HDD Clicker v0.2 Restores Aural Ambience of Pre-SSD Life
Retro computing enthusiast Matthias Werner shared his design of a device that mimics the characteristic operating noise of a hard disk drive (HDD).
of HDD Clicker v0.2caught our attention Reliptingboth are said to be nostalgic When I can use it. The atmosphere is nostalgic and helps provide audible feedback in sync with data access and transfer using shiny new SSDs (Solid State Disks).
It may be 2022, but there are still PC users enjoying their first delightful taste of NAND flash storage. However, as with any change, some people, like Tom’s Hardware Editor-in-Chief Matt Safford, who promised never to buy a hard drive again, may miss what they used to have.
You won’t miss the slow access and load times of HDDs, or the relatively heavy weight and fragility (especially important in laptops), but the characteristic clicking, ticking sound that older HDDs make when powered up. sounds, and buzzes. work. There must be people like this. €25 HDD Clicker.
However, noisy gadgets are not primarily aimed at PCs. Retro As his computing enthusiast, Werner has upgraded a variety of old computers with fast, high-capacity storage. In the video cool retro like floppy and hdd he explains to someone who added the solution to their system that the hdd clicker can add the missing noise. flash adapter. If you watch the video you can see that his retro system is his i486 and that his IDE HDD has been replaced with his CF adapter.
Werner’s design may seem fairly simple to someone with some experience building circuit boards and doing a little soldering work. The heart of HDD Clicker is a circuit board with an ATTiny microcontroller. It gets input from his HDD activity LED pin on the computer and a little power from the Molex connector. Finally, the microcontroller sends audio to the internal piezo speaker in sync with the drive’s activity. Therefore, it does not require any drivers or software and should work as soon as the computer is turned on, i.e. before or after the OS is loaded.
While this device may be useful, it’s not exactly a good representation of HDDs in sound, so it’s not great for nostalgia in its current form. what do readers think?confirmation of forum, v0.2 is of course an early version number. Perhaps it’s more appropriate to characterize it as a work in progress. Various forum users have asked for more/different sounds, so the project may expand or branch in the future.