PC Speaker or not?

486 player · Post by **486 player** » Fri Nov 11, 2005 4:17 am

They aren't bad. (Ok, in Elf Land and Jill of the Jungle.) Besides they're essential if sound card's effects are too quiet to hear.

Fri Nov 11, 2005 9:02 am

Well I have mixed feelings on the issue. I never use to like them. But when the other speakers on my old computer broke and somehow killed the socket that you plug the speakers into. I had little else I could actually use on my PC, so I had no choice but to get use to it.

CloudCobain · Post by **CloudCobain** » Wed Mar 08, 2006 7:05 am

I like the PC speaker as it gives me fond, fond memories.

dr_st · Post by **dr_st** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 7:42 am

Hell no, horrible beeping!

I don't even have a PC speaker in my case.

jmmijo · Post by **jmmijo** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 10:02 am

Bah, PC Speakers, the bane of early games and motherboard POST messages

Correct me if I'm wrong on this, but I seem to recall one or more of the old Sound Blaster models had a PC Speaker input on them. It was just the pair of pins that you would connect to the motherboard front panel jack where the speaker would connect and then connect this to the SB card.

Now then, maybe this was an output jack, I can't really recall but if this was indeed an input jack, then you would at least be able to get much better sound quality out of anything that used the PC Speaker.

franpa · Post by **franpa** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 8:52 pm

i smoked mine... for some reason whenever i turned my pc on tons of smoke poured out yet i had a picture on the screen... i opened it up turned on the computer and had a look inside... the pc speaker wire was glowing red hot... i turned off my coputer unplugged the pc speaker and unstuck the wire from other wires took it out of the pc and turned my pc back on... no smoke was happening and i cheered hooray and went back to playing games.

this is a true story, i was changing ram stick when this all occured.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Fri Mar 17, 2006 10:15 pm

the beeping horrible kills me so bad

Unknown_K · Post by **Unknown_K** » Sat Mar 18, 2006 1:06 am

The only built in sound I can tolerate was the speaker found in the Tandy machines (I have a Tandy 1000HX PC Jr compatible type machine for the very old CGA and TGA games).

The only thing the PC speaker is good for is letting me know a newer machine is overheating or there is a problem on bootup (and boy do I hate figuring out what bios code beeps mean).

Swiftman · Post by **Swiftman** » Sat Mar 18, 2006 1:19 am

Eh, I didn't mind the PC Speaker when it was well implemented [Duke Nukem original or Commander Keen 1-3, anyone?] but other than that, it was good for telling me when things went wrong. If it was quieter, I would have been able to tolerate it much better.

I DO recall though, one level from Ken's Labrynth background music sounding way catchier on PC Speaker than on Adlib.

486 player · Post by **486 player** » Tue Mar 21, 2006 11:39 am

I sometimes even have days when all sounds are played from Beeper or are complitely mute.

JKSM · Post by **JKSM** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 8:32 am

From your mention of PC speaker, I suppose you mean the internal speaker. The external speaker linked to sound card produces nice music & sound so it should not be a problem.

For the internal speaker, the sound gets from bad to worse with newer PCs. There were 2 games that I kept over the year and tried on all the newer PCs. The game, Hexavga, a columns clone has a very nice high pitch "preek" on Win 3.1 386 PC. Then on Win95 Pretium I, it sounded not as nice with "pick" sound. Then on Win Xp Pentium III, it is a low "thud" sound. The quality deteriorated. Proabably manufacterers think that with external speakers people do not need good internal speakers and most people do not bother about internal speakers. The internal speaker sound for Prince of Persia game also sound worse. Thankfully, there is the option for external speaker sound for that game. In addition, 3 cheers for Dosbox as it can emulate the internal speaker beeps to be closer to the orginal good quality internal speaker sound although still not as good.

If you have ever played old dos games with internal speaker bleeping sounds, you will notice the change in sound quality of the internal speakers.

Thu Mar 23, 2006 3:07 am

This is the one time where it pays to habe a laptop, as the only speakers you have are internal, and they're usually pretty good quality.

Thu Mar 23, 2006 3:13 am

This is the one time where it pays to habe a laptop, as the only speakers you have are internal, and they're usually pretty good quality.

Post by **Larry Laffer** » Sun Mar 26, 2006 7:11 am

Sure it's Ok but only if conected to a sound card otherwise UHHHHHHHHHHHh

486 player · Post by **486 player** » Sun Mar 26, 2006 1:17 pm

JKSM wrote: For the internal speaker, the sound gets from bad to worse with newer PCs. on Win Xp it is a low "thud" sound. The quality deteriorated. Dosbox can emulate the internal speaker beeps to be closer to the orginal good quality internal speaker sound although still not as good.

If you have ever played old dos games with internal speaker bleeping sounds, you will notice the change in sound quality of the internal speakers.

'cause they're played from sound card. XP doesn't have it. In Win 2000 machines it still exists, I've tried.

Thunderdog · Post by **Thunderdog** » Sun Mar 26, 2006 3:18 pm

I've got mine disconnected.

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