[HN Gopher] Obsolete Sounds
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Obsolete Sounds
Author : benbreen
Score : 207 points
Date : 2026-03-26 03:54 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (citiesandmemory.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (citiesandmemory.com)
| wan9yu wrote:
| Love projects like this - we obsess over preserving images and
| video, but soundscapes vanish almost unnoticed.
| aledevv wrote:
| Ahh... what memories... the legendary Pac-Man of the 80s (video
| games category). I was a kid, but I remember it like it was
| yesterday.
| binaryturtle wrote:
| Needs a recording of an Amiga reading in a floppy disk... and the
| floppy drive just waiting to be feed. Those were the sounds! :)
|
| (The interface on the website is a bit confusing to use, IMHO)
| chriswarbo wrote:
| I love that Amiga emulators (FS/E/Win)UAE have an option to
| emulate the floppy drive sound. Very nostalgic, but also useful
| as an indication that something's happening!
| bee_rider wrote:
| It is weird to think, computers are almost completely devoid of
| whirring nowadays. Other than the fan, and fans have gotten
| quite quiet. Floppies, CDs, hard drives. Tapes even (although
| I'm not that old).
|
| It's just kind of funny, I guess, the upcoming generation will
| never have the surprising "wow, my computer is silent" moment.
| I guess that was a one-time thing.
| Loughla wrote:
| I tried to describe to my kid the sound of a 5.25" floppy
| disc the other day. MMWA MWA mmmmmm MWAMWA mmmmmmm.
|
| He has seen 3.5" discs, but never the large floppies. His
| mind almost exploded when I talked about games needing 7 or 8
| discs and hitting certain points where the game would pause
| while you put a new disc in.
| PlunderBunny wrote:
| I remember when the hard drive on my PowerMac 7200/90 started
| to fail (I was told that some of the ball bearings the
| platter rotated on were broken [0]). When the drive detected
| a 'wobble' on the platter, the entire computer would just
| power down with no warning at all - it was like the sound of
| a vacuum cleaner powering off. Silence and a blank screen
| that looked like a power cut, followed by that "oh sh!t"
| moment.
|
| 0. Note sure how true this was!
| antalis wrote:
| Yes, there are two players, and often the bottom one plays and
| it's a different song than the one we selected, which is loaded
| in the top one.
| shit_game wrote:
| I love seeing art like this. Using things that are forgotten,
| obscure, unused, insignificant, or otherwise inconsequential is
| an ethos unto its own. Obsolete technologies are becoming
| exponentially rare; I _unfortunately_ passed up an auction for an
| Osbourne 1 just this week and I 'm regretting it more every
| second since.
|
| I desperatey search thrift stores for anything I can find that
| isn't the generic consumer garbage that plagues the US; smart
| tvs, ISP-issued modem/routers, terrible dvd players, "media
| centers", other smart garbage. Really, any kind of digital
| circuit that isnt a dumb interface to media is sacrilige in my
| search. This has become all but a moot point because things like
| CRTs and other obscure electronics are all picked off at the
| donation point and then sold online because they've been
| indentified as valuable or "retro", or outright thrown away
| because theyre considered too old for anyone to ever give a shit
| about.
|
| There is a disturbing situation regarding old technology right
| now where only a very, _very_ specific subset of technologies are
| considered valuable to a very small, specific subset of
| consumers; this means that things like CRTs are shipped off to
| warehouses to be catalogued and sold on online auctions, and
| their accompanying hardware is being thrown into dumpsters
| because theres no immediately correlated market for this
| hardware. For the first time in about 10 years I saw two VCRs at
| a thrift store (a Quasar VHQ-40M and some lesser generic
| garbage). This was the first time I had seen a VCR for sale IRL
| since going to a pawn shop that has since been demolished; the
| man running the store said I could keep it for free because the
| person who pawned it was a crackhead and he didn 't even know if
| it worked, but if it did, he wanted me to come back and pay him
| $10 for it. Lo and behold it worked perfectly, so I went back and
| did.
|
| I've noticed just this week that both of the thrift store
| companies I frequent have stopped stocking VHS tapes; I don't
| know if this is because they have decided they're to be thrown
| out, sold online, or refused as donations. The last VHS tapes
| I've bought were _Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace_ and
| _Austin Powers in Goldmember_.
| bombcar wrote:
| It's almost certainly that they refuse the donations or throw
| them out when they find them.
|
| Some of the more rural thrift stores still have VHS, one still
| has cassettes, and I know of a place where there's a stash of
| 8-track.
|
| Thrift stores are businesses; they stock what sells - but they
| also have the reality of often having to _pay_ to dispose of
| electronic waste that was donated - they 're not allowed to
| just dumpster it as in days of yore.
