386 era machines often had a 4 inch speaker in the front panel. It couldn’t do much. Some main boards still come with headers for a speaker, some even come with an electret beeper
Back in my day, that used to be the only way a computer could produce sound. Later on you could purchase a specialized sound card that would take up a slot in your motherboard.
My dad used to disable the motherboard speaker because the noises games made back then were more annoying than fun. We eventually got a soundcard, and that was awesome.
Motherboards have speakers?
Bleepers
Are you trying to make me feel old?
I’m afraid. I’m afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it.
They do, but it’s a very simple speaker that’s really more of a buzzer than what you might think of as a speaker.
Many motherboards he’s a combination of beeps to report hardware errors if you fail on power on.
Beep beep
386 era machines often had a 4 inch speaker in the front panel. It couldn’t do much. Some main boards still come with headers for a speaker, some even come with an electret beeper
Back in my day, that used to be the only way a computer could produce sound. Later on you could purchase a specialized sound card that would take up a slot in your motherboard.
And you could plug in your joystick into the soundcard, because where else would you put joystick, right? Perfectly logical.
Damn, I feel old now…
My dad used to disable the motherboard speaker because the noises games made back then were more annoying than fun. We eventually got a soundcard, and that was awesome.
I thought I was the cool kid when I got my SoundBlaster 16!
The anticipation as you figure out a new IRQ and DMA configuration so you could play with your new toy