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Re:Mac Chimes of Death by gamache on Thursday April 15, 2021 @06:05PM (#26826735)
I supported Macs in the mid-90s, so I heard a lot of chimes. IIRC the funky chord before the rest of the chime (you can hear part of one at the beginning of the IIcx example) carried actual diagnostic meaning. The one here, again IIRC (it's been a while) means "I have no RAM".
Re:Mac Chimes of Death by Stratoscope on Thursday April 15, 2021 @07:39PM (#26827525)
ThinkPads and other Lenovo machines have something similar called SmartBeep. Here is an example:

https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/k6fu6y/hey_i_have...

I had some fun with this one, as mentioned in my comment there. I downloaded Lenovo's app and had it listen to the audio in the post, and it told me the error code and recommended steps.

I guess I am easily entertained.

Re:Mac Chimes of Death by WalterGR on Thursday April 15, 2021 @11:11PM (#26828979)
It's interesting that different tones were used. That would be difficult to document in any medium that doesn't support embedded sound files.

Many BIOSes used a sequence of beeps to convey the error code. Here's a page about this (found via googling for 2 seconds, so standard caveats apply): https://www.computerhope.com/beep.htm

Re:Mac Chimes of Death by Stratoscope on Thursday April 15, 2021 @11:43PM (#26829190)
Ah yes, a slow Morse code dah-dit-dit-dit is burned into my mind from when my original IBM PC had memory errors!

For the new Lenovo beeps, the idea wasn't that you would listen to them and look it up in a doc like you would with the old PC beeps. They were intended for people who would call customer support and say "my computer won't boot and it makes these strange sounds!"

The CS rep would run the app while on the phone call, have the customer reboot, then the app would listen to the call, hear the beeps and display the error code and recommendations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2rzkO3jwko

Re:Mac Chimes of Death by sedatk on Thursday April 15, 2021 @07:38PM (#26827517)
Awesome tidbit, thanks!
Re:Mac Chimes of Death by PhantomGremlin on Thursday April 15, 2021 @11:00PM (#26828913)
Yeah, I just revel in stuff like this. In some alternative universe Sheldon Cooper is contributing to HN.