PC speakers in the mid to late 1990s used simple beep codes during the BIOS power on self test to signal hardware problems before speakers or drivers loaded. As Windows 95 and 98 machines aged into nostalgia, recordings of those tones moved to forums, videos and soundboards grouped with other error sounds from the same era. Creators kept using it because younger viewers still recognise the tone from retro tech videos, even if they never owned a machine that made it.