[Guust-Fi]

Mr. Radar mentioned it was possible to get the internal pc speaker to work as output using a certain driver. I did a brief search but couldn't really find what I was looking for. I would like to output error sounds and other insignificant windows sounds to my internal pc speaker to be able to use my chaintech with kernel streaming. Does anybody know how to do this? Btw how can you specify the soundcard you wish to use with a game like "America's Army" where there is no option to choose your desired soundcard?
I could also connect a little speaker to my onboard soundcard of course but I would still like to try this.

Thanks,
Guust-Fi

 

[madman2003]

Look at this (assuming that you use windows): http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q138857/

It orginates from windows 3.1, so it's a bit old. I can remember installing for someone quite a few years ago.

Madman2003.

 

[sgrossklass]

You don't want to use the PC speaker as "sound card", believe me. Even if there were any kind of driver, everything (!) would be brought to a halt during sound playback. The CPU is used as a primitive 1-bit DAC, with the speaker forming the lowpass filter - a compromise that was adequate for a business machine in the early '80s but nothing more. Better use that onboard sound, it'll be vastly superior.

EDIT: I've actually used that Windows 3.1 speaker driver, on my old notebook which lacked any kind of sound as well as a PCMCIA slot. I think the thing still worked in Windows 95, but that's about it. As I said, you do not want that kind of driver in any multitasking OS.

 

[Guust-Fi]

I already told you I don't care about sound quality I just wanted to try this out. I was playing commander keen today and it uses the onboard speaker as output. In the meanwhile I was running foobar with directsound and I didn't notice any interruptions...

 

[450]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Guust-Fi I already told you I don't care about sound quality I just wanted to try this out. I was playing commander keen today and it uses the onboard speaker as output. In the meanwhile I was running foobar with directsound and I didn't notice any interruptions...

Commander Keen rocks!!! Which episode are you playing?


Windows 3.1? Is that compatible with Windows 3.11?

 

[Guust-Fi]

First episode. Do the graphics improve? It's actually more than 12 years ago I played this game and I'm now 17 :d Where can you find the other versions?

 

[AdamWill]

http://www.idsoftware.com/ - you still have to pay, though

. episodes 2 and 3 were all basically part of the same game as episode 1, so no change in gfx quality. After that came Keen Dreams, a little oddity of a game that had an aborted release due to obscure publisher issues (id were with Apogee at that stage but still owed Softdisk several games under contract, Keen Dreams was one of the quickies they made to fill the contract). You can download Keen Dreams here: http://www.dosgamesarchive.com/download/game/71. Then came Goodbye Galaxy! This was made up of two episodes, Secret of the Oracle ( episode 4, the shareware part) and The Armageddon Machine (episode 5, which you got when you registered). Both published by Apogee. These had much better graphics than 1, 2 and 3 (Dreams comes somewhere in between in quality), but still nowhere near today's standards. You can buy episodes 1-5 together for $15 from idsoftware.com , downloadable only. Finally there was Aliens ate my Babysitter, episode 6, which was released commercially by Formgen with a small playable demo available (you can download that here - http://www.dosgamesarchive.com/download/game/70 ). I don't know how much id had to do with that one, though (they don't list it on idsoftware.com) - it may have been something Formgen did themselves after acquiring the rights from Apogee, like they did with Spear of Destiny, the sequel to Wolfenstein 3D.

(man, my head is crammed full of useless information. :>)

 

[llmobll]

wow PC speaker as output. Best thread today.




P.S. Commander Keen in the man.

 

[Guust-Fi]

Quote:

Originally Posted by llmobll wow PC speaker as output. Best thread today. P.S. Commander Keen in the man.

Ok I guess I'll just connect a little speaker to my onboard card...

Still one question remaines. I would have to set my onboard as default device to get it to play windows sounds but how can I change output to my av-710 with games that do not alow you to change this option?

 

[Clown12]

Interesting idea though, I've had a few thoughts that may be relevant here:
I (just barely) managed to disable a new PCs speaker today - the trick you want is to remove the .wav samples from the "sounds theme/scheme" menu in the sounds control panel, that makes them beep the pc speaker instead.

Secondly, how can I get a 1bit audio stream out of my PC, in exactly the style of the pc speaker (x2 of course). I suspect modern PCs SuperIO chips do the work now instead of the CPU, and the big difference I'm after is I want my 1bit wide electrically clean square ware stream fast enough to exceed the resolution of 24bits at 48kHz

Most of the interfaces I know about are either too slow for background use (lpt, com), or require custom circuitry. The BT878 chip (tv-card) or network card (or worse) could have the potential to make a killer audio DAC/ADC.