Skip to content

Disk noise¶

For those who miss the gentle whirring and clicking of old hard drives and floppies, DOSBox Staging can play emulated disk noises. It’s a small touch, but it adds a surprising amount of atmosphere — there’s something oddly satisfying about hearing the floppy drive chatter while a game loads.

For the full “waiting for the game to load” experience, pair disk noises with throttled disk speeds (see the floppy_disk_speed and hard_disk_speed settings). The volume is adjustable via the DISKNOISE mixer channel.

Configuration settings¶

You can set the disk noise parameters in the [disknoise] configuration section.

floppy_disk_noise¶

Enable emulated floppy disk noises. Plays spinning disk and seek noise sounds when enabled. It’s recommended to set floppy_disk_speed to lower than maximum for an authentic experience.

Possible values:

  • off default – No floppy disk noises.
  • seek-only – Play floppy disk seek noises only, no spin noises.
  • on – Play both floppy disk seek and spin noises.

Note

You can customise the disk noise volume by changing the volume of the DISKNOISE mixer channel.

hard_disk_noise¶

Enable emulated hard disk noises. Plays spinning disk and seek noise sounds when enabled. It’s recommended to set hard_disk_speed to lower than maximum for an authentic experience.

Possible values:

  • off default – No hard disk noises.
  • seek-only – Play hard disk seek noises only, no spin noises.
  • on – Play both hard disk seek and spin noises.

Note

You can customise the disk noise volume by changing the volume of the DISKNOISE mixer channel.