Sound Blaster 16 has an speaker header where you can attach an PC speaker. Many sound cards have this.

I used to have an HP DX2000MT Pentium 4 PC at work that could play back it's onboard sound via the PC speaker.
But, can't think now of any ISA soundcards that allowed you to play back via the PC speaker.
I know you can do it the other way around.

Stojke wrote:

Sound Blaster 16 has an speaker header where you can attach an PC speaker. Many sound cards have this.

Ahh, this thought had not occurred to me. Physically attaching the T5200 PC speaker to a sound card in this manner would be difficult though, because it uses a very short wire with a proprietary connector and thus would require modification...I'd like to avoid modding the computer itself if at all possible. However, it sounds like I could take a spare PC speaker from another system and stick it to the sound card with some VHB foam tape. A concern then, though, would be having a magnet that close to the power supply.

I take it there is no means for a sound card to route its output through the PC speaker via the system bus?

Phil from philscomputerlab presented me a better solution, you can connect the pc speaker output to the soundcard, and then to your speakers. It is really cool, I have this on my 486 and so I can hear all those lovely beeps through some headphones or amplified speakers. 😀

I would prefer a solution that would allow me to just pick up the computer itself with nothing else attached and take it with me, yet still have sound. This is why I was inquiring about sound cards with a built-in speaker or a means of getting it to play through the PC speaker. I'm not necessarily looking for high-quality sound, just sound support. I don't even yet know what all I'll be doing with the system, it's only got a 386DX-20 with 8MB RAM, and although the screen is VGA it's monochrome orange plasma, so gaming could be difficult.

You can always get something like this

Won't work. Gotta remember, I'm dealing with a clamshell-style portable computer here.

(Not my picture)

The onboard speaker had no DAC so doing that in software isn't feasible. Also, unless the sound card as a MONO OUT header (never seen one) you can't really connect a PC speaker there. Assuming it does, however, and it also has a SPEAKER IN, then the cleanest solution would be connect the PC's speaker output to that input, and then connect the speaker to the mono out. If you can get the first part done (adapt a cable), then you might just as well remove the original speaker entirely and put a PC speaker with a longer cable in its place....

Now, if you don't find a sound card that can do that, you can try a more.... hackish solution.
You'll need one of theese

Just cut the RCA outputs, cut the connector of two cheap PC speaker and join the wires (shielding of the RCA cable = ground, the other one is the signal), tape everything and you'll have both speakers internally. If all you want is mono sound, you can cut only one of the RCA outputs, but the sound won't be downmixed, so make sure all software is configured to use only mono sound. Also, you'll need to find an opening to pass the P2 connector through.

Connect the PC Speaker to the sound card's PC speaker input. The WaveBlaster header on Sound Blaster cards has audio output pins you can directly wire up a speaker.

Some Creative cards also have a "test header" or something like that. It is usually behind the rear bracket. Creative technicians used that header to quickly test the card. The output can be found on some of these pins.

Question is though, the speaker in the notebook, is it connected with wires, or soldered directly onto the motherboard?

It is connected with wires, but they are too short to reach the card slot area, and the connector is not a standard four-pin header. So, I'd have to mod the speaker to connect it directly to a sound card in this fashion. I can do it, I was just hoping to avoid it. There's also a concern about RF interference from the power supply adding noise to the signal were I to try connecting the existing PC speaker to the sound card. Because of how the system is laid out internally, the wiring from the speaker to the card would need to run right next to, if not actually through, the portion of the case that houses the power supply, and I imagine there's quite a bit of noisy high-voltage high-frequency circuitry in there to run the plasma screen.

This is why I suggested possibly sticking a second speaker salvaged from an old modem directly to the bottom of the card using VHB double-sided tape. Or, maybe I could even retrofit the housing from one of these cooling fans to hold the speaker and help better direct the sound out of the case.

There is one PCMCIA card with an onboard speaker (New Media Gamejammer), two cards that can output the audio directly to the PC speaker from Panasonic (CF-VEW 211 and 212), and a couple of parallel port sound devices with integrated speaker like the DSP Sound Plus, maybe one of those would work.

I think the speaker connector on the SB16 is for Input.

Then you can hear the Pc-Speaker Sound with your desktop-speakers or your hifi Systems.

This is usefull for Games that only have pc-speaker Output.

But the sb16 had an built in amplifier.
You can connect some small speakers (like the ones in Babyphones) directly to the soundcard.
just Check the watts and ohm for the right speaker you need.

Yes the SPK connector on SB16 is for input.

Alright, so short of soldering a speaker directly to the terminals on the output jack (Which I would prefer not to do as I'm looking for no or minimal modding) it's sounding like then I'll have to just get a set of external speakers anyway. Ah well, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it, as I do not yet even have a sound card to put in the system.

Your laptop doesn't have a PCMCIA interface, right?
Adding a PCMCIA ISA adapter is probably not worth it though...

You can take a look at the parallel port device I mentioned earlier: http://www.expnet.com/product.nsf/88b61452c2e … d5?OpenDocument

That parallel port sound adapter certainly does look interesting, but still presents the necessity to have an external set of speakers tethered to the system, which is no different than a standard sound card, so I might as well just install a sound card anyway. I imagine I could find a set of unpowered or battery-powered speakers that are small enough to clip to the side of the screen, that would be acceptable.

What do you want sound for anyway? If its just Windows, there is a freeware PC Speaker sound driver for it... if you can track down the non-free software SpkQQ, it is supposed to be even better (can play asynchronously).

I'm not even sure yet if I will add sound to it. This was more of an "Is this possible" thought.