[HN Gopher] My broken ThinkPad plays music upon booting
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My broken ThinkPad plays music upon booting
Author : NeroVanbierv
Score : 145 points
Date : 2023-07-17 08:24 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nerology.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (nerology.substack.com)
| kramerger wrote:
| Serious question:
|
| The bios is a few megs large. Why not store sound clips and play
| them in case of an error?
| syntheticnature wrote:
| I actually had a desktop motherboard, purchased about
| 2003-2004, that did this.
|
| Mind you, as it slowly succumbed to age (capacitor plague, most
| likely), it would start repeating "No CPU Installed, No CPU
| Installed..." as I watched it boot without issue. Once the
| sound driver was configured, it would stop.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| "System completed power on self test, computer now booting
| operating system" is forever burned into my mind.
| rzzzt wrote:
| "ASUS POST Reporter" was one incarnation: http://web.archive.
| org/web/20081121022828/http://www.asus.co...
| kube-system wrote:
| Maybe modulation limitations? A square wave can often be output
| quite easily without the use of a DAC.
|
| Also the tiny piezo speakers frequently used on motherboards
| are often pretty bad at functioning as general purpose
| speakers. Something like voice might not be clearly audible
| through one of them. (And also, localization would be an
| issue.)
| bitwize wrote:
| You could even jam a Klatt synth in there and some text strings
| to say in a Stephen Hawking voice upon boot, e.g., "memory
| error".
| jeroenhd wrote:
| You'd need sound drivers to operate the sound chip. The small
| PC speaker that's easy to access is also very bad at rendering
| speech. Playing some music seems like an excellent solution.
|
| With this reverse engineering done already, someone should be
| able to write a decoder app for looking up the error codes.
| Clamchop wrote:
| Have laptops had a separate pc speaker in recent memory?
| jeroenhd wrote:
| No, but they seem to have some kind of compatibility
| wrapper to emulate the PC speaker in firmware. The early
| boot process on my laptop has plenty of beeps and boops I
| can enable but nothing more advanced than that until the
| operating system loads a real driver. If the UEFI firmware
| could play sound files, the laptop would come with much
| friendlier sounding (less shrill) noises.
| staplung wrote:
| Like a voice saying "error 47"? A good question. If I had to
| guess I'd say probably either localization concerns or that it
| was just a continuation of a pattern that began well before
| BIOSs were large enough to store audio.
| kramerger wrote:
| BIOS flash is a few megs larg., I think a few hundred
| kilobytes would be sufficient for either something generic
| (error 47, please consult user manual) or something more
| detailed (internal error, reset from back).
|
| Doesn't need to be 44.1K stereo and localised voice
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| > and localised voice
|
| Do you expect everyone to speak English? Localization would
| be critically important, and with a global supply chain,
| having one SKU for each language would cause you to get
| laughed out of a room if proposed.
| Thoreandan wrote:
| Apple PowerPC Macs definitely did this - the car crash would
| play if POST failed.
|
| YT collection of Mac chimes (~48s):
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkBcpXL94rA&t=48s
| number6 wrote:
| My not broken P16s needs 1.50 Minutes to get out of firmware
| boot. And this is after the firmware update that shaved of 1
| minute.
|
| This will be my last Lenovo...
| sebazzz wrote:
| My P1 Gen 5 needs to be reset - being the power button pressed
| until the notebook turns off - at least once and sometimes
| multiple times after I switch from working from home (multiple
| USB-C connections, HDMI) to Office (nothing connected) or vice
| versa. It hangs in firmware and doesn't boot the OS (Windows).
|
| Just the other day I had a few days when it even boot looped
| and I had to disconnect it, boot it to Windows, and only then
| connect it.
| pdxpatzer wrote:
| even simpler, they could have used morse code ...
| jeffbee wrote:
| This is cool but why is the human in the loop? If the only
| possible action is for the human to close a switch, why doesn't
| the platform diagnostic just close the circuit instead of playing
| the song?
| neilv wrote:
| The "BIOS setup" of some ancient IBM ThinkPads wasn't the
| ordinary PC BIOS blue character-based UI, but actually a pixel-
| based GUI, including an _animated flappy-bird mouse pointer_ :
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfUkI-n4jpo&t=23s
|
| I'd guess most corporate fleet ThinkPad end users never saw the
| bird flapping its wings to fly as you moved it around the screen
| with your Trackpoint, but kudos to IBM (known for wearing suits
| at the time) for letting this bit of whimsy slip through to
| customers.
|
| Maybe it was indicative of corporate flexibility that helped the
| ThinkPad introduce so many innovations and general technical
| excellence, and made it such a respected and beloved brand.
| wanda wrote:
| Ah that Thinkpad 560E reminds me of my first laptop -- the
| perfectly chunky Thinkpad 380XD.
|
| I adored that laptop. I loved how it felt, how it looked, how
| it sounded. I loved the beeps, I miss computers beeping and
| chattering to confirm that they are indeed powering on.
|
| I loved the fan periodically revving every 30 minutes or so,
| reminding me that it was still alive but also putting into
| perspective that it had been utterly silent until that moment.
|
| I _still_ remember how the keyboard felt. Granted I wasn 't
| doing much on it besides trawling through newsgroups and
| homework, but I haven't really come across a keyboard I've
| enjoyed typing on more.
|
| The Filco keyboard I'm composing this comment on now isn't bad
| by any means, and I'm fairly happy with my Macbook's keyboard
| given its other strengths... but if I had the time, I'd find a
| way to get the 560E's keyboard on a laptop with a Chromebook
| Pixel's 2560x1600 screen and an M2 under the hood.
