[PLUG] Quiet intermittent beeping on Thinkpad T42

Jason R. Martin nsxfreddy at verizon.net
Tue Aug 9 02:15:19 UTC 2005


Evan Heidtmann wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I come to you today with a very odd problem. My thinkpad is now making
> an annoying low-volume sound that is very difficult to describe. I made
> a recording:
> 
> http://evanheidtmann.info/audio/thinkpad-beeping.ogg
> 
> You will have to turn up your speakers a bit. It's a high pitched
> beeping sound that is irregular, yet seems to have a pattern.
> 
> I can't tell if this sound is new, or whether it's been there all along.
> I also can't tell for sure what part of the box it's coming from, but
> the recording was made from a speaker. The same noise can be heard in
> headphones attached to the laptop. The sound happens in Linux, but not
> in the BIOS, GRUB, Windows, or the IBM Rescue & Recovery application.
> The sound disappears when any constant CPU activity occurs: playing an
> OGG (muted), moving the mouse around, scrolling, or holding down a key
> (with autorepeat). It seems unrelated to display activity. The volume
> decreases to an almost inaudible level when I reduce the CPU frequency
> from 1700Mhz to 600Mhz.
> 
> Has anyone seen this before? Any suggestions for how to go about
> eliminating it?

Sounds somewhat similar to the interference my HP Pavilion has through 
the headphone jack.  As near as I can tell, the hard drive interferes 
with my headphone jack causing a sorta beeping, sorta whining sound that 
is directly related to the hard drive access light.  I guess routing an 
analog signal through a cramped laptop is kinda tricky :-(

If that's it (does it match your HD activity light?) then I dunno if 
there's a way to fix it, if you figure it out let me know!

Jason



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