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I asked this question several months ago about why did the Atari produce beeping sounds when loading a disk or tape and it seems that it was by design. However, as I've played with a few emulators over the years it seems to me that none of them actually reproduce the SIO sounds. Digging into the options of the Atari 800 emulator (for Windows and Mac OS X), I don't seem to find anything that suggests that this sound can be enabled or disabled.

Are there any emulators that emulate this sound? I'm curious why is it disabled on the emulators since aren't they trying to at least provide an authentic reproduction of the original platform?

(yeah, I'd probably enable it for about 5 minutes before muting it again, but as far as platform authenticity in emulation goes you'd think it should at least be there?)

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  • If you just want to hear the beeps then the ANTIC Podcast is a great way to get that fix. First time I listened to it the noise immediately took me back through a wormhole!
    – Matt Lacey ♦
    Commented Jun 29, 2017 at 3:32

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I use Altirra, which does emulate the drive beeping.

http://www.virtualdub.org/altirra.html

Note: I had to tweak the preferences to get the drive beeping turned on, and it was some time ago, so I can't direct you to the exact preference. But I just tried it and it definitely makes the drive beeping sounds.

As an added bonus, you can also enable the 'drive sounds' to produce the spinning floppy disk noise.

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To speed up disk operations most emulators intercept jumps to specific code in Atari ROM bypassing it and handling operation natively so loading is almost instantaneous and there is no accompanying sound. This is controlled by "SIO Patch" option. Beeping loading sound can be heard when this option is off, but loading would take significantly more time.

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