Hi , I'm using an API call to beep the pc speakers.
[DllImport("kernel32.dll")
private extern static bool Beep ( int dwFreq , int dwDuration ) ;
public static void BeepPcInternal(int freq , int duration)
{
Beep(freq,duration);
}
This works fine in Windows XP. But when I run it on my client's Windows 98 system it doesn't beep. I suppose it has something to do with the sound card installed ?
How can I beep the speaker wether there's a sound card or not? It doesn't have to be an API call necessarly. Is it possible to directly access the PC speaker in c#?
Much obliged
Maxime
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I'd first check for an error coming back from Beep().
In any case, yes, on 9x it goes to the sound card, and I suspect their default Window's beep is either disabled orthe volume turned down.
Alas, MessageBeep() tries the sound card first.
Here's some sample code to talk directly to the speaker port:
http://www.news2news.com/v
There's a good chance that NT/2K/XP will throw an exception on that code, so either make sure you trap it or check for OS before using it.
It has a sound card , but no speakers. The client has about 800 such workstations running a DOS program. The idea is that the workstation user gets a PC Speaker Beep notification when he needs to ALT-Tab to attend to a background application.
It would be unpractical to go about and disable about 800 workstations' soundcards or to buy and install speakers for all 800 pc's. I'd have to find a way to bypass the soundcards to beep the pc speakers. The problem is that C# doesn't allow such lowlevel access or am I wrong? I have found assembler/pascal code to beep the pc speaker , pity I can't use it.
I also found a COM component that gives access to the PC speaker , but you need the VB runtimes for that and one of my design goals is to keep dependencies as low as possible , so that's not really an option.
Anyway , if someone has another suggestion to notify the workstation user to ALT-Tab and check a windows application running in the background. I also considered bringing focus to the app when attention is needed, so that the msdos app would minimize , but that would be irritating and not userfriendly.
I suppose u can do onething, for win98 u can install a sound driver for the pcspeaker, must be still available (try http://www.bebits.com/bob/
Regards,
Bhagyesh
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Answer for Membership
by: warturtlePosted on 2004-07-27 at 12:24:28ID: 11650063
Hi Maxime,
Have a look at this:
http://community.borland.c
This is an example using Windows API which are similar between all versions of windows :-)
Hope that helps,
Warturtle