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Mac Chimes of Death 

April 15, 2021April 15, 2021 [?] Permalink

We're all familiar with the Mac's startup chime. While it has changed
over the years, it has greeted users with its friendly tone for
decades.

What you may not know is that for years, the Mac also came with a
death sound, that would play when the machine crashed.

And they are glorious:

Macintosh II

The Macintosh II line used several different chimes. These large
machines combined the Macintosh operating system with the open
hardware of the Apple II, and while they aren't as charming as the
original Mac's design, they were lusted after by many users in their
day.

I think the IIcx is the nicest, but the IIfx chime feels the most
deathy to me.

Macintosh II

https://512pixels.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/
Macintosh_II_Death.m4a

Macintosh IIcx

https://512pixels.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/
Macintosh_IIcx_Death.m4a

Macintosh IIfx

https://512pixels.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/
Macintosh_IIfx_Death.m4a

Macintosh LC

The LC, short for "low cost," was designed to get the Mac into more
homes than ever before. The Macintosh II line ran circles around it,
but it was how many people experienced the Macintosh for the first
time. I think it's death sound is pretty good, building on that of
the IIfx, which was on sale at the same time as the original LC:

https://512pixels.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/
Macintosh_LC_Death.m4a

Quadra AV

The Macintosh Quadra line brought the Motorola 68040 to more people
when it replaced the out-going Macintosh II line in 1991. Most of
these machines used the death chimes from the LC line, but the
high-end Quadra AV systems got something a little more ... funky:

https://512pixels.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/
Macintosh_Quadra_AV_Death.m4a

This sound would be used on the ill-fated Centris AV machines.

Power Mac 6100, 7100 & Performa 6100

Uhhhh, this one just sounds like a car crash, which must have been
very upsetting to hear as your Mac died:

https://512pixels.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/
Power_Mac_6100_Death.m4a

Thankfully, it was just used on these super-early PowerPC Macs in
1994.

Some Random Performas

The low-cost, sold-in-big-box-stores Macintosh Performa may have been
a hot mess of a line of personal computers, but in the confusing list
of models, it's easy to tell Motorola 68k models from PowerPC ones:
the former have names with three digits, while the latter use four
digits in their names. A good number of the PowerPC models used this
menacing sound:

https://512pixels.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/
Mac_Performa_5400_Death.m4a

PCI-based Power Macs

Thankfully on the pro sides of things, Apple showed some restraint
once PCI became the standard expansion slot in these machines:

https://512pixels.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/
PCI_based_Power_Mac_Death.m4a

The death chime has been gone for over 20 years, and I'm not sad
about that ... especially when hearing that car crash one.

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