
Computer Randomly Plays Classical Music - jblesage
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/261186
======
sorbus
"This is an indication sent to the PC speaker from the computer's BIOS that
the CPU fan is failing or has failed, or that the power supply voltages have
drifted out of tolerance."

I can't help think that it might be more useful to play a short recording
saying something like "The CPU fan is failing. The CPU fan has failed."

On the other hand, this is undeniably awesome, and would perhaps make people
feel a bit better about having to repair their computer (I know that it would
make me feel better).

~~~
zootm
If anything, what we need is more musical cues indicating system health. From
the forboding opening strains of Orff's "O Fortuna" when the system first
starts to overheat, through to Debussy's "Clare de Lune" while the CPU goes
through a tearful montage of the many documents and applications that it's
helped during its short life, before whispering its last goodbyes to an ocean-
like plane of blue screen, the system could increase the user's empathy with a
musical journey through its struggles.

With innovations like this, I might even shed a tear when the host lays itself
down to die, rather than hammering the keyboard in futile rage.

~~~
yellowbkpk
I remember running a small Windows app that would sit in the background and
pipe sound of various frequencies through your speakers depending on system
state. I think I had mine set up to rumble at 30 or 40Hz at 50% CPU and slowly
increase the volume as it got past that point.

One night after I turned the volume up for a particularly quiet movie I fell
asleep and let folding@home go. I woke up a couple minutes later with my
subwoofer rattling the entire room and my roommates knocking on my door to
make sure the place wasn't falling apart.

~~~
zootm
The program I remember fondly along those lines is Nullsoft Beep:

<http://www.nullsoft.com/free/nbeep/>

It essentially makes your computer sound like something from Forbidden Planet,
hence instantly bringing you into the future of the past.

~~~
yellowbkpk
That's the one! Now someone needs to port it to Linux...

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Elite
Anybody else clicked this thinking it would be an artificial intelligence
module that exhibited musical creativity?

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teilo
Fur Elise doesn't exactly say, "Help! Turn me off! I'm melting!" I think a
Star Trek red alert klaxon would be more appropriate.

I'm not sure _what_ "It's a Small World" says. Definitely not, "Your voltage
is out of spec".

~~~
jmatt
Hahaha yeah. Here is the link for those that don't know:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7J-y2rFfny8>

~~~
yellowbkpk
Wow, as soon as I heard that sound I was reminded of sitting in front of my
old Macintosh LC II system. Maybe I had set it up to use the klaxon for the
beep sound. It's strange the way sounds can bring back memories like that!

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blasdel
I'm pretty sure this one was actually the motherboard manufacturer's idea, but
Microsoft did something far stupider.

In Windows XP, if you open Windows Explorer and have the search sidebar
active, there's a little animated yellow dog sitting there below the search
form. He's originally from Microsoft Bob, and he's there as your 'agent' to
search your filesystem. The animation goes through a full cycle about every 90
seconds, and in part of it the dog pants twice. A sound is played through your
speakers.

This confuses and infuriates people: <http://ask.metafilter.com/38461/>
<http://ask.metafilter.com/51844/> <http://ask.metafilter.com/52427/>
<http://ask.metafilter.com/65029/> <http://ask.metafilter.com/70851/>

~~~
parallax7d
That's amazing, I'm going to leave the search window open now, A badly
designed Windows feature is the best virtual pet I can think of.

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Natsu
The sad thing about this is that I kind of understand why someone would make
something like that. The first Windows DLL I ever made was nothing more than
an attempt to make a function that would play notes on the PC speaker in both
Win 98 & 2K.

I actually had a little music player written in VBS that used it. For those
who know enough about VBS to wonder how on earth you could access a DLL from
it, someone else made an OCX marked 'safe for scripting' that did that by
writing out assembly code and then calling it via some hack. And you could
even store the OCX inside the script by abusing more crazy bugs that let you
open a file in binary mode (though you had to store the OCX as a horrible
"string" constant).

Oh, and we're not done with the Rube Goldberg contraption yet. It was actually
executed not by Windows itself, but via some proprietary company testing tool
that used VBS to script itself. I blame severe boredom for causing me to do
things in such an absurd way. I didn't think of using it for an alarm, though.

Incidentally, the only piece I ever wrote for it was one of Chopin's Etudes. I
don't think I can find that piece any more, but it would be something like
this (but the piece had only one note at a time):

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89tude_Op._10,_No._4_%28Cho...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89tude_Op._10,_No._4_%28Chopin%29)

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docgnome
Does anyone have video of a computer doing this? I'm curious to see what it
sounds like.

~~~
joubert
Oui. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExmqBkfFU5Q>

~~~
docgnome
Thanks!

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defen
Would have been way funnier if they played Mozart's Requiem Mass instead of
Fur Elise.

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Workaphobia
I've actually experienced this years and years ago on my grandmother's
machine. It played Fur Elise because it had a short. We needed to figure out
the name of the song in order for tech support to help us identify what it
meant.

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daychilde
When I worked for Bravo, which contracted me out to Software Spectrum, which
contracted me out to Microsoft, back in 1999-2000 - I was supporting Windows
95/98 and all the applets installed (theoretically meaning I supported, for
example, MS Paint and Notepad and such...) - I had access to a certain level
of the MSKB.

I printed out but subsequently lost, and haven't been able to find anywhere -
there was an article about Kraft cheese inserted into a floppy drive. It was
meant as a joke, and wasn't public... but I wish I hadn't lost it. (IIRC, the
basic advice was "don't do this"...)

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maggit
Aw, nuts! The server product I am working on actually does the same thing. If
the program is unable to output log messages to the console (for example if
the user has selected some text), Für Elise will play on the PC-speaker, since
we don't have another way to scream about errors.

With this, we might actually misdiagnose complaints from our customers..! Who
would have thought?

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chris24
It's a shame they don't play Beethoven's 5th Symphony:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4IRMYuE1hI>

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rbanffy
And when I say a modern PC is a kludge, people don't believe me.

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powrtoch
lp0 on fire.

~~~
nitrogen
The origins of the "printer on fire" error message are actually quite
interesting -- IIRC the error is generated if the printer status lines
indicate an impossible state that a normal printer would never produce.

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tibbon
Sounds more like Skynet coming true. The computer play music when they want
to!

