manipulating the system speaker

Does anyone know of a utility to manipulate the system speaker? I am building a pc that will be "storage only," a bunch of drives, headless, no gui, accessible only with ssh from my desktop computer or the main server. What I need is a utility I can put last in the boot sequence, so I know the thing is booted and I can login. Alternatively, is there a utility that will play a short .wav or .mpg from a startup script? -- Insanity is the final defense ... It's hard to get a refund when the salesman is sniffing your crotch and baying at the moon.