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From: eric@snark.uu.net (Eric S. Raymond)
Newsgroups: alt.hackers
Subject: My latest hack -- Music for PC-bus UNIX boxes
Message-ID: <1WK1b1#5Z5dBz5zk9Y2613qhY4MVCGm=eric@snark.uu.net>
Date: 2 May 90 16:05:55 GMT
Lines: 20
Approved: eric@snark.thyrsus.com

This is partly a test, but mostly an announcement of my latest hack -- a
console speaker driver for IBM PC-compatible UNIX boxes.

See, I found this ancient article on controlling the speaker from C under
MS-DOS using the PC's interval timer. And I said to myself, I said: "Gee.
Wouldn't it be interesting to repackage that as a UNIX device driver?"
So I did.

The really tasty part is that I implemented an interpreter for the
nifty play-string language from IBM BASIC 2.1 right in the driver. So
with it you can do

echo "t255cf8f8edc<a>~cf8f8edd#e~ce8cdce8cd.<a>c8c8c#def8af8" >/dev/speaker

and out comes the Loony Toons theme. Ah, bliss. Pure winnitude.

Now, if I can just find out where I have to poke bytes to write to the
power-on-diagnostics display on my 6386's chassis...
-- 
      Eric S. Raymond = ...!uunet!snark!eric  (mad mastermind of TMN-Netnews)