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PC Speaker don't beep

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First post, by .legaCy

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Hi i finished my 486 build(soon i will post the details of the build on the correct section) everything seems to work fine, all the case switches and LED are working(i even configured to turbo enabled to be fast and disabled to be slow) but my pc speaker don't sound at all.
I tried:
- continuity tests on the cables and the conector(seems ok)
-changing the speaker itself (seems ok)
i'm thinking that maybe the motherboard can't produce the signal strong enough to drive the cone.
Maybe if i use the piezo beeper speaker that usualy came with more modern motherboards?
What do you guys think?

Reply 1 of 7, by Jepael

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If there is a header it usually meant to drive a real speaker, and usually piezos are integrated on motherboard.
That's because piezos are not really similar loads like a speaker is, so driving a piezo (that looks like a capacitance really) with output that's meant to drive a real speaker (that looks like resistive and inductive load) may not sound optimal.

What motherboard is it (manual will verify you have the connect pins and pinout), and does the speaker have the typical 4-pin connector, the speaker being on pins 1 and 4?

Another option is that the motherboard speaker output is broken.

Reply 2 of 7, by clueless1

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Does your soundcard have a PC speaker header? Maybe you could try it on there.

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Reply 3 of 7, by .legaCy

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http://www.elhvb.com/mobokive/Archive/Oldman. … Chips/specs.htm
Here is all the info that i have, i will try piezo ones;

Last edited by .legaCy on 2017-12-12, 21:54. Edited 2 times in total.

Reply 4 of 7, by Scali

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The speaker circuitry on a PC is rather crude, and uses +5v. Should be fine to power either a piezo or a proper cone speaker.
I've modified PCs in the past, removing the onboard piezo and installing a header instead, then connecting it to a cone speaker. Worked like a charm.
Most clone cases would have cone speakers built in, so generic clone boards generally didn't have integrated piezos, and headers were meant to connect to these speakers in the case. This motherboard appears to be no different.
So it should just work, if the circuit is not damaged, you connect the correct pins (the outermost ones, 1 and 4), and your speaker is not broken.

If you have a volt meter, you could start up some game that plays PC speaker music, and then measure if there's any signal on there. It should average at about 2.5v I would guess.

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Reply 6 of 7, by Jo22

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TheGouldFish wrote:

I had issues with my pc speaker being too quiet so ended up routing it to the sound cards
TAD connector, which worked nicely. So you might be able to do something similar.

That's a good idea, I believe! And as a last resort, using a PAS16 could help user .legaCy, too.
On pre-586 systems, the PAS16 is able to "emulate" the PC-Speaker.

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