[geeks] Wow, PCs are cheap...

[Lionel Peterson]

>From: nate at portents.com
>Date: 2008/08/29 Fri AM 10:28:33 EDT
>To: The Geeks List <geeks at sunhelp.org>
>Subject: Re: [geeks] Wow, PCs are cheap...

>>>Nice, tiny, quiet.  I noted it has audio headers on the motherboard, but
>>>no headers for a speaker.
>>
>> That's pretty common in the MBs I've come in contact with, and I only
>> notice it when I build a system with an oddball chassis that happens to
>> include a built-in speaker.
>
>The only thing that comes out of a desktop PC 'speaker' output on a
>motherboard these days is diagnostic beeps, which are often just handled
>by a piezo buzzer soldered on a lot of motherboards.  (The one exception
>to this is some proprietary systems that Dell and other big box makers put
>together which include a small onboard amp connected to the onboard sound
>which gives their built-in speaker the ability to be a standard audio
>out.)
>
>The last time I've heard a plain PC speaker output do anything other than
>beeps was in 1992 with the game "Star Control II: The Ur-Quan Masters"
>which could play back single-channel digital audio very quietly over the
>PC speaker if you had no sound card (including the MOD music).

There used to be a small utility program that directed soundcard output to the case speaker, but that was back in the Win 3.1 era...

The only time I've missed it was when I had an extra wiring jumper from the chassis I had no place to connect it to...

Like you said about the custom PCs, I have a Dell USFF (Ultra Small Form Factor) PC that has full audio that comes out of the chassis - it is an Optiplex GX620. It's a pretty nice machine actually - it can take 4 Gigs of RAM, a 9xx series CPU, and a "full size" half-height 3.5" IDE HD - about the size of half-loaf of rye bread. It really suprised me when a flash soundtrack played when I didn't have any speakers attached!

Lionel