[comp.unix.sysv386] Sound driver ?

frank5@mars.njit.edu (Frank D. Greco CIS Adj. Prof.) (01/26/91)

A colleague of mine needs to squeeze sound effects out of
a PC using AT&T Sys V.  Does anyone out in netland know
of the src to a device driver that does such a thing?
Or if he has to roll his own, what should he watch out
for ?


Thanks,

Frank
--
Frank D. Greco

Crossroads Technologies, Inc.       ARPA: frank5@mars.njit.edu
P.O. Box 530                        VOICE: (201)-754-7820

johnl@iecc.cambridge.ma.us (John R. Levine) (01/27/91)

In article <2148@njitgw.njit.edu> you write:
>A colleague of mine needs to squeeze sound effects out of
>a PC using AT&T Sys V.  ...

Standard AT&T and ISC Unix have ioctl calls KIOCSOUND and KDMKTONE in the
console driver.  They drive the low-fi PC speaker about as well as it can be
driven without doing tricks that take over the whole machine.  You can play
sequences of beeps of various tones.  SCO recognizes the calls but doesn't
actually make any sounds.

Shameless plug:  The Norton Utilities for Unix include, along with all the
useful stuff, a program that plays tones on the speaker, specified either
as frequency and duration or as musical notes.  The new version even has
a speaker kernel driver for SCO.

Regards,
John Levine, johnl@iecc.cambridge.ma.us, {spdcc|ima|world}!iecc!johnl

allbery@NCoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery KB8JRR) (01/27/91)

As quoted from <9101261221.AA11029@iecc.cambridge.ma.us> by johnl@iecc.cambridge.ma.us (John R. Levine):
+---------------
| Standard AT&T and ISC Unix have ioctl calls KIOCSOUND and KDMKTONE in the
| console driver.  They drive the low-fi PC speaker about as well as it can be
| driven without doing tricks that take over the whole machine.  You can play
| sequences of beeps of various tones.  SCO recognizes the calls but doesn't
| actually make any sounds.
+---------------

...but documents that KIOCSOUND, at least, works.  Now I know why mgr wasn't
beeping....  I'm now glad I didn't get the cdiffs finished; I'll have to port
the kernel bell driver from Xenix (minimal, the startupcode has changed a
little --- it works as is, but spits out its existence even with verbose=no)
and put it back into the Makefile.

++Brandon
-- 
Me: Brandon S. Allbery			    VHF/UHF: KB8JRR on 220, 2m, 440
Internet: allbery@NCoast.ORG		    Packet: KB8JRR @ WA8BXN
America OnLine: KB8JRR			    AMPR: KB8JRR.AmPR.ORG [44.70.4.88]
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pdg@chinet.chi.il.us (Paul Guthrie) (01/28/91)

In article <9101261221.AA11029@iecc.cambridge.ma.us> johnl@iecc.cambridge.ma.us (John R. Levine) writes:
>Shameless plug:  The Norton Utilities for Unix include, along with all the
>useful stuff, a program that plays tones on the speaker, specified either
>as frequency and duration or as musical notes.  The new version even has
>a speaker kernel driver for SCO.

I just wish that the companies doing this package for Norton could
get the Unerase capability working as well as the speaker.  We went
from 2 filesystems running this on an ISC system to taking it
off altogether because of kernal panics and hangs directly
attributable to this package, and then the same on AT&T Unix.
The same story from two other local sites.  It is completely
unusable.  So, if you want to pay the money for a nice system
that plays pretty tunes, be my guest, even though there was one
for free posted to the net not that long ago.
Disclaimer.... we got it as soon as it came out.  It may have
been improved by now... although I doubt it as I asked the person
I reported the bugs to (he said at least one was known) to let
me know when they were fixed and I have yet to hear back.
-- 
Paul Guthrie
chinet!nsacray!paul or pdg@balr.com or attmail!balr!pdg