Chimes of Death
The Chimes of Death are the Macintosh equivalent of an IBM PC POST error beep. Most of the time, the Chimes of Death are accompanied by a Sad Mac icon in the middle of the screen.
Different Macintosh series used different death chimes. The Macintosh II was the first to use the death chimes (an upward major arpeggio, with different chimes on many models). The Macintosh Quadra, Centris, Performa, LC and the Macintosh Classic played the upward major arpeggio, followed by three or four notes, with slight variation depending on the model of the Macintosh. The Macintosh Quadra AV660 and Centris AV660 used a sound of a single pass of Roland D-50's "Digital Native Dance" sample loop, while the Performa 6100 series used a car crash sound. The Power Macintosh and Performa 6200 and 6300 series, along with the Power Macintosh upgrade card, used a 3-note brass fanfare. The pre-G3 PCI Power Macs, the beige G3 Power Macs and the G3 All-In-One used a sound of a firecracker mixed with a metal pipe being struck, making it sound like something just exploded inside the machine when power was applied. Since the introduction of the iMac in 1998, the Chimes of Death are no longer used.
Mac OS X Jaguar, released in 2002 replaced the Sad Mac logo with the Universal "no" symbol.
One can hear the death chimes of any Mac by downloading Mactracker, a program with information about older Macs, which includes startup chime samples. Clicking the icon on the upper left for each model plays the startup chime, holding down Option while clicking plays the death chime.
Read more about this topic: Welcome To Macintosh
Famous quotes containing the words chimes and/or death:
“It was your severed image that grew sweeter,
That floated, wing-stiff, focused in the sun
Along uncertainty and gales of shame
Blown out before I slept. Now you are one
I dare not think alive: only a name
That chimes occasionally, as a belief
Long since embedded in the static past.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“One is apt to be discouraged by the frequency with which Mr. Hardy has persuaded himself that a macabre subject is a poem in itself; that, if there be enough of death and the tomb in one’s theme, it needs no translation into art, the bold statement of it being sufficient.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)