid to break the floppy drives because of the high current.

What sould I do?

2

I could put a driver IC on the breadboard to supply all the IO pins of all floppy drives

Yes

I'm afraid to break the floppy drives because of the high current.

You only get high current if the voltage is too high. You don't understand ohms law, look at this for the diffrence between actual current and current capacity.
http://www.thebox.myzen.co.uk/Tutorial/Power_Supplies.html

3

Wow thanks! You really took my fear. I'm a good programmer but bad ad science :smiley:

Bye!

4

I need to look at a calendar, I could have sworn it was June 12 and not April the First, Won't drive 40 and What blue light?
20 floppies @ an average +5 +12 of 1A/step is a lot...

Doc