Startup sounds of doom

Remember the first time you cringed when you started up your Mac only to hear the crumpling metal and breaking glass of a loud car crash sound? Whatever happened to the chimes of death?

One part of the new OS X experience that I haven't seen much written about is the lack of whimsical system sounds and error messages that amused and befuddled me under Mac OS 9.x. This thought came to mind earlier this week when a photographer friend called to say his PowerBook wouldn't boot, and that whenever he tried to start the machine it would just make three long beeping sounds and then sit there. I haven't used OS 9.x in more than a year now, so I couldn't remember what those sounds meant (it turned out that the sound signifies bad RAM, but in my friend's case, it appears the motherboard on his Pismo was fried). But hearing about the odd startup sounds triggered my memory of the sounds of horror that used to ring out from my legacy of old Macs.

Even the first OS X Public Beta had a sense of whimsy. There was something fun about setting the alert sound on my PowerBook to be the soft sound of a baby laughing. But the baby's laugh was silenced with the arrival of the first commercial version of OS X.

Today's Mac OS X offers an endlessly spinning multi-colored disc or the sudden black and white text overwriting the screen in a kernel panic. But I miss those whimsical sounds. I mean, could there ever be a more appropriate or ominous error sound than the car crash?

Has anyone run into these legacy Mac sounds under OS X? Are they still there? Drop me a line and let me know...