mfw you forget AMD Thunderbird

Sometimes the solution is worse than the problem. My favorite example is the TRS-80 Model II and its descendants, with the combination of the fan and disk drives so loud that users experience physical discomfort. <https://archive.org/details/80-microcomputing-magazine-1983-...>

Modern computers should come with built in piezo, haptic and rumble motors that can emulate HDD, FDD and CD-ROM sounds whenever you start a game or app. Change my mind.

- Inner voice: "You don't miss the old PC noises, you just miss those times".

- Shut up!

<https://tryklack.com/>

But this only simulates keyboard and mouse click sounds. In any case, you wrote "whenever you start a game or app" (my emphasis). The Model II's fan and drive noises are 100% present from start to finish, with the combination enough to drive users insane (or, at least, not want to use the $5-10,000 computer).

I kind of miss the bass drop the Model 16's "Thinline" drives did when they were accessed. That was a cool sound.

The Model II was a loud beast. Its floppy drive drew directly from mains power, not a DC rail off the power supply, and spun all the time. The heads engaged via a solenoid that was so powerful it made a loud "thunk" sound and actually changed the size of the display on the built-in CRT.

The Model 12 and 16 improved on the design, sporting Tandon "Thinline" 8" drives that ran on DC and spun down when not in use, leaving fan noise that was quite tolerable.