|
| Of course the national thrift store chain machines (Goodwill)
| have policies for all this stuff - you gotta hit up and get to
| know the smaller independent stores if you want them to hold
| stuff for you - which they'll often do.
|
| A VCR and some tapes are great for the kid's playroom - teach
| them rewind patience on equipment you won't cry much if they
| destroy.
| myself248 wrote:
| Thrift stores throw out things THEY don't think are valuable.
| Skip that bottleneck, go straight to the estate sales.
|
| Every Thursday around lunch, I open up Estatesales.net and
| browse the sales for the upcoming weekend. There's typically a
| dozen or two. I open each one in a new tab, and scroll down
| through what's typically 100-300 photos per sale. Very quick
| skim, stopping if I see anything interesting.
|
| I then paste links to specific photos into item-specific
| category threads in a local makerspace chat: Sewing
| machines/other fabric stuff,
| Typewriters/addingmachines/cashregisters/calculators, CRT
| TVs/VCRs/related, Computers/videogames/peripherals, Tools,
| Cameras/film/telescopes/projectors/optics,
| Radio/stereo/DJ/vinyl records, Landline phones. So basically
| I've done the horizontal browse and sorted it into vertical
| categories, and anyone who follows those threads for stuff
| they're interested in, can go to the sale and nab the stuff.
|
| But crucially, estate sales have _everything_, and if the sale
| folks have reorganized the house, badger them into telling you
| where the accessories went. If they already threw out valuable
| cables or something, give 'em hell for it and refuse the
| purchase, and they'll be more mindful next time.
|
| If you're looking for something specific, show up on the first
| day. But personally, I just want to keep it from being
| landfilled, so I show up near the end of the last day. Offer
| fifty bucks for all the VHS tapes in the house, they'll take
| it. I got about 3500 floppy disks this way -- other shoppers
| ended up helping bucket-brigade them to my car as the clerk was
| closing up shop.
| ghaff wrote:
| Meanwhile some of us just want to simplify, accessories and
| cables have probably been scattered, etc. it's not worth it
| to me to find a home for a lot of this stuff or just live
| with the clutter until probably someone else needs to deal
| with it.
| Theodores wrote:
| I get it, but, for every estate sale, there are people that
| have lost a parent, a grandparent, a friend, a neighbour.
|
| There will be people, the executors of the will, that need to
| clear the house, however, much which is just $$$ to you will
| be heirloom grade stuff to them, with memories of happier
| times attached. Yet still, they need to realise the assets
| from the estate, maybe there are grandchildren with
| inheritances in that mountain of cruft left over after a long
| life.
|
| Sure, there are things that just need to go, that the
| executors of the will would consider paying to get cleared.
|
| As for getting things like the cables and power bricks that
| go with electrical items, chances are that the deceased was
| not doing a good job of keeping everything in order, they
| might even have a bit of hoarding going on. It is no easy job
| to repatriate cables with electrical items, that might have
| gone to the tip already, as e-waste.
|
| There is also a tendency for men to put value on what most
| women will just see as e-waste. Similarly, with clothes, men
| see the whole lot as jumble sale trash, whereas women are
| more likely to see value in these items. I say this not to
| court sexist allegations, it is just that, if a woman clears
| the house, there is a slimmer likelihood of getting that lead
| for that obsolete electronic kit that somehow is considered
| valuable.
|
| Sometimes the estate is too much work for the relatives, so
| the solicitor might get the keys to the house and
| instructions to get it all cleared. These are a minority of
| cases, usually, the relatives do pick through everything and
| put stuff in charity shops, charity shops that deal with big
| items of furniture, up to half a dozen 'skips' (British
| English term) and so on. I would say there isn't going to be
| a estate sale in these situations, really you are relying on
| the minority of sales where the solicitor gets the key, if
| you are going the estate sales route.
| myself248 wrote:
| Oh, all the estate sales I go to are run (and posted) by
| third parties, who do it as a business, for a percentage of
| the sales. The heirs are nowhere to be found -- they got a
| first pass through the house a few days prior to grab
| anything sentimental, and they'll show up a few days later
| when the business has been transacted. But the folks
| running the sale are professionals.
|
| Which means they should know better. And some of them do --
| I have a few local favorite companies, where I know they'll
| keep things together, they're good about finding manuals in
| file cabinets and putting them with their respective items,
| etc. I'm usually happy to pay their asking price, because
| they're interested in seeing the items go to good homes and
| get reused, and take care accordingly.
|
| But, likewise I have some "un-favorites", one who was
| notorious for sticking price-tags on screens. I might've
| finally trained them out of this when I told them I'd only
| pay their asking price for a particular piece of test
| equipment if they could remove the sticker without damage.
