Strange 'beeping' keyboard typing on PB15

If you mute your computer you still hear the noise.

I don't see how that can be anything but hardware.

That's true, however, hardware is controlled by software. Could be that it's not an OS update necessary, but a firmware issue. We may never know. Have you called Apple support about it. If I get a chance, I might do that.

I think this is a software issue. My 3 year-old PB17 started chirping after I upgraded to Tiger.

It only chirps in software that uses Apple's text-editing framework (Safari, Text Edit, MacJournal), and then, only when there's enough text to turn on the scroll bars. When there's off-screen text in an Apple text editor, it chirps.

It chirps on every key stroke, and every key repeat.

The real proof is that when I open a program that uses its own text-editing engine, like Final Draft, the chirping stops. So I can switch between Text Edit and Final Draft and the chirping starts and stops, depending on which program I'm using.

The chirp persists despite turning off the speaker, or plugging in headphones. Interestingly, the chirp is also heard when plugging and unplugging the headphones. Perhaps it's caused by a combination of sofware and voltage fluctuation, since small changes like keystrokes and plugging in headphones seem to trigger it.

PB17 G4 Mac OS X (10.4.5)

The software causes whatever situation is necessary for the hardware to make the noise. I agree with that.

However, it is the hardware that is making the noise.

When I mute the Mac and reboot I don't hear the chime; when it's muted, I don't hear anything at all when I plug in headphones or speakers. It's completely muted.

Now at the same time, when I have the mac muted, I can still here the chirping sound from the keyboard. If I run iTunes and play music loudly in the background while the computer is muted, I still don't hear any music even though I hear the chirps, and it doesn't make the chirps sound any different. If this was actual software sound, it would be going through the sound card and being mixed with the music.

The only way software could possibly be an explanation is if the sound card was giving special treatment to this sound and supressing all others. Even in that case, that's a weird thing for a sound card to do. And even in that case, it's a weird thing for software to be generating this sound. This explanation makes the least sense to me because you'd pretty much have to code it intentionally.

The next piece to the puzzle is that this is dependent on setting your CPU to maximum performance. That's a hardware setting.

And here's one final piece. When you hear the little chirps, try putting your ear right up against the speakers. Do you hear a static pattern? Sounds a lot like a working hardrive, but it's not. You can hear your hard drive as well and it's much louder and much cleaner of a sound. I'm talking about white noise beats in a rapid 'random' pattern, like the rhythmic pattern produced by pebbles falling, a babbling brook, morse code or a hard drive working.

I think that's the processor. And although it's very hard for me to both stick my ear against the laptop speaker to hear this and watch the processor monitor, it does seem mirror the activity I see scrolling by in it.

One possibility is that this is related to the way the text widget uses memory since it appears to be tied to increasing memory usage, character by character, (i.e.: only happens when you edit existing text). The processor manages the data in the memory, so that would explain the maximum performance component.

So my suspicion is that there is some bad insulation that is causing the soundcard to pickup activity from the motherboard.

867DDR, 1.33 PB

Just another voice saying, yes, this is happening to me, too. A tiny "tink" noise for every keypress, in every application, but only sometimes and not others. No idea why. I've experienced this in two different 15" Powerbooks - a 1.5 and a 1.67 Ghz. Most annoying.

You can add my name to the list as well.

Sometimes my powerbook makes the "tink" sound when I type, and sometimes it doesn't.

Sorry. There's not much else I can say that hasn't been said already.

Just wish it would go away. :/

Glad to see I'm not the only one though.

15" PowerBook | 1.67GHz G4 | 1GB RAM | 100GB HDD | DL SuperDrive Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Yep, me too.

PowerBook 1.67 GHz Mac OS X (10.4.7)

I'm noticing the same problem. I thought to take it to Apple, but then figured I'd check here first. Looks like "there's nothing we can do".

I got it too! Never really noticed when it was occurring, only that it seemed fairly random. Tried the "long TextEdit" test, and it started chirping (much more a "chirp" than a "beep").

It's not overly loud, and, so long as it's not a sign of a real problem I'm not overly concerned, but it would be nice to know what the heck is causing it! 😝

1.67 Al, a TiBk and b/w G3 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

(p.s. no chirping when I'm editing this message though)

I also have the same problem! 😟

My powerbook al 1.5ghz 2005.

Yep... I'm joinin' the ranks of you other beepers. I've had this problem since purchase last xmas '05. I've called Apple several times, they say various useless info to fix, or "I don't know, why don't you purchase another 2 years of Applecare for $400." No thanks...

This is frustrating... Apple should stand behind their hardware...

(Great discussion so far though peeps... keep the info flowing)

You're still under warranty, get it fixed for free before you need AppleCare to do so.

Joe

But what actually cause these noises? Is there midi (or something like that) speaker in motherboard? Maybe I could disconect it?