300ms is a lot of time, especially if the calculator.exe was in disk cache already.

300 ms is a long time on a computer, definitely. Just, the autistic side of me has to speak up when it’s wildly unrealistic glorification of the past.

Keypress duration is likely much less than 300 ms, top Google result claims 77 ms on average. And that’s down and up.

I see it being in cache already as sort of game playing, i.e. we can say anything is instant if we throw a cache in front of it. Am I missing something about caching that makes it reasonable? (I’m 37, so only 18 around that time and wouldn’t have had the technical chops to understand it was normal for things to be in disk cache after a cold boot)

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do_not_redeem 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Okay, let's say the cache is cold and you're on an old clunky spinning rust 5400 RPM hard drive. Do the math. How long will it take, worst case, for the platter to spin to where calc.exe is stored?

	▲	refulgentis 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		For a 5400 RPM drive, worst-case rotational latency is one full rotation: 5400/60 = 90 rev/sec, so ~11ms. Average is half that (~5.5ms). If you also need to seek (yes, we'll definitely need to move on both axes in the worst case scenario requested, likely all the time), 2006-era datasheets show average seek around 11-12ms, with full-stroke seeks around 21-22ms. So worst case total access: ~33ms. Seagate Momentus 5400.3 manual (2005): https://www.seagate.com/support/disc/manuals/ata/100398876a.... Hitachi Travelstar 5K120 (2006):http://www.ggsdata.se/PC/Bilder/hd/5K120.pdf WD Scorpio (October 2007): https://theretroweb.com/storage/documentation/2879-001121-a1...