14 DAY TRIAL // Computer technology was extremely noisy back in the '80s and '90s. Hard disks creaked and cracked, modems hummed and sounded like some bird was turning into a zombie in your computer, and floppy disks sounded like metal sheets were being scratched by insane kids with knives.
Yes, computers, and generally technology, were noisy back in the days and it wasn't a priority for manufacturers to make them silent as much as give them more performance and speed. You could expect your sleeping mom or sibling to wake up when you were installing Doom via floppy-drive on your 486 or when connecting to the Internet. Risks had to be taken in those days.
However, since technology became faster and more quiet, the specific sounds of that era were never forgotten, and although they are of little use these days, except making fancy hipster bags, floppy disks or floppy drives were usually thrown away and recycled in some damp, heartless grinding machines. Unless you're nostalgic of that era and turn them into music instruments.
Some people never get over it
American tech-savvy fellow James Willis, with a nostalgia for decades old floppy drives managed to cleverly build an orchestra of such machines, sync them all by a miRIO and wirelessly control them via an iPad to play famous songs of the '80, '90s and anything you desire. To add even more flavor to this arrangement of raw technical sound of the '80s, Willis connected a screen with various images that reflect the sound of the floppy drives creaking and cracking in glorious polyphony.
In case you have a full stock of rotting floppies in your basement and you're into electronic music, his website decible.ni will provide everything you need to conjure such wonderful music. I won't be surprised if people would start DJ-ing on this stuff too.
