...or how a PC can play a merry tune
Published on April 1, 2005 By Fuzzy Logic In PC Hardware

I switched my PC on last night to be greeted with a diddley-diddley-diddley-de. My, I thought, what a merry tune my PC is playing, never knew it could do that. My glee at hearing this tuneful melody was tempered seconds later by the sight of a blue screen and susequent boot failure 

So out came the screwdriver and off came the case cover. Out came components one at a time, sometimes followed by a diddley-diddley-diddley-de, sometimes not. As soon as it booted I headed off to BiosCentral to look up the code - not a diddley-diddley-diddley-de in sight, though I did spot a di-di-diddley-di or two  

So I continued with my quest of stripping the PC to its bare bones. Then I added one component at a time, booting after each and listening for the familiar diddley-diddley-diddley-de. After connecting one of my hard drives (backup), my little diddley-diddley-diddley-de reappeared. I disconnected the IDE cable, still a diddley-diddley-diddley-de. I disconnected the power cable, silence! Re-connected the power cable, diddley-diddley-diddley-de...

It seems on closer inspection one of the power pins on the hard drive is damaged. Easy enough to get a new (larger) hard drive. It could have been worse.

So the moral of this story is: if you hear your PC playing  diddley-diddley-diddley-de, don't just sit there humming the tune!   


Comments (Page 1)
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on Apr 01, 2005
Thanks. Very funny while being informative!
on Apr 01, 2005
What do I do if it starts playing piano?
on Apr 01, 2005
What do I do if it starts playing piano?

An Ovation...

on Apr 01, 2005
Or a funeral march

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on Apr 01, 2005
Anyone want a second hand 160Gb drive? Plays nice tunes... ***innocent look***
on Apr 02, 2005
Me! Me! Ship it across the pond! You pay of course! Playing tunes like that I could make a fortune on one of the U.S. inane T.V. shows! A spot on Who's the Next T.V. star, or Celebrity search,.....the list is endless!
on Apr 02, 2005
Did it go in the tune of Phantom of the Opera?
on Apr 03, 2005
Oh, to know all the beep codes by heart.
on Apr 03, 2005
LoL..it's funny..I just played "Name that Beep" last night with a friends PC.. Unfortunately I do not know the codes either so my experience was much like yours Fuzzy..Strip it until it works and then re-assemble..problem was..it never worked..::laughs:: I ended up replacing the MB..Fortunately we had an exact match on-hand (Exact same PC sitting in the closit for parts!)So there was very little down time for my friend as it took about a total of 1 hour from start to finsh to get it up and running again
But yeah..Beep codes are useful knowledge I have discovered..

Zero.
on Apr 04, 2005
Beep Codes are just morse for 'you need to spend again'...
on Apr 04, 2005

A new 250Gb drive is in the post, cost £87 plus a few more missing hairs...   

The beep codes were useless - they went so fast you couldn't count them. The old fashioned way works a treat.

on Apr 04, 2005
A new 250Gb drive is in the post, cost £87


I remember adding an 8GB to my first PC for around $150 and wondering what the hell I was gonna do with all that space
on Apr 04, 2005
You'd think that by now they could replace that old pizo speaker with a proper speaker and let the computer spell it out in your own language?
on Apr 04, 2005
New drive is arriving tomorrow. A different make this time, I've had enough of Maxtor drives. That's three failures in less than two years - a 30Gb, a 80Gb and now this 160Gb. Poor show   
on Apr 04, 2005
Makes me a bit paranoid. Got a Maxtor HD on this machine. All though it's my parents, I am the one that have to keep this thing alive. Not allways easy to do while I am studying in a different country...
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