Chosen Solution
Do Macs still have diagnostic sounds on boot up? We used to have sounds for different maladies. Bad RAM gave out a discordant sound, There were others that I’ve forgotten. I had a 6100 that was hit by lightning and I got the sound of screeching brakes and a car crash just before chips started popping of the motherboard. All I’ve seen lately are idiot lights.
if I recall correctly, Apple stopped using the “chimes of death” diagnostic tones when the original iMac was introduced. I remember my old Mac II had those chimes if you download the free Mactracker app, you can play the death chimes for any of the old model Macs that supported it, as well as each Mac’s startup chime EDIT - This Apple support document mentions the power-on self test multiple beep diagnostic tones introduced starting with models like the iMac, PowerMac G3 (Blue & White), PowerMac G4 (PCI graphics) and PowerBook G3 (FireWire) and PowerBook G3 (Bronze keyboard) models. this seems to agree with the death chime tones I can find in Mactracker - i.e. only earlier models in Mactracker seem to have those old style chimes.
Nope, now it’s just the “Bong” There is however a loud obnoxious tone if there is bad ram(or no ram) But i have only seen this in my PowerMac G4 MDD (and a few macs before it), though it might do that in newer macs too, but i don’t really want to remove all of the ram from my mac mini (the newest mac i own) to see if it does the same, but other than that, there isn’t really anything to symblify a toasted mac except the light codes. Though i do remember some of the “Death Chimes” of the older macs, such as The Macintosh II** series, and The LC’s, but there aren’t really anything like that anymore.
