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Freespin

Matthias Kramm · 148.1K views · 2021-07-03 · 4:52

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Overview

Freespin is a demo that runs on a Commodore 1541 floppy drive. It makes sound by vibrating the drive head and video by toggling the serial bus lines, and it keeps running after the C64 that booted it is disconnected.

On Hacker News

Shared as a favorite example of retrocomputing hackery, a demo that runs entirely on a disk drive.

Recommended by 1 HN people across 1 months · HN mentions 2021–2026

Topics

Demoscene & retrocomputing
Search by tags
commodore 641541demosceneretrocomputingfloppy drive

What people said

ObiKenobi · 2026-05 · Strong recommendation

My most favourite demo is "Freespin" which runs entirely on a floppy drive without a computer. Crazy stuff. [VIDEO]

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rzzzt · 2023-12 · Reference

There's a demo that plays entirely out of the 1541, you can disconnect the rest of the computer: [VIDEO]

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thristian · 2023-07 · Reference

The "C64" demo "Freespin" wires the drive's data cable directly into the monitor's data cable to play a demo (including audio!) without an actual C64 involved at all: [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by Matthias Kramm, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

HN summaries and labels may contain AI errors. HN dates refer to discussions, not video publication.

HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

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