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

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

#91

Post by bonzini »

yuhong wrote: post #77
bonzini wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The SuperI/O is the part of the southbridge (which later became the ICH and nowadays is known as PCH) that implements the legacy ISA chips (RTC, 8042[1], 8254, 8257, 8259). It used to be separate, which was already an improvement over the separate integrated circuits of 30 years ago. [1] nowadays the 8042 is mostly emulated in SMM because it needs to convert USB to PS/2.

I think the Super I/O is typically a separate chip on the LPC bus.

Not since at least PIIX (1990-something).

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

#92

Post by voltagex_ »

45h34jh53k4j wrote: post #61
rzzzt wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The PC port of Pinball Fantasies could also play MOD music through the internal speaker fairly nicely. My personal favorite is still the "Magic Mushroom" disk, which played the audio part of an Air-O-Zone air freshener commercial, all in 360K. :)

hey. your story intrigued me, so i found it and hosted it somewhere more free. Its quite rare these days. It doesn't work in Dosbox on OSX unfortunately so I couldn't see it. This is: echo Magic Mushroom Echo -------------- echo This Program was made by the R&D Team at echo the Cleveland Corp. of Australia at Hendra echo To turn 'Magic Mushroom off press any key echo Bye,Bye,Bye virus total scan (its clean): https://…

Where'd you find this? I'm trying to find out what happened to "Cleveland Corp of Australia".

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

#93

Post by int_19h »

jordache wrote: post #75
int_19h wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were some DOS games that had that baked in. Here's one example from 1987 (!), that used CGA graphics. They couldn't really spare the processing power during the game itself, so they kept it for the intro and the main menu. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yL-u7lsMxk

Wow that must have been magic to anyone not aware such capabilitily existed

Back when I saw it for the first time on real hardware, my jaw did drop.

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

#94

Post by huskyr »

wyager wrote: post #63

>It turns out that they couldn’t. And the answer to why they couldn’t came from a totally unexpected place. The American’s with Disabilities Act. I wonder how much this act has cost society. Just in this particular instance, let's say keeping this chip on PC motherboards adds 5¢ to the cost of each motherboard. Multiply by a billion PCs sold in the last 10 years (The actual number is higher, but maybe some don't have…

You're making lots of wrong assumptions and insulting remarks here.

This act is not just about 'blind people', but people with all kinds of disabilities. If you read the article, you'll see that Beep() API is used for assistive technologies, which can be anything, from devices for motor impairment to deafness. Not everyone who is disabled is blind.

If this API would have suddenly disappeared the 'cost to society' would have been much higher than the assumed figure of $50M that you're stating here. Imagine if you'd wake up one day and your mouse doesn't work anymore because it's no longer compatible. That's how important assistive technologies can be to disabled people.

Furthermore, the suggestion that blindness can be 'fixed' by donating $50M to 'sight restoration technology' (whatever that is) grossly underestimates the complexities and variety of sight related disabilities. Vision is not a switch you can turn on again with an operation.

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

#95

Post by stuaxo »

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

This was great, it's surprising it wasn't mentioned in the article or comments. A shame the isn't a speaker wddm.

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

#96

Post by stuaxo »

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

This was great, it's surprising it wasn't mentioned in the article or comments. A shame the isn't a speaker wddm.

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

#97

Post by makomk »

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 think Linux still has a driver that allows the internal speaker to emulate a sound card badly even now.

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

#98

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

syngrog66 wrote: post #88
qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"So," say I, "what is the madness, The state of awful system sadness, That would cause Linux such distress?" After all, the days of yore, from which this reference came before, those days are long since gone. Yes, the PDP is long since gone, and though it legacy carries on, the once-great HACTRN is no more. So once again this begs the question, which I ask through my HN session, what did feep upon your console's bell…

there should be a rule for this: all great & powerful modern emotional things can be reframed to point back to some work of Edgar Allen Poe. whether hacker related or not. the only dependency is the human condition and/or to Shakespeare, etc.

That's true of any author: You can reframe almost anything as a reference to anything, if you try hard enough.

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

#99

Post by TorKlingberg »

StillBored wrote: post #26
dogma1138 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost nothing, there are some components that are emulated in software/firmware.

Well a certain amount of it is emulated in SMM, but from the fact that its still possible to boot DOS on most modern machines, a lot of the core hardware is still there emulated or otherwise. I was just reading a review on the Asus X99-A II, board where they were talking about the super-io chip's PS2 keyboard port. And IIRC, a couple years ago someone (IBM IIRC) dared to ship a machine without an 8042 keyboard contro…

> Same thing goes for RS232 ports, which are still on the vast majority of decent PC hardware even if they don't have headers soldered on.

As someone who works on embedded systems, the serial port is really useful for debugging when nothing else works.

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

#100

Post by david-given »

...way back when, a lot of sound cards had a connector on the top which could be hooked up to your CD drive, so that the drive could play Red Book audio which would be sent (as analogue) to your speakers.

Clever me noticed that the pinout of the CD drive matched the pinout of the PC's internal speaker. Aha, I thought; I can connect it up so that the internal speaker noises come out through my sound system.

Turns out that full-voltage square-wave 5V, amplified and pushed through a set of decent speakers, is... slightly loud.

(I was actually lucky not to damage the speakers. Or have a heart attack.)

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