Computer making a weird faint chimes/ping sound

About every couple minutes, my computer is making a sort of chimes sound effect, like one would select as a sound effect for the operating system. It's really quiet. And completely new to this computer. Sounds like some routine that's looping has just completed (like the trash being emptied, though not that). . . and there's the rub. Which routine?
It was doing it when both hooked to the internet, and when I pulled the plug on my connection.
What could be causing it? What are the usual background routines running in OSX? I have Norton anti-virus, but don't know of any other program that could have been doing it.
Suggestions welcome.
Thanks.

Woah. After pulling the plug on my internet connection just a bit ago, I continued hearing the chime described in the last post. Then after a time, I just heard the Microsoft Windows XP "shutting down" sound at the same low volume level after I posted that last bit.
Clearly this is a MAC I'm on, and I have no emulators on this machine. My PC which is elsewhere has been off for a day.
I'm not in an apartment and it was not from a neighbor as they are abundantly far away to not hear their computers unless somehow someone's accessing my computer, deliberately or inadvertently.
Is there anything in the stock G4 with 10.4.8 that can allow someone/anyone access to my computer remotely in a bluetooth sort of way? I'm connected with DSL that's on a land line.
Are we dead certain that MACs don't get viruses and sypware?
I've suspected problems in the past when my external drive kept spinning on at about the rate that I heard this ping, It seemed to go away, but this one was audible and decidedly microsoft (i.e probably not coming from something in the background from one of my MAC programs).
This is really disconcerting.
Thanks.

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