strong believer that at some point we gotta invent a little doodad that goes in a computer and makes some unnecessary machine noises so it sounds like it's doing something
the "little buzzer that pretends to make floppy drive head seek noise" functionality I paid $5 to have added to my amiga's floppy drive emulator was worth twice the price
This is why every computer should still have an in-built speaker that programs can use as a standard sound device.
every couple years i realize that for whatever reason all the sound effects in windows just stopped working. then i reenable them and they break after another week. i just wanna hear that brian eno when i turn my computer on, man.
I simply have a ground loop between my GPU and my studio monitors 😎
Spent decades complaining about the computer being too loud, now want it back.
it should produce a terrifying screech randomly just to keep everyone on their toes
i know how to hook a solenoid up to my keyboard! i turn it on for ten seconds every 6 months or so, and realize that there's a limit to nostalgia
machines should be loud. the louder they are, the more they are doing
Heh. Right now, my best indicator is that the AIO pump and fans spin up or the video card's fans spin up when it's under load. But motherboards still ship with a HDD LED activity header. Should be able connect something to that to make an artificial rapid clicking sound like an old-school mechanical arm HDD.
i built my first PC a couple years ago and decided i needed disc drive just in case. i've used it once or twice, but it makes a fantastic brief searching noise every time i wake the machine up. i love it!
someone did this for hard drives! https://www.retrokits.de/index.php/hdd-clicker-v0-2/ I think LGR did a video, it's… not the most convincing, but it does add somewhat to the ambiance
tiny program that reads and writes to a dying hard drive based on IO utilization, and blasts the thing proportionally
oh! theres a product like that that imitates a hard drive clicking, lgr did a review of it a while back! https://www.serdashop.com/HDDClicker
Fun fact, this exists. Your computer probably has the connector for it but there's no speaker installed, and also no modern programs will use it
I know that a bunch of HP computers have one still installed and that it can be used as a standard sound device, which is how I got the idea. Both my T620+ and Z440 have it. If I turn off the TV, sound from any idling games will play from the Z440 speaker.
