[Mediaman_12]

Do you play music on your Mac, then get deafened by the volume of the Startup Chime?
You can now turn it off with this preffpane.

Click here for original Japanese
Click here for Babelfish translation

[dwood]

to anyone actually think of doing this, realize the startup chime is there to tell you your computer is booting correctly, and when it comes to troubleshooting the computer, and that chime isnt there, it makes it a little difficult.

Originally posted by Mediaman_12:
Do you play music on your Mac, then get deafened by the volume of the Startup Chime?
You can now turn it off with this preffpane.

Click here for original Japanese
Click here for Babelfish translation

[brutal]

usefull or not - I still find it pretty damn annoying.

btw I don't really think I need the chimes to tell me if my machine is booting correctly or not. Here is how I troubleshoot:

Screen stays black -> something is wrong
OSX starts loading -> everything is ok.

[Earth Mk. II]

Originally posted by dwood:
to anyone actually think of doing this, realize the startup chime is there to tell you your computer is booting correctly, and when it comes to troubleshooting the computer, and that chime isnt there, it makes it a little difficult.

If you mute the system volume before shutting down, you get the same effect. namely, no start-up chime.

If the chime's purpose is diagnostic, then it should be independent of the last system volume level before shut-down.

Besides, just zap your PRAM and it'll be reset to default values. That should be one of the first steps when something goes awry with your machine anyway. During boot or not.

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by brutal:
btw I don't really think I need the chimes to tell me if my machine is booting correctly or not. Here is how I troubleshoot:

Screen stays black -> something is wrong
OSX starts loading -> everything is ok.

But sometimes if the screen stays black, and you want to know just how screwed up it is, whether the chime occurs or not can give you a hint as to what part of the machine may be having trouble.

Originally posted by Earth Mk. II:
If you mute the system volume before shutting down, you get the same effect. namely, no start-up chime.

If the chime's purpose is diagnostic, then it should be independent of the last system volume level before shut-down.

It used to be this way. In the old days, if you turned the system volume all the way down, the chime would actually be louder than if you had it set to the maximum, for some reason.

Besides, just zap your PRAM and it'll be reset to default values. That should be one of the first steps when something goes awry with your machine anyway. During boot or not.

Sometimes things are hosed to the point where you won't get far enough to be able to zap the PRAM.

Anyway, regarding this utility - it's not a simple pref pane. Looking at the package, it installs a kernel extension in /System/Library/Extensions. Eh... no thanks.

[Earth Mk. II]

Originally posted by CharlesS:
It used to be this way. In the old days, if you turned the system volume all the way down, the chime would actually be louder than if you had it set to the maximum, for some reason.

I'm aware of that, though, it was never a good diagnostic tool in the first place. All it ever said was, "This machine isn't so fscked that I can't execute the ROM or OpenFirmware." It's no guarantee that your RAM isn't corrupted, your Hard Drive works, an OS is installed, or your video card works. In all those cases, the normal chime still sounds on boot.

Although (knock on wood) I've never heard them in my own experience, and it's rare to hear about them at all these days, I'd be surprised if the Chimes of Death didn't play at a level independent of the system volume.

[CharlesS]

It's not so great a diagnostic tool when the machine is chiming. However, it's a great tool when the machine isn't chiming, because then you know something's messed up.

Although lately, who knows, because they've made it possible to disable the chime by muting the volume. But trust me, back in the days when it was consistent, it has helped me out on more than one occasion.

[Moonray]

I understand it would allow you to control the volume of the chime rather than turning it off, so why is everyone concerned about not hearing it anymore?

-

[Sage]

Well, I'm not sure about other Macs, but if you hold down the "mute" button on an iBook/PowerBook's keyboard while it's booting, it won't make the startup chime (without actually muting the system sound or permanently muting the startup chime).

[MOTHERWELL]

I jammed a giant SPOON into the speaker.


seriously though - I have an extra set of headphones sitting here that I plug in if I don't want to hear the chime.

[mdc]

i like the chime. besides it screaming out "i got a mac" in a public place (i'm so sad). besides that, i get a bit freaked out when i don't hear it, i think something has gone wrong. but the case is that i had osX muted.

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by mdc:
i like the chime. besides it screaming out "i got a mac" in a public place (i'm so sad). besides that, i get a bit freaked out when i don't hear it, i think something has gone wrong. but the case is that i had osX muted.

Agreed. It causes me to have the same reaction. I replaced the whiny IBM hard drive that was in my Pismo with a nice quiet Fujitsu, and used the machine to take notes in class. Because the Word noises whenever you save or basically do anything would have been disruptive to the class, and I was too lazy to go hunt down the setting in the preferences to turn them off, I just muted the volume. But then each time when I pushed the power button and it was dead silent, my heart would skip a beat until I saw the screen come on with the Apple logo...