Back in my day, that used to be the only way a computer could produce sound. Later on you could purchase a specialized sound card that would take up a slot in your motherboard.
My dad used to disable the motherboard speaker because the noises games made back then were more annoying than fun. We eventually got a soundcard, and that was awesome.
386 era machines often had a 4 inch speaker in the front panel. It couldn’t do much. Some main boards still come with headers for a speaker, some even come with an electret beeper
A good number do, but you won’t hear anything during normal operation. If your vomputer has ever beeped at you when you try to turn it on at 0% battery, accessed the bios, etc., there’s a good chance that was the motherboard speaker.
Motherboards have speakers?
Are you trying to make me feel old?
I’m afraid. I’m afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it.
Back in my day, that used to be the only way a computer could produce sound. Later on you could purchase a specialized sound card that would take up a slot in your motherboard.
I thought I was the cool kid when I got my SoundBlaster 16!
The anticipation as you figure out a new IRQ and DMA configuration so you could play with your new toy
My dad used to disable the motherboard speaker because the noises games made back then were more annoying than fun. We eventually got a soundcard, and that was awesome.
Damn, I feel old now…
And you could plug in your joystick into the soundcard, because where else would you put joystick, right? Perfectly logical.
They do, but it’s a very simple speaker that’s really more of a buzzer than what you might think of as a speaker.
Many motherboards use a combination of beeps to report hardware errors if you fail on power on.
Bleepers
Beep beep
386 era machines often had a 4 inch speaker in the front panel. It couldn’t do much. Some main boards still come with headers for a speaker, some even come with an electret beeper
A good number do, but you won’t hear anything during normal operation. If your vomputer has ever beeped at you when you try to turn it on at 0% battery, accessed the bios, etc., there’s a good chance that was the motherboard speaker.