Playing a sound BEFORE windows starts on a cab?

[drventure]

Anyone ever tried something like this

In other words, the cab is normally powered off. When you flip the switch, the PC will power up and start it's boot process, but "something else" would immediately start playing a recorded audio track.

I'm thinking take a little cheapy MP3 player, put one MP3 track on it, and hack the power and play buttons to get hit by the same switch that powers the PC up.

But that's just an off the cuff idea.

XP seems to take about 30-40 seconds to load on my cab, which is not bad, and could likely be improved by 5-10 seconds with some tweaking, but I thought it'd be pretty cool to flip the switch and have a 15-20 second audio program play while the pc boots.

I didn't see any posts here of anyone trying that, though, so I thought I'd throw it out there.

[severdhed]

sounds like a cool idea, i'd be interested to see how it works out

[fallacy]

Integrate one of these LCD picture frames into your cab. You can have video and audio play on power up.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16882136225

[DeLuSioNal29]

Kind of reminds me of how Macs boot up.  But it's only a small chord, not a long mp3 file.

D

[drventure]

Well, a little success on this

I found an old RaveMP2000 I've had for years. I thought I'd lost the cable but, no, it was just buried in a box of old cables I keep around just for this sort of thing 



Anyway, my big concern for this was that this dude is so old, it uses a PARALLEL port interface! That, and the LCD screen is starting to fade really bad. At some points in the menus, you can't read em at all.

And the kicker, the old drivers don't work under Vista (or XP, or hell, Windows 2000 or NT4 for that matter, Win98 only baby!)

Sooooo. I pulled out the driver app I'd written for it back in 2002, ran it, couldn't detect the device. <sigh>

So I started poking around. Well, first, I had to install NTPORT (a DLL/OCX that allows VB6 programs to get at the PPorts under NT). That thing itself hasn't been updated since 2004, but lo and behold, it's still out there, and after a few false starts, I got it installed and registered.

Back to my app, run it, Oh yeah! I actually got the file list out of that thing!

it's got a whopping 32mb storage, turns on instantly, looks like it can start playing a track within less than a second from being turned on, AND has a DC3v external power plug, so no batteries to futz with.

All I +SHOULD+ have to do is wire up a relay driven contact to the PLAY button and I'll be good to go.

At least, that's the theory right now.

[DeLuSioNal29]

I had a similar issue with a Diamond Rio MP3 player that I had.  It had a Parallel interface as well to load stuff onto it.

I managed to find this great software called Sveta Portable Audio:  http://www.dbpoweramp.com/sveta-portable-audio.htm

It allowed me to load music by dragging and dropping it to my device.  It worked with WinXP.  Their site lists many MP3 players and drivers for them that work.

My MP3 player has been stolen since (good riddance - heh) so I don't have it anymore.  But it worked while I had it.

DeLuSioNaL

[NeoTechni]

You could try a copy of XP embedded

[Finchbyrd]

I'd love to do this after reading this, someone do the hard work and explain it for us

[mvsfan]

this reminds me of something. ive got a willlem eprom programmer that uses parallel port and i havent used it in a long time cause i cannibalized my old pc for one of my projects. next time i needed something, looked at the willem and dusted it off i realized the new pc didnt have a parallell port.

has anybody used it with a parallell add on card? any issues?

im sure it would work id just like to know before i waste $ on a card.

[mvsfan]

ill keep up on this though cause it interests me.

Years ago i got tired of Doom music and inserted the entire intro of Megadeths holy wars into it instead.

that would be very very cool to have that intro once again when i first power on my cabinet.

[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]

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.

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.

[drventure]

Oh. I see what you mean. Yeah, you could probably use that, or, just the 5v line on one of the drive leads. I believe those go hot immediately, even before you hear the beep.

[protokatie]

Oh. I see what you mean. Yeah, you could probably use that, or, just the 5v line on one of the drive leads. I believe those go hot immediately, even before you hear the beep.

Or the 3.3V on the power LED.

EDIT: Wait a sec, if we are going to this level, then just use the PC power switch as the trigger. The only problem would be that it stays on. Nevermind; just go with using the BEEP speaker as the trigger, it only beeps once if on, and then if the OS locks up and you hit too many keys. Go with the beep speaker, it is nearly fail safe.

[doctorhifi]

This little device can be handy to deal with various triggering needs.  Perhaps it may lend itself  to your idea somehow?

http://www.altronix.com/index.php?pid=2&model_num=6062

[drventure]

In my case, the "powerswitch" is going to be a very obvious, very +large+ object on the cabinet, that's external and can easily be made DPDT. So I'll be able to throw both the PC power switch and any other "contact" switch that I might need to through.

The only catch is that my switch is constant, ie when it's thrown ON, it's making contact the whole time it's ON, when you throw it OFF, it breaks contact completely.

Not quite standard Arcade cab behavior, I'll grant. In this case though, the "arcade style" behavior would probably be easier to deal with 

[mvsfan]

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.

Ive been taking things apart as long as ive known me, heh.

I remember when i was a kid and busted some of those stupid talking toys apart on purpouse,

they had a small record inside them.

and yes some survived the years intact till i was old enough to want to smash them and see if it would play on a turntable. nope, too small.

just figured id share that.

[mvsfan]

out of everything i had i wish id saved the pig though. it would be a number 1 seller in spencers today.

my aunt had a way of finding unique things like what they sell at spencers, before their was a spencers.

the pig wore a bikers jacket , Was truly a pig with all the noises it maded, and it had a filthy mouth.

=number 1 seller today.