VOGONS


First post, by PTherapist

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I've got a 486 that seems to have a dead PC Speaker. It's a DELL OptiPlex 425s/L with a basic Piezoelectric buzzer soldered onto the motherboard.

After years of being in storage, when I first turned the PC on it produced a pathetic death groan that was supposed to be the BIOS beep codes indicating a memory problem (memory issue was soon resolved). Those were the last sounds I heard from it however, the speaker is now totally dead/silent.

There are markings on the motherboard for a typical PC speaker connection, but no pins. I tried touching bare wires from a spare PC speaker to the contacts on the motherboard, but this produced no sound either.

Ideally I'd like to not mess around soldering or desoldering parts and am wondering if there is any kind of software solution to perhaps emulate the PC speaker output through the sound card?

Reply 1 of 2, by Jo22

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PTherapist wrote:

Ideally I'd like to not mess around soldering or desoldering parts and am wondering if there is any kind of software solution to perhaps emulate the PC speaker output through the sound card?

Yes, I heard the Media Vision Pro AudioSpectrum 16 can do that.

Besides, you can also use one of the Covox drivers to emulate speaker sound.
See Sound Blaster Emulator for Dos?

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Reply 2 of 2, by badmojo

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Yes the PAS picks up the PC speaker signals off the ISA bus which is very clever of it - great sound card for a 486 too!

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