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| Playing a sound BEFORE windows starts on a cab? |
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| protokatie:
An idea that may work, buy one of those cheepey kids toys that say something when you hit a button or tickle them, and replace the eprom in them with what sound you want. Ok, not an easy mod, but something to post on arstechnica once done. I remember back in the 90's radioshack sold audio storage chips as part of a DIY digital audio recorder, if they still sell the chip you could make your own completely custom system that could play sounds for a multitude of things. But here I am thinking beyond a simple hack, but if anyone did use this chip and design a good system for it, that would be useful for the community. EDIT: Ooo. Just though of something, I have an old digital answering machine that wouldn't do well for this, but if you have an old "2 tape" one (with a loop tape for the out going message) you could easily hack that for your purpose. |
| Finchbyrd:
When windows boots and the bios causes the internal speaker to "beep," is the beep the only signal the speaker can output or is that sound that the motherboard is pushing? I'm asking because, if you used one of those kid recorder things you could wire it to the motherboard speaker pins and have it activate when it receives the "beep" signal. Again, I don't know if it beeps because that's the only noise it can make, or if that's the sound the motherboard pushes to the speaker. And, if it could play another sound if it were manufactured that way, is the signal constant or just that single beep, meaning external power would have to be used if it only gets the power strong enough for the single beep. |
| protokatie:
--- Quote from: Finchbyrd on September 14, 2009, 07:51:21 pm ---When windows boots and the bios causes the internal speaker to "beep," is the beep the only signal the speaker can output or is that sound that the motherboard is pushing? I'm asking because, if you used one of those kid recorder things you could wire it to the motherboard speaker pins and have it activate when it receives the "beep" signal. Again, I don't know if it beeps because that's the only noise it can make, or if that's the sound the motherboard pushes to the speaker. And, if it could play another sound if it were manufactured that way, is the signal constant or just that single beep, meaning external power would have to be used if it only gets the power strong enough for the single beep. --- End quote --- The "beep" speaker "can" play more than a beep. A lot of early MSDOS games used the internal speaker when no other sound option was available, but it sucked (IE they were sending a modulated signal to a "beep" speaker to fake sounds that the "beep" speaker cannot do on its own.). To my knowledge, the beep speaker is simply given power and it makes the beep noise on its own (it is a form of buzzer speaker). You COULD use that small bump of power to trigger a small solonoid or NPN transistor circuit to start something going, but the power is there for only as long as the beep sound is, so it would have to be a solonoid or other switching setup. (IE you would have to use the "beep" voltage as a switch to tell something else to do its own thing, power is only applied when the beep is happening). |
| drventure:
Yeah, any attempt to get the actual PC mobo to do this is bound for failure unless you know enough to upgrade and replace the bios itself. Not something I want to take on. Esp not when there's really cheap, and (at least it would seem) fairly easy solutions with cheapo MP3 players or these "talking greeting card" audio modules floating around... But if anyone knows how to get a bios to play music during the boot process, I'd definitely be all ears! |
| Finchbyrd:
Oh no no, I didn't mean use the speaker, I just meant use the power from the pins because they get that burst of power to make the beep, and I figured that could trigger play on a device. |
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