I hear dead components.

July 5, 2000 10:44 AM

I hear dead components. How nice that your computer can sing to you when it's breaking down. I wonder if there's any significance to "It's a small world."
posted by jdiaz (8 comments total)

On some Mac's I have worked on a similar rare failure sound is that of a horrible car accident. One time the volume was set to high, and the case was off, I nearly hit the roof I was so startled.
posted by thirteen at 10:54 AM on July 5, 2000

I'm not sure I want my computer playing music seemingly at random - let alone if it's playing music to tell me that it has decided to break on me.... That strikes me as a little too creepily Hal-like for my tastes...
posted by elf_baby at 11:14 AM on July 5, 2000

"Deep in the NOC, nobody can hear Fur Elise"

If I've got an overheated chip, the last thing I want is fun and games burning up cycles. I'd rather it just shutdown after writing a few bytes to the BIOS, so when I tried to restart it I get a message telling me there was a component failure.

I'm going to chalk that up to "stupid things chipset designers come up with"
posted by katchomko at 11:48 AM on July 5, 2000

Weird. This has been around for years, but it's really bouncing around. (The Trib's computer columnist recently covered the question.)

This is pretty similar to the BIOS tunes that a Mac plays to tell you, for instance, that you installed the memory SIMMs in the wrong order.
posted by dhartung at 3:24 PM on July 5, 2000

They should make a portable mp3 player that plays mp3s to warn you that it's going to break...
posted by sonofsamiam at 3:51 PM on July 5, 2000

I've heard some of the various "failure" sounds the Mac ROM can play, but don't know anybody who's ever actually heard "Fur Elise" and "It's a Small World" (which, quite frankly, would make me beat the malfunctioning component into a molten, useless pulp of plastic and copper wires I hate that tune so much...). Any of you guys ever have a machine actually do this, or is this one of those "urban/internet legend" things that some tech writer at Microsoft decided to have some fun with?
posted by m.polo at 4:37 PM on July 5, 2000

I personally don't think I've ever had a system with the Award/Unicore BIOS on it. At the same token, I've never actually had a machine die on me either, so who knows. I didn't think about the Mac, I knew they did something similar. Wasn't there something like this in the old Amiga's as well? Anyway, it's not all that new of a notion, but I was surprised that it's still in existence.

And I too would toss the computer out the window if it started playing "It's a Small world." I mean, why kick a man when he's down?
posted by jdiaz at 5:44 PM on July 5, 2000

Anyone here who thinks that's anything *other* than an MSKB easter-egg, raise your hand...

(so I can steal your notebook out from under your arm. :-)
posted by baylink at 6:31 PM on July 5, 2000