8 ms·

I miss the sound of popping a floppy disk in the drive.

by prokopton 3y ago

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
I miss all the old PC sounds except the fans.
- hypercube33 3y ago
  This has me thinking but I don't like to assume. I recall most of my first computers really not having any dedicated fans until around 1999 - they mostly used the power supply to pull an airflow through cases. I do miss some of the sounds that let you know machines were doing something - but we also had indication lights, too - mostly gone now, for disk drives. Heck my first laptop had a second LCD to show battery level without the machine even being on.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    >Heck my first laptop had a second LCD to show battery level without the machine even being on Many modern laptops still do this though. Dell XPS had some LEDs on the side and a button on the case that when pressed would light up the LEDs as a percentage indicator of battery charge, and my 2 year old Lenovo has this feature built into the motherboard EC controller and Bios that when I press any key on the keyboard when the laptop is OFF, it wakes the laptop's own display to show battery percentage. Modern laptops have many neat features.
  - lpfnrobin 3y ago
    Although not all floppies there's something nice about the sound of them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMe2vza46cQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMe2vza46cQ
  - bombcar 3y ago
    I think 95-96 was the first machines I had that had a processor fan (at the high end). Otherwise they just had a power supply fan, but it was more “massive” in a way. You’d click that switch and you could hear the fan spool up.
  - spiritplumber 3y ago
    For a few years cpu fans were something overclockers did.
  - jonhohle 3y ago
    There are others, but if you’re a Mac user, I wrote DriveLight[0] to have a disk activity light. 0 - https://ttkb.co/soft/drivelight/ https://ttkb.co/soft/drivelight/
  - ido 3y ago
    I'm pretty sure the original Pentium ('93) was when CPU fans became mandatory.
    - hakfoo 3y ago
      It's a pretty nuanced thing. Some large OEMs with the resources to do the design effort could use a large passive heatsink on even surprisingly late processor (i. e. Pentium 4) because they could make a holistic design with shrouds and baffles and know you were getting just enough airflow from a case fan elsewhere to keep the CPU within spec. Early ATX designs, in fact, were often based on "the PSU has its fan placed so that it will draw air over the CPU heatsink and out the back" Enthusiasts, obviously, went for brute force designs.
- silvestrov 3y ago
  I do not miss the high pitched whine of 90's harddrives.
  - jonhohle 3y ago
    Not just the whine, but the deep crunch synced with the drive activity light. It provided some hope that an unresponsive computer was in the middle of a monumental task. Any flicker of light or change on cadence was reassurance that progress was being made and would complete should you wait just a little bit longer.
- Dalewyn 3y ago
  You know, now that you've mentioned it I pity the kids today and tomorrow who won't experience a computer that makes sounds. For kid me, the sound of floppy drives, hard drives, and optical drives were simply mesmerizing to witness. Those were the sounds of the computer performing magic before my eyes and ears.
- sillywalk 3y ago
  The Windows 3.1 "tada.wav" sound
- distract8901 3y ago
  There was something visceral about the sound of an old PC laboriously whirring to life.
voytec 3y ago
I have a thing for dialup modem handshake sounds.
- jonhohle 3y ago
  I use a modem sound for text message notification. It occasionally starts some fun, nostalgic conversations. When I was on call, however, pager storms resulted in the phone being muted quickly. Nothing helps the stress of triaging production issues like the high pitched scream of suppressors and cancellers being disabled.
ido 3y ago
It's kinda weird but if I don't think too long about it I still sorta associate 3.5" as "modern", where as the classic floppies are the 5.25". It's silly at this point in time but windows 3.11 (the first version of windows I used) also feel decidedly "modern" where as DOS is "old" (even though less than 10 years separated my first experiences with them, and both were way longer than 10 years ago).

I miss the sound of popping a floppy disk in the drive.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago

I miss all the old PC sounds except the fans.

hypercube33 3y ago
This has me thinking but I don't like to assume. I recall most of my first computers really not having any dedicated fans until around 1999 - they mostly used the power supply to pull an airflow through cases. I do miss some of the sounds that let you know machines were doing something - but we also had indication lights, too - mostly gone now, for disk drives. Heck my first laptop had a second LCD to show battery level without the machine even being on.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  >Heck my first laptop had a second LCD to show battery level without the machine even being on Many modern laptops still do this though. Dell XPS had some LEDs on the side and a button on the case that when pressed would light up the LEDs as a percentage indicator of battery charge, and my 2 year old Lenovo has this feature built into the motherboard EC controller and Bios that when I press any key on the keyboard when the laptop is OFF, it wakes the laptop's own display to show battery percentage. Modern laptops have many neat features.
- lpfnrobin 3y ago
  Although not all floppies there's something nice about the sound of them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMe2vza46cQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMe2vza46cQ
- bombcar 3y ago
  I think 95-96 was the first machines I had that had a processor fan (at the high end). Otherwise they just had a power supply fan, but it was more “massive” in a way. You’d click that switch and you could hear the fan spool up.
- spiritplumber 3y ago
  For a few years cpu fans were something overclockers did.
- jonhohle 3y ago
  There are others, but if you’re a Mac user, I wrote DriveLight[0] to have a disk activity light. 0 - https://ttkb.co/soft/drivelight/ https://ttkb.co/soft/drivelight/
- ido 3y ago
  I'm pretty sure the original Pentium ('93) was when CPU fans became mandatory.
  - hakfoo 3y ago
    It's a pretty nuanced thing. Some large OEMs with the resources to do the design effort could use a large passive heatsink on even surprisingly late processor (i. e. Pentium 4) because they could make a holistic design with shrouds and baffles and know you were getting just enough airflow from a case fan elsewhere to keep the CPU within spec. Early ATX designs, in fact, were often based on "the PSU has its fan placed so that it will draw air over the CPU heatsink and out the back" Enthusiasts, obviously, went for brute force designs.
silvestrov 3y ago
I do not miss the high pitched whine of 90's harddrives.
- jonhohle 3y ago
  Not just the whine, but the deep crunch synced with the drive activity light. It provided some hope that an unresponsive computer was in the middle of a monumental task. Any flicker of light or change on cadence was reassurance that progress was being made and would complete should you wait just a little bit longer.
Dalewyn 3y ago
You know, now that you've mentioned it I pity the kids today and tomorrow who won't experience a computer that makes sounds. For kid me, the sound of floppy drives, hard drives, and optical drives were simply mesmerizing to witness. Those were the sounds of the computer performing magic before my eyes and ears.
sillywalk 3y ago
The Windows 3.1 "tada.wav" sound
distract8901 3y ago
There was something visceral about the sound of an old PC laboriously whirring to life.

voytec 3y ago

I have a thing for dialup modem handshake sounds.

jonhohle 3y ago
I use a modem sound for text message notification. It occasionally starts some fun, nostalgic conversations. When I was on call, however, pager storms resulted in the phone being muted quickly. Nothing helps the stress of triaging production issues like the high pitched scream of suppressors and cancellers being disabled.

ido 3y ago

It's kinda weird but if I don't think too long about it I still sorta associate 3.5" as "modern", where as the classic floppies are the 5.25". It's silly at this point in time but windows 3.11 (the first version of windows I used) also feel decidedly "modern" where as DOS is "old" (even though less than 10 years separated my first experiences with them, and both were way longer than 10 years ago).