5 ms·

I miss the sound of the hard drive as an indicator of I/O activity.

by sildur 6y ago

enriquto 6y ago
Sometimes the motherboard makes a similar, but much softer, hum.
Scoundreller 6y ago
I’m surprised someone hasn’t made a SATA MITM that does this. I once put an LED in series on a long rs232 link so I could see them flash when I/O was happening. But they have the spare voltage to work with.
alistairSH 6y ago
Or the sound of a modem to let you know the internet is working? Nothing sounds better than two pulsing, clicking sine waves finding each other after long last, making love, and giving birth to white noise. No thanks, I'll take all my computers and electronics as quiet as possible.
lolc 6y ago
My little desk-computer has a pretty dirty audio path. I can turn up the audio to hear the chirps of the power regulators over the speakers; when the CPU is leaning on the PSU. Even just keystrokes in my editor cause a flurry of chirps as the clock-rate is increased and the systems races to idle within a few milliseconds. When a process stalls I would already know whether it's IO or computation. Depending on the chirping I may reach for either ping or top to investigate further. Sometimes I leave these chirps on for hours. It's nonintrusive feedback to me about background tasks and when they clear. I actually worry that my next machine will not have this flaw. And now I'm thinking of a syscall-chirp generator to get an even better feel for the pulse of the machine :-)
- swirepe 6y ago
  >And now I'm thinking of a syscall-chirp generator to get an even better feel for the pulse of the machine :-) Nullsoft (the winamp people) made something like this back in the day. I encourage you you to write your own :)
- HeadsUpHigh 6y ago
  Reminds me of the overheating cpu xkcd and the emacs programmer.
wpm 6y ago
Oh it’s still around. I just bought a 14TB external for my desk and god it’s loud. It’s a bad loud too. Old 160MB Quantum SCSI drives have that satisfying crispy whine and that sound like some tiny hamster is changing gears around inside of it when it does a seek.
asdff 6y ago
Yup, I could tell by ear if my computer had crashed and I should hard restart or if there was still hope for the program if I waited it out.
skc 6y ago
Heh, I really, really liked that sound as well. But I can't explain why really. Could be the sci-fi nerd in me similar to the way we tend to like the feel of mechanical toggle switches.
- nannal 6y ago
  I've two machines tucked away near my desk & a sudden rise in the ambient hard drive rumbling has occasionally been an indicator that I should look into what's happening, usually it's just one of the larger torrents but it has also drawn my attention to a few bots going over my git server. It draws attention to an alternate sense (hearing) when it comes to systems monitoring & information delivery, Phones are the common culprit of obnoxious beeping, whistles and tones but this sound isn't an intentional interpreted interrupting noise, it's a direct line from the machine.

I miss the sound of the hard drive as an indicator of I/O activity.

by sildur 6y ago

I miss the sound of the hard drive as an indicator of I/O activity.

enriquto 6y ago

Sometimes the motherboard makes a similar, but much softer, hum.

Scoundreller 6y ago

I’m surprised someone hasn’t made a SATA MITM that does this. I once put an LED in series on a long rs232 link so I could see them flash when I/O was happening. But they have the spare voltage to work with.

alistairSH 6y ago

Or the sound of a modem to let you know the internet is working? Nothing sounds better than two pulsing, clicking sine waves finding each other after long last, making love, and giving birth to white noise. No thanks, I'll take all my computers and electronics as quiet as possible.

lolc 6y ago

My little desk-computer has a pretty dirty audio path. I can turn up the audio to hear the chirps of the power regulators over the speakers; when the CPU is leaning on the PSU. Even just keystrokes in my editor cause a flurry of chirps as the clock-rate is increased and the systems races to idle within a few milliseconds. When a process stalls I would already know whether it's IO or computation. Depending on the chirping I may reach for either ping or top to investigate further. Sometimes I leave these chirps on for hours. It's nonintrusive feedback to me about background tasks and when they clear. I actually worry that my next machine will not have this flaw. And now I'm thinking of a syscall-chirp generator to get an even better feel for the pulse of the machine :-)

swirepe 6y ago
>And now I'm thinking of a syscall-chirp generator to get an even better feel for the pulse of the machine :-) Nullsoft (the winamp people) made something like this back in the day. I encourage you you to write your own :)
HeadsUpHigh 6y ago
Reminds me of the overheating cpu xkcd and the emacs programmer.

wpm 6y ago

Oh it’s still around. I just bought a 14TB external for my desk and god it’s loud. It’s a bad loud too. Old 160MB Quantum SCSI drives have that satisfying crispy whine and that sound like some tiny hamster is changing gears around inside of it when it does a seek.

asdff 6y ago

Yup, I could tell by ear if my computer had crashed and I should hard restart or if there was still hope for the program if I waited it out.

skc 6y ago

Heh, I really, really liked that sound as well. But I can't explain why really. Could be the sci-fi nerd in me similar to the way we tend to like the feel of mechanical toggle switches.

nannal 6y ago
I've two machines tucked away near my desk & a sudden rise in the ambient hard drive rumbling has occasionally been an indicator that I should look into what's happening, usually it's just one of the larger torrents but it has also drawn my attention to a few bots going over my git server. It draws attention to an alternate sense (hearing) when it comes to systems monitoring & information delivery, Phones are the common culprit of obnoxious beeping, whistles and tones but this sound isn't an intentional interpreted interrupting noise, it's a direct line from the machine.