[Review] 20 PC Speaker / Beeper / Buzzer for Motherboard Diagnostics – AliExpress

The 20 Motherboard Diagnostic Speaker / Beeper / Buzzer PCs were acquired on AliExpress, shop DIKAVS Store, for use of one of them in a Gabinete Corsair Mid-Tower Carbide Series 100R CC-9011075-WW, which was purchased recently and came without a PC Speaker.

Motivation

I had my first PC in 1994. Was a 286 with 1 MB of RAM, 40 MB of HDD (that chamávamos of winchester), and a monochrome CGA monitor. His office had a speaker 3 or 4 inches, that chamávamos of PC Speaker. It was there that the music and sound effects of some games came out. Nothing too sophisticated, quality of gaming consoles 8 3rd generation bits, no maximum. Street Rod and Kings of the Beach were my favorite games.

Even music could be heard on the PC Speaker from the 286. It was through MOD files, containing samples of instruments and patterns of when and how they should be played. I still remember today that the first song I heard in that format was Axel F, that is part of the soundtrack of “A tough guy”. I was impressed with the skill of the people who assembled these files, and how they got so small that you could fill a floppy disk with music. This was in the days when a single CD-quality song would fill my entire HDD.

Por fim, it was hair PC Speaker that the motherboard beeps when it is starting. More than one beep was a sign of a problem, and their number and duration indicated what the problem was.

My second PC was a 486 DX2 and the monitor has changed colors, it was a VGA. This one already ran the most recent games, like Doom 2. Games were already made to use sound cards, but were still compatible with PC Speaker, for those who didn't have a sign yet, as my case was. On PC Speaker the songs and effects were very simplified, but at least they were present. The exception were games like the Pinball Fantasies, who used exactly MOD files for the soundtrack, and so they didn't lose that much quality in PC Speaker.

Sometime later my first multimedia kit came. It was a Creative that had the Sound Blaster 16, a CD-ROM drive quad speed, a pair of speakers, and a lot of CDs with games, encyclopedia and cool software. I used the Thus Photostyler. Good times.

With sound cards, the PC Speakers were getting underused, starting to serve only to emit the diagnostic beeps of the motherboards. So, in the cabinets the manufacturers stopped using the speakers of a few inches and started to use increasingly smaller speakers.

There were several upgrades and a few cabinets after that, for the next two decades. My Cooler Master HAF-X it had been the last cabinet I bought, there in 2013, and he even came up with PC Speaker.

Until I recently acquired the Gabinete Corsair Mid-Tower Carbide Series 100R CC-9011075-WW. It was here that the economy at the bottom of the crap reached its limit. The cabinet simply came without the PC Speaker. It is a very dirty economy and I am sorry that a brand like Corsair has lent itself to this.

It only remains to regret and buy one PC Speaker separately, because I still consider it an essential item for diagnosing PC problems. In all these years I have counted the beeps several times and this helped me to know if a problem was with memory or video card, for example, in situations where the computer didn't even send a video signal.

I believe that some of the local electronics stores have PC Speaker to sell at reasonable prices, but in times of pandemic they are forcibly closed. On the Internet I found some, but with prices starting at R $ 10 a R$ 15 and even more expensive freight than that.

Pensei bem e parti logo para a AliExpress. They were R $ 30,84, which is more or less what I would spend in Brazil buying over the Internet, but instead of just one were 20 PCs Speaker/Beeper/Buzzer, and including freight, which is the most expensive. Give way, gave a cost of only R $ 1,54 for each Speaker. I was with 19 theirs for future use, but I can still sell some and recover everything I spent.

Unboxing and installation

The 20 Motherboard Diagnostic Speaker / Beeper / Buzzer PCs came in a bag like a zipper zip-lock that, by sua time, came inside a bubble envelope. As the product, the construction is ok, the thread is short, but enough to fulfill the role of the good old PC Speaker, or PC Bepeer, or even PC Buzzer, as they are most recently called.

I took care to insulate the contacts with electrical tape in one of them, to avoid any accidental shorts inside the case, and then plugged it into the motherboard. At the next boot I heard the good old beep again.

Check out the photos and the video of the unboxing and installation of the 20 Motherboard Diagnostic Speaker / Beeper / Buzzer PCs:

Tracing

These are the package tracking information with the 20 Motherboard Diagnostic Speaker / Beeper / Buzzer PCs obtained from the AliExpress system:

2020.07.18 10:07 (GMT-7): Delivery successful
2020.07.03 09:07 (GMT-7): Accepted by Last Mile Carrier
2020.06.28 05:10 (GMT-7): Arrived at destination country
2020.06.27 10:10 (GMT-7): Departed country of origin
2020.06.27 10:10 (GMT-7): Departed country of origin
2020.06.23 14:06 (GMT-7): Shipment arrived at country of origin post office
2020.06.22 13:30 (GMT-7): Shipment left country of origin warehouse
2020.06.22 10:32 (GMT-7): Shipment at country of origin warehouse
2020.06.22 10:13 (GMT-7): Shipment at country of origin distribution center

And these are the information obtained on the site of the station:

18/07/2020
10:53
[REMOVED] / SP Object delivered to the recipient
18/07/2020
07:37
[REMOVED] / SP object out for delivery to the recipient
16/07/2020
13:48
INDAIATUBA / SP
Objeto encaminhado
de Unidade de Tratamento em INDAIATUBA / SP for distribution Unit in [REMOVED] / SP
08/07/2020
09:03
CURITIBA / PR
Objeto encaminhado
de Unidade de Distribuição em CURITIBA / PR for Treatment Unit in INDAIATUBA / SP
08/07/2020
09:01
CURITIBA / PR finalized Customs supervision
03/07/2020
09:24
CURITIBA / PR	Objeto recebido pelos Correios do Brasil

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24/06/2020
16:15
HONG KONG /
Objeto encaminhado
de País em HONG KONG / countries in International treatment unit / BR

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23/06/2020
14:53
HONG KONG / 	Objeto postado

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Table-Summary

This is the table-summary of purchase:

Final Considerations

The 20 Motherboard Diagnostic Speaker / Beeper / Buzzer PCs fulfill their role. Give voice to motherboards in cabinets where manufacturers did not include it at the factory. It is something that Corsair itself should have included in the case, m24as como ela não o fez, pelo menos não custou caro para inclui-lo.

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