| They removed it, the already-degrading plastic screen was
| obviously fucked by the adhesive, they exchanged awkward
| glances with each other, and I walked away. Maybe they'll
| keep that in mind on the next sale they run.
| Theodores wrote:
| Meh. Maybe it is a cultural difference, we have different
| manners outside the USA. Your business is rather vulgar
| in the UK context, that of a parasite or a greedy gannet.
| There would be no honour in selling the estate items to
| your sort, setting light to everything or giving it to
| sensible charities would be far preferable.
|
| As exemplified by what is going on in the Middle East,
| the USA has different values to the rest of the world, so
| don't take this criticism as a slight, just don't come
| here and expect to be liked for what you are doing.
| Hnrobert42 wrote:
| I wonder if it should include the sound of insects. Sigh.
| nhecker wrote:
| Or songbirds.
| stavros wrote:
| This is great, but why is there an echo? It's prominent and it
| didn't let me enjoy the nostalgia as much as hearing the actual
| sound would have.
| rbanffy wrote:
| I was looking for typewriter sounds and several of them are
| "artistic renderings" that are completely useless as a form of
| documentation.
| tgv wrote:
| There's e.g. this one: http://www.mrgory.info/sm/ (path may
| look odd, but it probably means sound machine/museum/memory or
| something).
| elaus wrote:
| Quite a lot of sample sound strange. Some even have echo or
| other weird artifacts. I hope it's not AI generated.
| NoSalt wrote:
| Aaaahhh ... the IBM Selectric. Fond memories.
| kleiba wrote:
| _" Each sound in the project is recomposed and reimagined by
| artists"_
|
| Completely agree! I would have _much_ preferred original
| sounds, or - if anything - sounds taken from original
| recordings but restored to compensate for the bad recording
| equipment at the time of recording.
| steinwinde wrote:
| You can listen to each of the original recordings. Just make
| sure you click on the first play button after you've chosen
| the sound, not the second (which often seems to be the
| default).
| klik99 wrote:
| Yes, I came to say the same thing, not just typewriter - it's a
| great idea but I wish they had the original recordings by
| themselves and not overlayed with ambient music.
| ljlolel wrote:
| I just made a new audio format that makes sharing sounds easier
| on mobile https://hxtube.com
| Cockbrand wrote:
| I can't believe nobody had nitpicked the obvious mistake yet:
| there never was an iBook Duo. The 68k Apple notebooks and the
| early PPC ones were called PowerBooks, so the correct naming is
| "PowerBook Duo 230".
| Cockbrand wrote:
| Each time I get super anal about a piece nerd knowledge, I make
| some mistake myself - _all_ the Apple PPC laptops were in fact
| called PowerBook. The MacBook name started with the Intel based
| devices.
| Pxtl wrote:
| My personal "obsolete sound": The sound of an old C64 floppy
| drive failing a read.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/shorts/JroA0Ap7zGU
| naikrovek wrote:
| > a brand new form of listening
|
| bro go away from me with that crap. nothing has been invented,
| here.
| adolph wrote:
| I'd like to track down this sound for my sisters and me: Old
| Library Card Punch Machine. Finding the old library smell too
| would be a plus.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Library/comments/unek0c/old_library...
| jonplackett wrote:
| The Philips Coffee grinder is quite intense with Airpods on.
| Feels like my head is the grinder.
| wolandomny wrote:
| The sounds sort of lack, but the idea is beautiful
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| I was hoping for fax machine, 56K modem, 300 baud modem, US
| public pay phone ringing and coin deposit, princess phone ring
| and dial, rotary phone dialing, 9-pin printer, and 24-pin color
| printer.
| buildsjets wrote:
| When I was a kid, I could hear the sound the of the flyback
| transformer on the CRT TV from anywhere in the house. None of the
| adults could. 15.7 kHz. Now obsolete both due to the lack of
| CRTs, and degradation of my hearing from heavy metal concerts and
| jet engine exposure.
| brycewray wrote:
| Same here about the TV's flyback transformer. My parents always
| wondered how I could hear from down the hall (out of sight from
| the TV) when the horizontal hold or vertical hold went awry.
| :-)
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| Toilet flush as obsolete sound is an interesting future.
| lemoncucumber wrote:
| I thought this was going to be about phonemes that used to be
| part of English but aren't anymore (e.g. all of the vestigal
| "gh"es in our spellings that used to represent the
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_velar_fricative but are
| now either silent or pronounced as another phoneme).
| nilslindemann wrote:
| It took me a few clicks to figure out what played those sounds.
| The background images of the play buttons aren't helpful in
| visually clarifying their function. Otherwise: Good idea, keep it
| up!
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(page generated 2026-03-26 23:01 UTC)