In ,
barrowhill wrote:
SC Tom

Couple of messages on this issue from yourself and a chap called
Paul that I couldn't review because ...."News servers regularly
expire articles as they get older to make space available for newer
articles" Looking at date and time of both posts how they could be
classified as old when they were only posted 2 - 3 hours ago I don't
know!. Anyway...................

Well Paul's comments were quite excellent. So I'll repost it here below.


From: "Paul"
Subject: PC no longer booting
Date: Monday, May 09, 2011 6:55 AM

The computer cases I have here, they like to hide the speaker in the
front plastic fascia. If you take the thing all apart, eventually you
might be rewarded with a 2" speaker or the like.

If you trace where the SPKR connector and two wire cable go, you'll
eventually find it. It can't escape :-) Start at the motherboard PANEL
header, and work your way back, following the two wire twisted pair.

When I get a new computer case, I take special pleasure in disassembling
the thing, and removing the bits I don't want. For example, the first
thing to go, are the front USB or Firewire ports, the audio connectors
and wires. By removing those and saving them for later, I have less
cruft hanging down inside the computer. Since my computers are always at
desk level, and oriented so I have access to the rear connectors, there
is no need for front connectors. I started this practice, after finding
wiring errors on some of my older cases, and rather than wasting time
catching those errors before they burn or damage something, I just got
in the habit of tearing them out.

But I always keep the speaker, due to the ability to do "beep tests" if
something breaks.

Some computers (Dell) have a four LED display on the case, using two
color LEDs. And those can give diagnostic codes, indicating a problem.

Some retail motherboards (typically Nvidia motherboards resold by other
companies), have a two digit POST code right on the motherboard surface.
The actual codes aren't of much use, but the ability to see whether the
POST display will work at all, helps identify whether the processor is
able to read the BIOS or not. If the POST display stays stuck at 0xFF or
0x00, then chances are the processor isn't running for some reason
(stuck in reset, no power etc). Any other of the remaining 254 decimal
codes, indicates something is going on, but usually there is no reliable
documentation of the code values, and even if there is documentation,
the codes don't focus on a single fault at all. So they're not really
that useful. In all the cases, where a person has posted the value they
got off their display, when I looked up the code, no good came of it
(the user was none the wiser).

Now, a feature I liked, but which is no longer used, was the Winbond
audio post device. It was a chip that would play back voice messages, to
tell you what was going on. These would be triggered by writing a
control byte in the chip, via BIOS code. But unlike the POST display,
the events were designed to be a bit more useful. The audio was coupled
into the regular Line Out connector, so the "bitchen betty" voice came
out of your amplified external computer speakers. Asus put that on their
motherboards for several years, and then gave up on it. It probably cost
them a dollar or two per motherboard (audio playback chip plus serial
EEPROM). There was even a utility, so you could record your own voice
for the samples if you wanted (it took 30 to 60 minutes to re-program
the serial EEPROM).

By comparison, the computer case (internal) speaker is a bit boring, but
at least it is common enough, that some useful testing can be done.

Paul