From manual "Speaker:
A speaker may be installed on the motherboard as a manufacturing option. The speaker option includes a jumper on pins 26-27 of the
front panel connector. You can disable the onboard speaker by removing the jumper, and you can connect an offboard speaker in its place."

From the Tech Product Spec Update:
3. External Chassis Speaker is Not Supported
PROBLEM: The signals to the front panel I/O connector (J10H1) that support an external chassis speaker are not connected.
IMPLICATION: An external chassis speaker that uses the standard 1x4-pin connector will not function.
WORKAROUND: None.
STATUS: This erratum was fixed in PBA revisions with revision level -5xx and greater.

So if your board number is 6xxxxx-499 or lower there is no work around, my VS440FX is a Gateway OEM board # aa 666860-408 and iirc the Ext speaker did not work on it either.....

Thanks Horun. Just checked my revision as you advised and mine is AA 666860-407. So i'm out of luck. At least I can stop looking for a solution.

If you do not like soldering on your motherboard, you can just break the piezo speaker piece by piece, and then just connect cables, to install a real speaker, or route speaker output to a sound card. Wel i have done that to few of my OEM motherboards.

Cyberdyne wrote on 2020-08-31, 09:05:

If you do not like soldering on your motherboard, you can just break the piezo speaker piece by piece, and then just connect cables, to install a real speaker, or route speaker output to a sound card. Wel i have done that to few of my OEM motherboards.

Good idea...but I think I’ll just stick with the piezo, don’t feel like butchering the motherboard. Thank you for the advice though.

Hmm but if the internal piezo speaker could be enabled/disabled by the jumper across pin 26 & 27 of J10H1, isn't the signal already available on pin 26/27 already?

kalohimal wrote on 2020-09-03, 04:10:

Hmm but if the internal piezo speaker could be enabled/disabled by the jumper across pin 26 & 27 of J10H1, isn't the signal already available on pin 26/27 already?

Nope, pins 26 and 27 just jump the speaker main to the piezo (on just one speaker lead), you also need the speaker Gnd which should be on pin 24. The quirk is early versions were wired diff and those pins do nothing but Intel did not describe why. Could be the way either was wired OR the fact that piezo's are a 1K impedence but most pc speakers are 8 or 16ohm. Would be like connecting a speaker to a amps line-out not a speaker out if not designed proper to accept a low Z speaker.

Erm of course you need the ground, I was referring to the signal. The jumper is to route the signal from pin 26 to 27 to the internal speaker (or vice versa depending on how it's wired up). If the signal is not present on pin 26/27 but is wired to the internal speaker directly, then adding/removing the jumper will do nothing. In that case, probably soldering a simple wire from the internal speaker +ve to pin 26 will do the trick.

Cyberdyne wrote on 2020-08-31, 09:05:

If you do not like soldering on your motherboard, you can just break the piezo speaker piece by piece, and then just connect cables, to install a real speaker, or route speaker output to a sound card. Wel i have done that to few of my OEM motherboards.

Awesome! I just asked about this yesterday!

So in your experience, if I desolder the piezo from my motherboard and replace it with wiring I should be able to plug that into my Sound Blaster pc speaker input connector? Do you use any additional components or just straight wire it?

Measure, one pin is +5V and the other one should be more or less zero on normal condition. The zero is the speaker out pin. But it needs a 5 Volt bias. 100-300 Ohm resistor between Speaker pins. And then from Speaker out you take straight wire, or add a Capacitor 1uF Positive to the speaker side. It is a safe measure and a low pass filter. Even if you then do something wrong, you wont fry your sound card with straight 5 Volt. And if everything is correct, then you hear sound. You can shield the wire with ground, but it is not really nessesary, you can just take that one wire and connect it to Speaker in, or even CD in, you can safely bridge the left and right channel.

Thanks so much for your help!