Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What’s up with the Beep driver in Windows 7? (2010)

blogs.msdn.microsoft.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 106 posts

Re: What’s up with the Beep driver in Windows 7? (2010)

#11

Post by TylerE »

dogma1138 wrote: post #9
wyldfire wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even chipset pins devoted to AT keyboards?

Good luck using an AT keyboard today :P there are some USB converters. Some motherboards that offer PS/2 connectivity (rare, mostly "gaming motherboards" for n-Key rollover fanatics) but I don't even know if that chipset would do AT.

Even if you _have_ PS/2 connectivity, good luck getting it work with legacy hardware. E.g. an original Model M kbd will not work with most modern PS/2 due to electrical limitations (can't remember if it's non enough volts or not enough amps)

Re: What’s up with the Beep driver in Windows 7? (2010)

#12

Post by aaroninsf »

AstralStorm wrote: post #8
wyldfire wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even chipset pins devoted to AT keyboards?

There are mainboards without PS/2 ports. The beeper using ancient interface is also long gone. Nowadays, the HDA chip handles it most of the time. There is no reason except ancient compatibility to call into the beeper via the ancient interface.

_Challenge accepted_

j/k... but I hope a Hero Will Rise

Re: What’s up with the Beep driver in Windows 7? (2010)

#13

Post by Yhippa »

jordache wrote: post #2

Anyone else remember that driver that allowed the internal speaker to output wave sound? I remember days of playing SimCity 2000 and Doom without a sound card, so it was just beeps and buzzes. Then one day I discovered that driver and started to enjoy small sounding wave sound

Not exactly that but a similar story for you. I was a huge dork in high school and figured out the sound API on my HP-48G which was just really a way to play a sound from the internal speaker at a frequency and duration. I programmed the first parts of Holst's Jupiter using my calculator and a friend's calculator. Man that was real fun to do. Created an API on top of that to simplify it to play notes at a certain length.

That calculator was amazing. Real nice programming environment there for a high school kid that didn't have programming everywhere like we do today.

Re: What’s up with the Beep driver in Windows 7? (2010)

#14

Post by yuhong »

axelfontaine wrote: post #4

This 8254 mention made me curious. Does anyone know which other parts of the original PC hardware are still present in modern machines for compatibility? (Real mode in CPUs, A20, ...)

FYI, it was 8253 in PC and XT, 8254 in AT. The main difference is the readback command I think. This is not the only error in this blog post BTW.

Re: What’s up with the Beep driver in Windows 7? (2010)

#15

Post by yuhong »

Sanddancer wrote: post #7
axelfontaine wrote: post #4

This 8254 mention made me curious. Does anyone know which other parts of the original PC hardware are still present in modern machines for compatibility? (Real mode in CPUs, A20, ...)

Intel finally got rid of hardware A20 gating in Haskell. Real mode still exists, and iirc, the processor still defaults to it. You just can't jump into real mode from x64 mode, you need a virtualized environment in 32 bit mode to do that.

I think you can technically disable PE and PG in CR0 at the same time and jump directly to real mode.

Re: What’s up with the Beep driver in Windows 7? (2010)

#16

Post by E6300 »

TylerE wrote: post #11
dogma1138 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck using an AT keyboard today :P there are some USB converters. Some motherboards that offer PS/2 connectivity (rare, mostly "gaming motherboards" for n-Key rollover fanatics) but I don't even know if that chipset would do AT.

Even if you _have_ PS/2 connectivity, good luck getting it work with legacy hardware. E.g. an original Model M kbd will not work with most modern PS/2 due to electrical limitations (can't remember if it's non enough volts or not enough amps)

I'm typing this on a Model M from 1990 connected to a PS/2 port. It works just fine.

Re: What’s up with the Beep driver in Windows 7? (2010)

#17

Post by Florin_Andrei »

dogma1138 wrote: post #9
wyldfire wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even chipset pins devoted to AT keyboards?

Good luck using an AT keyboard today :P there are some USB converters. Some motherboards that offer PS/2 connectivity (rare, mostly "gaming motherboards" for n-Key rollover fanatics) but I don't even know if that chipset would do AT.

I think I still have an old Silicon Graphics keyboard somewhere in the garage. Built like a tank, I'm pretty sure it would still work if I had a port to connect it to.

Re: What’s up with the Beep driver in Windows 7? (2010)

#18

Post by yuhong »

TylerE wrote: post #11
dogma1138 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck using an AT keyboard today :P there are some USB converters. Some motherboards that offer PS/2 connectivity (rare, mostly "gaming motherboards" for n-Key rollover fanatics) but I don't even know if that chipset would do AT.

Even if you _have_ PS/2 connectivity, good luck getting it work with legacy hardware. E.g. an original Model M kbd will not work with most modern PS/2 due to electrical limitations (can't remember if it's non enough volts or not enough amps)

I think there is a simple hardware modification to make them work.

Re: What’s up with the Beep driver in Windows 7? (2010)

#19

Post by DanBC »

jordache wrote: post #2

Anyone else remember that driver that allowed the internal speaker to output wave sound? I remember days of playing SimCity 2000 and Doom without a sound card, so it was just beeps and buzzes. Then one day I discovered that driver and started to enjoy small sounding wave sound

I remember building a resistor ladder DA converter and connecting it to the parallel port. Software like No$ gameboy emulator used it, and it was easy enough to write to the parallel port directly.

Re: What’s up with the Beep driver in Windows 7? (2010)

#20

Post by dogma1138 »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #17
dogma1138 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck using an AT keyboard today :P there are some USB converters. Some motherboards that offer PS/2 connectivity (rare, mostly "gaming motherboards" for n-Key rollover fanatics) but I don't even know if that chipset would do AT.

I think I still have an old Silicon Graphics keyboard somewhere in the garage. Built like a tank, I'm pretty sure it would still work if I had a port to connect it to.

There aren't ports because there isn't support anymore. Intel doesn't support AT, I don't even think it supports PS/2 with most of it's chipsets.

The motherboards that do come with PS/2 usually implement their chipset.

Also PS/2 stopped being electrically compatible a while ago around about the same time that the combo Keyboard/Mouse PS/2 ports became available.

It offers pretty low current only about 250ma so you might have issues with older AT keyboards even if the chipset is still AT command compatible.

Post reply on HN