| Scalene2 wrote:
| I had a 380XD too, wish I never got rid of it based on how
| much they sell for now I will probably never see one again.
| Way outdated for the time, but I managed to get XP running on
| it and also got HL1 running too.
| danjc wrote:
| I was instantly transported back to playing Kings Quest!
| cesarb wrote:
| > But it doesn't run on recent android devices...
|
| > > This app isn't available for your device because it was made
| for an older version of Android.
|
| I wonder if it really "doesn't run on recent android devices", or
| if it's just that Google doesn't want you to install it (because
| it was made for an older version of Android and Google doesn't
| like that), and if you somehow downloaded the APK and manually
| installed it, it would run just fine. I suspect it's the later
| case... In my experience, other than the missing software version
| of the legacy hardware menu key, Android's compatibility with
| software made for older versions of Android is quite good.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Yeah, does anyone know what causes this to happen and if it can
| be worked around? I was under the (possibly mistaken)
| impression that Android backwards compatibility was actually
| decent (in contrast to iOS).
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Much more pleasant sounding compared to the screeching modem
| built into appliances.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DADcChMJqBY
|
| https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/institute/a24653/how-to-dia...
| munificent wrote:
| _> You can see a lot of repetition in the vertical direction, but
| these are probably redundant resonances. They don't add any more
| information, so we should only look at the base frequencies._
|
| In the context of audio, these are just called "overtones", and
| the "base frequency" is the "fundamental".
|
| The amplitudes of the overtones are what give an instrument its
| characteristic timbre. It's what makes a flute sound different
| from, say, a sax, when they are both playing the same note.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overtone
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_frequency
| NeroVanbierv wrote:
| I knew that I had the wrong word, but couldn't think of the
| correct one. Thanks!
| adrianmonk wrote:
| Yeah, these are probably square waves. They sound like it, and
| square waves are the easiest to generate.
| [deleted]
| technikly wrote:
| Probably quicker to just bluestack to emulate the app. (If you
| can get an apk from somewhere)
|
| But I love this very clever solution.
| Shared404 wrote:
| In my experience the app doesn't run well even on the correct
| android version and was almost impossible to use on bluestack.
|
| Had to use it a couple times when I worked at a repair shop.
| kernal wrote:
| In my experience, the app worked perfectly and diagnosed the
| error via their video instantly.
| carloslagoa wrote:
| This is dope, great post --- just a bit of script /
| spectogrammin' and no one needs no APK
| bch wrote:
| I've been a Thinkpad user for probably 20 years or more, never
| heard of this (though not entirely surprised this level of
| attention was developed). Also, just yesterday this happened to
| me (T470s). Now I know to make a note of the tune if it happens
| again.
| 1024core wrote:
| Reminds me of this classic:
| https://www.betaarchive.com/wiki/index.php/Microsoft_KB_Arch...
| 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote:
| The minor second in there is a little menacing
| rzzzt wrote:
| This is also a little menacing:
| https://youtu.be/9bHV4KIIDtE?t=9
|
| (I would freak out if the intro of Forbidden Forest started
| blaring from the speakers on startup)
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| My fully functional ThinkPad plays a tune on every boot. The tune
| means "BIOS Password Required". Then, two tones rising mean,
| "Password Accepted".
|
| I had to explain it to my mother the other week over the phone.
|
| A few weeks ago, I was boarding a bus with a brand-new mobile
| fare; I scanned the QR and it turned green and beeped, I guess
| twice or something, and the operator summons me back and he goes,
| "it has to beep once", so I shrugged, scanned again, got 3 beeps
| and a green light, message says, "already scanned" and I asked
| the operator "what does that mean?" and he didn't know.
|
| Come in, C-3PO, where could he be?
| jeffparsons wrote:
| Where I am, two beeps means concession fare, so the
| driver/whoever can notice and ask to verify your concession
| entitlement. Might that have been it?
| killjoywashere wrote:
| A) Cool.
|
| B) Glad to see I'm not the only one using ThinkPads _and_
| MacBooks.
| kernal wrote:
| Okay, this is a rather cool diagnostic feature by Lenovo. One
| thing though, the Lenovo diagnostic app APK can be found and
| sideloaded rather easily as I did to see if it actually worked -
| and it did by bringing up the correct error code. Why Lenovo
| restricted the installation of the app to certain OS versions is
| rather silly.
| kj4ips wrote:
| My understanding this is more of a Google thing. The play store
| will no longer offer new installations of software below a
| certain API level, even though they will work on current
| versions of Android.
|
| I believe this is an attempt to enforce some of the permissions
| changes made around Marshmallow, I believe, where apps now
| request many permissions at time of use, and not at install.
| The compatibility layers are a bit 'ugly'.
|
| An interesting side effect is that if you sideload an app that
| is in this state, Google Play will actually offer to keep it
| updated, even though it wouldn't allow installation initially.
| NeroVanbierv wrote:
| Actually, I did install the APK directly from Apkpure, but it
| didn't seem to do anything apart from loading the splash
| screen.
| butz wrote:
| Has anyone tried hacking Lenovo BIOS to make more interesting
| sounding tunes?
| wildzzz wrote:
| This is fun although you'd think it would have just been easier
| on everyone to just have a number of beeps and the count equals
| the error code. Requiring a second device on hand just to decode
| the error beeps sounds more complex than necessary.
|
| I guess the author now has the responsibility of writing a new
| app to decode the beeps that hopefully can last longer in the app
| store before it gets too old.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| It could be a web app that captures mic input
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(page generated 2023-07-17 23:01 UTC)