There have been many computers that played a little jingle to greet you upon booting. The NEC PC-9800 is a famous example, though almost all the Macintosh computers played either the soothing “booting” chord or sometimes the Sad Mac “error” chord. And of course, consoles have long played music on startup, with the original PlayStation boot music heralding a whole new era of video games. But modern machines don’t do anything, except maybe a single beep if you’re lucky. So why not pop in this M.2 card (JP) and bring some quirky flair to your PC?
While this particular card is aimed at the Japanese market and specifically evokes the PC-9800, we hope to see some hackers creating projects bringing other custom boot sounds to laptops and PCs around the rest of the world! A simple microcontroller, DAC, speaker and flash storage for the waveform would be all that’s required. It could even be capacitively coupled into the system’s sound output for some extra nerd points. You could pull the ultimate prank and have your friend’s laptop play the opening notes to “Never Gonna Give You Up” upon boot. Or you could have your favourite hacker movie quote play – “I can trace her physical location by looking at the binary!”. Brilliant!
In the meantime, if you want one of these cards, you’ll likely have to use a Japanese mail forwarding service as the cards are only available from Japanese retailer Kadenken — though for only ¥2880, or just under $20 USD, which is a great deal.
[via Techspot]
Isn’t this the perfect example of “A 556 could have done this” ?
How?
No, really, please show us how to get the specific PC-98 boot sound using a 556.
Put the 556 in a well visible location for bystanders to gaze upon and have the operating system handle the rest.
This is one of the best comments ever on Hackaday. I find it utterly criminal that more EEs don’t use the NE555 and LM3909 in more designs. “Just use a PIC.” Idiots.
You fell for one of the classic blunders.
Never go up against a Sicilian when Death is on the line?
I mean, there is an 8 pin chip on the board, who’s to say it’s not a 555 and the RP2040 is just the support chip?
Hmm, maybe it’s not an RP2040
Yes, but what did a NEC-9800 sound like? mp3 or aiff link?
https://soundcloud.com/htomari/nec-pc-9821ra40-boot-tune appears to be a recording of a real one.
Must have been one long boot time for a three minute song.
The boot sound track was 4sec long (most of which was dead air). Soundcloud’s auto-play lead immediately to the next track that was 3 min long.
Interesting form factor. I could see a USB version masquerading as a mouse or keyboard and giving a sound when enumerated by BIOS. Possibly using the USB header pins for internal placement.
Also you forgot to link some m.2 and PCIe article series from HaD
Jeez. Guys grub already does this! My grub plays the Zelda theme.when you find an item in game sound!
Not everyone uses Linux though.
Why not? Are they all using real Unix?
Give me the sound of an Apple II floppy seeking and loading…
My dog gets up and leaves the room when he hears the logout chime from the PC,
because he knows I’ll be getting up and leaving soon.
Your computer will never sound as good as an SGI Indy.
Doo doo doot doo…. BWAAAHHH
Nice HD rattle?
I now really need one of these that plays the Mac startup sounds to prank an Apple Fanboi colleague
This always seemed like a missing opportunity for customization. Manufacturers fell all over themselves to have full-screen logos at boot, but a 3-second low-fi sound sample through the in-case speaker would have been an equally annoying way to remind consumers “It’s an Asrock!”
I’ve seen two PCs with attempts at a nifty boot sound:
* A DFI 486/100 laptop which was badged heavily as “Multimedia” which meant an onboard sound card but no CD-ROM, so they had to play a tune to justify paying the premium for sound, I guess.
* Sergey Kiselev’s BIOS for 8088 machines which plays the Intel jingle at boot. I think it was mentioned as a diagnostic tool, since being able to get recognizable sound means some of the timers and peripherals are set up properly before you can even hope to write to the screen.
Not sure on the Mac boot up chord being “soothing”. It’s a tritone! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritone