Amiga diskette driving 'clicking'

[Honey Badger]

just kinda random ... but, when I first read about the Amiga's clicking sound of its diskette drive, thought it would likely be annoying

that hunch proved wrong for me anyway -- as weird as it might be, find it oddly relaxing

[spudje]

I also never was that anoyed by it and don't use any of these no click hacks. It's one of these things that adds to the nostalgia feeling, the sound alone already brings up the good Amiga memories

[Jope]

The more drives you have, the more fun it is when they click one after another.

[FOL]

Originally Posted by Jope

The more drives you have, the more fun it is when they click one after another.

Or you make both drives click at exactly same time, .

[Nobby_UK]

Some find ticking clocks annoying
others like it

[chip]

Indeed

Under emulation i disabled clicking

[Honey Badger]

ditto ... when using WinUAE (or other emulators actually) I turn off the disk clicking & drive sound effects .... as much as I kinda like it on the actual machinery, emulated just doesn't do it for me

and of course, many don't like it at all ... was surprised I didn't mind it, and for me isn't nostalgia as I didn't have an Amiga back in the day .... has bit of an ASMR effect on me

[-Acid-]

In the 90's I barely noticed the clicking even when I moved to a hard drive setup. But using one now it annoys the hell out of me, absolute torture if you have a couple of externals attached as well.

[HardStep]

Shoot, I just loved the 2.5 inch hard drive buzzing of the desktop 1200!

[Hewitson]

The clicking drove me insane. What a poor design.

[FOL]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

The clicking drove me insane. What a poor design.

You get used to it. Like living on a main road. You get used to noisey traffic, . I hear electricity hum at night, not many people do. I find it relaxing.

[Leffmann]

I've never heard an explanation for why you have to step the drive head before it can sense that a disk has been inserted. Does anyone know?

[Gorf]

just from the back on my head:
very early drives needed that stepping to update the sensor information - even later drives did not need that anymore, this code was left in the Kickstart, just in case.

[Honey Badger]

Originally Posted by Gorf

just from the back on my head:
very early drives needed that stepping to update the sensor information - even later drives did not need that anymore, this code was left in the Kickstart, just in case.

that's the backstory I've heard -- was a case of "well, it works. just leave it that way" whether the particular drive models (sourced from various vendors) necessarily needed it or not

[Leffmann]

Originally Posted by Gorf

just from the back on my head:
very early drives needed that stepping to update the sensor information...

Yes we know that much, but why? What's the technical explanation, and is/was it a peculiarity of the Amiga's disk controller and interface, or of the drive itself? To me it seems intuitive that if the system can immediately sense when the disk leaves the drive, it should also be able to sense the reverse.

[lesta_smsc]

The soothing tick... I think my heart beats to the same rhythm. It's like a pacemaker lol.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by Leffmann

Yes we know that much, but why? What's the technical explanation, and is/was it a peculiarity of the Amiga's disk controller and interface, or of the drive itself? To me it seems intuitive that if the system can immediately sense when the disk leaves the drive, it should also be able to sense the reverse.

since Paula and the CIAs never changed it was not on the Amiga side of things, but a requirement of the 3rd party disk drives.

some more explanation on this old thread:
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=53105

[Jope]

Originally Posted by Gorf

just from the back on my head:
very early drives needed that stepping to update the sensor information - even later drives did not need that anymore, this code was left in the Kickstart, just in case.

Are you sure the later drives don't need it? I never verified this for myself with a newer drive. It was part of the original floppy drive spec, that the DC signal is only updated after a step.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by Jope

Are you sure the later drives don't need it? I never verified this for myself with a newer drive. It was part of the original floppy drive spec, that the DC signal is only updated after a step.

It seems still necessary to initiate a step, but newer drives ignore that step (downwards), if they are at position 0, but do update the DC status and stay otherwise silent.

Older drives needed an actual movement and did not like to be "stepped against the wall" - so actually two step-instructions (one up - one down) where sent.

On a PC all this was irrelevant, since DOS did ignore all changes

[005AGIMA]

In the context of emulation, I LOVE the clicking for the following reasons:
1) It's a nostalgia hit of part of the experience I'd forgotten existed;
2) You can turn it DOWN unlike the real thing
3) It serves as a check, that perhaps the game/program is still loading, rather than the emulator has crashed.

I have it turned on in Amiga Forever on my desktop PC.

It's not an option in UAE4ARM on Android, and I miss it. Doesn't feel right.