A DOS TSR for providing sound and lights for solid-state drives

[Trixter]

(I wasn't sure exactly where to post this, so in General it goes; apolgies if this isn't the correct place)

I wrote a progam for vintage DOS computing that I thought the VCFed PC/DOS crowd might be interested in: It's called SOFTHDDI, and it monitors disk activity and provides an alternate indicator if the drive itself is silent and doesn't have LEDs. For example, on disk activity, it can click the speaker (like the HDD Clicker), or paint an "LED" onscreen in text and graphics modes, or flash the real keyboard status LEDs. The point of the program is to monitor HDD activity when you have a solid-state drive, like a compactflash card or SD card. Some people want the clicking for nostalgic reasons, others want the on-screen indicator to ensure their slow PC hasn't locked up or something.

Download SOFTHDDI: https://github.com/MobyGamer/softhddi/releases

Github repo with assembler source code and full documentation: https://github.com/MobyGamer/softhddi

I made a video about it, going into the justification for making it, and demonstrating it on real hardware:

 

[Plasma]

You keep saying the on-screen indicator is in the "top right" but it's actually in the top left. Is there an option to put it in the top right or bottom right? IMO that would be more out of the way.

 

[Trixter]

If I said top-right in the video, that was my mistake, sorry. It's top-left, although adding user positioning is a noted feature request that I added as a github issue.

 

[eight088]

Very cool! I like the thinking outside the box. I'd be keen to see you talking about the assembler code, even though I know very little about assembler I love learning about it!

Good job!

 

[vwestlife]

It works fine on my Gateway 486DX-33, although the solid-state Disk On Module I have installed is so fast that during disk speed tests, the clicking turns into a beep!

 

[Trixter]

It works fine on my Gateway 486DX-33, although the solid-state Disk On Module I have installed is so fast that during disk speed tests, the clicking turns into a beep!

Crap, I tried to mitigate that! :-D The original code acted the same way as the HDD Clicker does, which is to click on every activity no matter what it is (although I suspect the HDD Clicker may have an internal timer that will only click a maximum of X times per second). So I added checking the call itself to see if the "head" moved and only click for that... but that must not be enough for your DOM.

I supposed I could add code to mitigate the clicking further, although it would no longer be "accurate" -- but if you need this, please feel free to create an Issue in the github repo.