no beep any more

[Ian Smith]

In freebsd-questions Digest, Vol 634, Issue 3, Message: 21
On Wed, 27 Jul 2016 06:13:35 +0200 Matthias Apitz <guru at unixarea.de> wrote:
 > El d?a Tuesday, July 26, 2016 a las 04:02:25PM -0600, Warren Block escribi?:
 > 
 > > I think it's more likely that the Chromebook has been cost-reduced to 
 > > not have a hardware beeper.
 > 
 > I have two of these Acer C720 Chromebooks. One is still beeping and the
 > other only in the coreboot splash screen, and was beeping in FreeBSD
 > before. I do not see anything which supports your idea.

I've been following this thread with interest.

>From a later message from the list archive (not here yet) you say:

 > b) let away X11, and use as test cases only:
 >    1. it should beep on key backspace while cursor is on prompt
 >    2. it should beep on a second ESC in editor vi 
 >    3. it should beep on the shell command: printf "\7"

I don't use vi, but 1 and 3 work here fine both from a VT and within 
KDE, however I have KDE send 'beep' notifications rather than speaker.

You seem to assume that something's broken in FreeBSD - which may be the 
case - but it's also possible that the speaker hardware on the non- 
beeping one is just broken, especially as device speaker didn't work.

Usually the hardware for these in laptops is a simple piezo speaker, 
commonly with red and blue wires, likely driven by a single TTL or CMOS 
buffer.  While piezo speakers are pretty hard (but not impossible) to 
destroy, I've had a laptop where one wire has become detached, so if 
it's not too hard to get in there to check, that may be worthwhile .. if 
so it's likely a simple fix, either by soldering or replacement.

Another possibility is that it's (become?) disabled in BIOS settings?

To confirm it isn't (or is) a FreeBSD problem, try booting from an older 
version memstick in 'live CD' mode, from where a simple backspace at the 
console prompt should quickly confirm that, one way or t'other.

cheers, Ian