Re: My PC's internal (built-in) speaker.
When you turn on your computer, it should make a beep noise through the
internal speaker as the BIOS initialises (POST). This is so you know it
has started correctly, for example if your monitor fails. If you do not
get any sort of sound at start up, the speaker may be broken, or
disconnected. If you don't mind doing this, take the case off your
computer, and check the connection between the speaker and the motherboard
- there should probably be a pair of thin plastic-coated wires going via a
little plastic plug to two metal prongs somewhere around the edge of the
motherboard: check nothing has come loose or is broken.
It is possible (unlikely?) that your Bios doesn't beep to say everything
is ok on start-up, but it definitely should if something is wrong. You
could try taking out your graphics card (if you haven't turned the
computer off by now, do so, and take precautions against static dischage),
and then re-starting your computer. If the speaker is working, there will
be loads of beeps, as the bios tells you it can't find the primary video
(I've heard the knew ACME bios avoids all this noise by printing an
informative error message on the screen!).
If your speaker isn't working, I wouldn't worry about the cost of
replacing it, as the ones supplied with PC's are invariably cheap crappy
ones, and you should be able to get one for around a fiver (english
money). The one I have in my computer was bastardised from a broken
cheap radio.
Hope some of this helps, or at least makes sense. If the speaker is
working physically, I can't think of any debian stuff which would use it,
but if you've got dos installed, most games will use it.
Rich
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