PC speakers are pretty much all the same... just 2 1/4" 8ohm jobbies. The speaker interface on the motherboard isn't really set up to do anything other than basic beeps anyway, so the quality of the speaker is pretty much unimportant.

Virtually every case I've scrapped came with an internal speaker. I've scavenged a lot from scrapped cases and only came across some weird looking mac speaker once. The speakers should all be compatible, though some may be smaller or even just a buzzer.

I never bought an AT case, but afaik every single AT case came with a speaker. Can't be too sure about modern ATX cases but I reckon old ATX cases also came with a speaker.
I don't think theres much quality difference between them, all they do is "beep beep beep", or, "beep" if you're not having problems 😉

Usually speakers come with the 4-pin plug with the 2 middle ones empty, though I've seen them with just 2 1-pin plugs instead.
Afaik reversing polarity doesn't really matter. At least it shouldn't cause any problems.

Internal speaker is only good for listening to the startup beeps if there's a problem. In that regard it doesn't matter what you have in there so long as the connections to the motherboard are correct. Any onboard audio that actually uses the internal speaker is going to be horrible quality.

the speaker is awesome!

http://crossfire-designs.de/index.php?lang=en … undcards&page=3

I was playing Alone in the Dark using it back then 😊

Not sure how those small buzzers are different from a standard PC speaker but I'm guessing your motherboard didn't like it. I've been fiddling around with a pc speaker and did something I shouldn't have, and the whole system shut down or rebooted.

You should be able to track down ANY basic 8ohm bare speaker and just wire it up. Only 2 wires and polarity doesn't matter.

A lot of Soundblasters and clones have a PC SPK header, you might need to make your own cable to go from the 4 pin motherboard header to the 2 pin header on the sound card but this should let you hear the PC Speaker through your sound card - no actual PC speaker required. This input does seem to care about polarity though so if it doesn't work try swapping the wires.

this is my preferred method as the pc speaker can be quite loud sometimes, and some of the older games I play don't support any other sound device, or have an FM soundtrack playing over the PC speaker sound effects. This lets me adjust the volume of the pc speaker so it isnt so overpowering.

Thanks a lot for the info, people! I particularly like the idea of connecting the speaker header pins on a mobo to a sound blaster card. I must give that a go, it seems like a great solution! 😀

I think that connection should work with just one cable to the speaker header on the board. At least it works that way on my 286. However, as people mentioned, polarity does matter.

Yea it should give you much fuller or richer sound. If you card has bass and treble it should also affect the PC speaker sound.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Yea it should give you much fuller or richer sound. If you card has bass and treble it should also affect the PC speaker sound.

I did notice the speaker to either make a loud *beep* or a softer one, but hearing the *beep*s is basically all I use the speaker for

sliderider wrote:

Internal speaker is only good for listening to the startup beeps if there's a problem.

😜

SquallStrife wrote:

http://i52.tinypic.com/1htfeu.png http://i53.tinypic.com/34ig6xl.png […]
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sliderider wrote:

Internal speaker is only good for listening to the startup beeps if there's a problem.

😜

If you don't mind C64 quality sound. I'd rather plug in a sound card and a cheap pair of speakers than use the internal speaker for anything.

It's not too bad, actually. The only reason I know is that when I was younger, I had this hand-me-down Pentium 120 laptop with no sound card, but I could still listen to tracker music in Inertia Player. It was quiet, but not terrible.

I only remember those very old computers without sound cards. Frankly, the only iffy thing with them was their sound being too loud when secretly trying to play a couple games early in the morning with everyone else sleeping. I was like "Omg, please shut the **** up!", L O L!

In this OGG -> http://www.cmoo.com/snor/weeds/grspak80_preview.ogg

05:00 - 05:23 = Sound Pack Pro PC Speaker - Indianopolis 500

05:24 - 05:51 = Sound Pack Pro PC Speaker - Stunts

PC speaker goodness at it's best 😀

Sounds great!

I'm listening with headphones and wonder if you did some sound processing? It sounds quite "wide".

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

I'm listening with headphones and wonder if you did some sound processing? It sounds quite "wide".

I really don't remember if I did or not.

That preview sample OGG was to show off the new version of my "Sound Pack Pro v8.0" ( http://www.simpilot.net/~richnagel/grstuff.htm#sounds ) for the freeware racing game "GeneRally", and most of the sounds for the pack I had "stereo-fied" to make them fuller sounding.

The PC speaker ones in question I'm not sure about... but I do remember that I originally recorded them from my old 486DX4-100's PC bleeper, using one of those el-cheapo "stub" microphones <grin> that use to come wil almost all of the older Creative Labs' sound cards 😀

P.S. Almost forgot :duh:

That preview OGG was the sound effects as heard *within* the GeneRally game itself with the Sound Pack Pro v8.0 installed... hence the PC speaker versions don't really sound quite like that within the original DOS games that they came from <grin>.

Nevertheless, the ending "winning/victory music" for each of the PC speaker games was a direct recording of each of the original DOS games 😀