Is it perfect? No. But I have one of them in a Pentium 200 MHz system that I use a front-facing CF card slot as the primary means of storage, and I very much appreciate the audible feedback for disk activity. I just wish there was some mechanism to simulate more accurate sounds, but I digress.
P.S., Depending on the CF card, this machine runs Windows 9.x, Red Hat 6.2, OPENSTEP 4.0, or Apple Rhapsody DR2 hehe
The sound is not right. This clicker sounds like a Geiger counter ticking out of control. The HDD sound is much deeper. It should sound as if the minute hand on a clock decided to tick out of control.
It's not really possible to replicate the HDD sound with anything so simple.
Because what you hear on a real HDD is the seeks, and the seek time of any SSD is close enough to zero that it probably won't even show up on the HDD LED. All that's left is the data transfer, which are more or less silent on real mechanical HDDs.
That's part of the reason why it was useful to have the HDD LED despite fact you already had the loud HDD. The LED showed data transfer, while the sound indicated seeks.
Not necessarily. You could do it in a similar form factor, you'd just probably need a bigger speaker and more complicated acoustic model.
Though maybe instead of keying of an HDD LED, it should sit on the IDE/SCSI bus and generate sounds based on the actual access commands. That shouldn't be impossible, since the main market would be in retro-computing, and there are already devices that emulate those disks. Instead of figuring out what block to return, it would instead figure out of how long of a seek would have been needed and play the right sound.
If someone produces something that can simulate the sound of a 20MB Miniscribe drive, I'd buy it in a heartbeat:
I have a watercooled workstation (don't ask), and one day I made it spin up the pump when the chips heat up. I believe it goes from 17% pwm to 18% whenever any chip is more than 15°C warmer than the water. Changes nothing, and you wouldn't set it up like that.
But the immediate frequency change is enough for me to anticipate a delayed reaction. "Oh, computer is computing. Reach for coffee."
I didn't realize you could get Taptic Engines. I had wanted some about 10 years ago while I was working on a haptic data glove project, but Apple kept them under tight wraps because they own the patent and wanted them exclusive to their devices. I ended up using small pager motors, but I really think Taptic Engines would have made for a much better experience, both because they are smaller and because they are 3 axis linear vibrators, instead of a single axis rotary vibe.
I wanted to do something similar 3-5 years ago, and while I found that you could order the Taptic Engine, I couldn't find any good info for driving them last time I checked.
Im all for this. I miss the tactile feedback of older hard drives, you knew the computer was actually doing something. New computers are too quiet, like electric cars.
Is it perfect? No. But I have one of them in a Pentium 200 MHz system that I use a front-facing CF card slot as the primary means of storage, and I very much appreciate the audible feedback for disk activity. I just wish there was some mechanism to simulate more accurate sounds, but I digress.
P.S., Depending on the CF card, this machine runs Windows 9.x, Red Hat 6.2, OPENSTEP 4.0, or Apple Rhapsody DR2 hehe
The sound is not right. This clicker sounds like a Geiger counter ticking out of control. The HDD sound is much deeper. It should sound as if the minute hand on a clock decided to tick out of control.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUvlWt9WTKA
It's not really possible to replicate the HDD sound with anything so simple.
Because what you hear on a real HDD is the seeks, and the seek time of any SSD is close enough to zero that it probably won't even show up on the HDD LED. All that's left is the data transfer, which are more or less silent on real mechanical HDDs.
That's part of the reason why it was useful to have the HDD LED despite fact you already had the loud HDD. The LED showed data transfer, while the sound indicated seeks.
There's probably a way to do this in software? Like some cars simulating engine noises through the speakers...
But then you need to install something. Probably give it some perm.
Not necessarily. You could do it in a similar form factor, you'd just probably need a bigger speaker and more complicated acoustic model.
Though maybe instead of keying of an HDD LED, it should sit on the IDE/SCSI bus and generate sounds based on the actual access commands. That shouldn't be impossible, since the main market would be in retro-computing, and there are already devices that emulate those disks. Instead of figuring out what block to return, it would instead figure out of how long of a seek would have been needed and play the right sound.
If someone produces something that can simulate the sound of a 20MB Miniscribe drive, I'd buy it in a heartbeat:
https://youtu.be/9gTiBYEY02E?si=arGdgyI7hCnmJgN4&t=1866
I have a watercooled workstation (don't ask), and one day I made it spin up the pump when the chips heat up. I believe it goes from 17% pwm to 18% whenever any chip is more than 15°C warmer than the water. Changes nothing, and you wouldn't set it up like that.
But the immediate frequency change is enough for me to anticipate a delayed reaction. "Oh, computer is computing. Reach for coffee."
Don’t forget to PARK YOUR HEADS before shutting down!!
Reminds me of adding a Taptic Engine™ to a flash-upgraded iPod classic.
https://eoe.works/collections/shop-all-ipod-video-ipod-class...
I didn't realize you could get Taptic Engines. I had wanted some about 10 years ago while I was working on a haptic data glove project, but Apple kept them under tight wraps because they own the patent and wanted them exclusive to their devices. I ended up using small pager motors, but I really think Taptic Engines would have made for a much better experience, both because they are smaller and because they are 3 axis linear vibrators, instead of a single axis rotary vibe.
I wanted to do something similar 3-5 years ago, and while I found that you could order the Taptic Engine, I couldn't find any good info for driving them last time I checked.
Im all for this. I miss the tactile feedback of older hard drives, you knew the computer was actually doing something. New computers are too quiet, like electric cars.
I just realized today after 20 years that my computer stopped making noises.
It's progress but I miss those clicking sounds.
If it hooked into the OS, it could generate even more appropriate sounds:
* past SMART errors => knock of death sound
* unrecovered errors => head crash sound
Old news.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cM_sAxrAu7Q
What absolute nonsense. I love it!
[dead]