So if I had a desk that *was* the computer in today's terms analogous to the 80s how much compute power would it have and how much power consumption would it have? Like an inflation calculation but in computing. Half a rack of blade servers?
The problem with modern computing is the fan noise is outrageously loud. Back in the day your workstation was in the datacenter, now the datacenter is where the machines live, not the people.
> The problem with modern computing is the fan noise is outrageously loud.
As /u/Blah-Blah-Blah-2023 said, fan noise is in no way a new problem.
Highly relevant: [TIL that a computer was too loud to use. The TRS-80 Model II's fan and disk drives are "so noisy that users reported physical discomfort and reluctance to use the computer".](https://np.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1sqlmok/til_that_a_computer_was_too_loud_to_use_the_trs80/)
Looked that one up on YouTube, beautiful sound. I actually put extra fans in my Microserver partly so it sounds like a jet getting ready to take off. It only gets annoying when trying to listen to music but I love the white noise.
I used to run a PDP-8/e and some PDP-11s in my house. Let me tell you, fan noise is not a new problem! What has changed is modern fans are smaller, faster and more of them (so higher pitched sound.) Typical PDP-11 has three 7" or so fans at the back of the unit, plus usually a large blower at the top of the rack. Each disk drive, tape reader, or other peripheral has its own fans. Gets loud!
I’d guess that’s a low-persistence but dim monitor on the right, needed due to the poor refresh rates obtainable at higher resolutions. We used similar with AutoCAD on the IBM XT and AT. We all made our own cardboard shades.
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