clicky driver

[Ian Smith]

On Fri, 25 Dec 2009 20:23:22 -0800 Gary Kline <kline at thought.org> wrote:
 > On Sat, Dec 26, 2009 at 01:10:45AM +0000, Chris Whitehouse wrote:
 > > Gary Kline wrote:
 > > >>On Fri, 25 Dec 2009 13:37:13 -0800, Gary Kline <kline at thought.org> wrote:
 > > >>>	at first I'm lookings for a "cots" (commericial, off-the-shelf)
 > > >>>	solution.  The XO has stereo speakers and so do the notebooks.  
 > > >>>	I am thinking of the 'PC speaker'; something that would sound for
 > > >>>	around a 25th/second, very low and with at least some loudness
 > > >>>	control.  
 > > 
 > > Hi Gary,
 > > 
 > > someone posted recently about the play-string language for /dev/speaker, 
 > > see speaker(4). Could you do something with that?
 > > 
 > > btw thanks to whoever posted the play-string code for frere jaques - 
 > > cracked me up :)
 > >
 > > Chris

Yeah :)  I play little tunelets on certain battery power events, when 
some IP gets blacklisted by some logtailing script, things like that.

 > 	Wow; the stuff I've never heard about:-)   --I just tried spkrtest
 > 	and have no /dev/speaker.   

# kldload speaker

device speaker isn't in kernel GENERIC.  If it doesn't work immediately, 
try adding speaker_load="YES" to /boot/loader.conf .. this assumes that 
your box _has_ a working speaker, eg beeps once while booting?

Some laptops use the sound'card' for speaker, and provide a mixer level.

 > 	The short answer [Guess] is no, I dont think so.  If getting the
 > 	keys to have an auditory feedback with beeps or shorter clicks were
 > 	that easy, it would have been done after 15 years.  Even Linux
 > 	lacks this--and I'd bet Minux too.  
 > 
 > 	What I've got to do is pick up where I kwit ten years ago with the 
 > 	kernel driver code and drop the the code to make the speaker-audio
 > 	create tiny, brief clicks, preferably low, thunky sounds like ye 
 > 	ancient IBM Selectrics.  

You can do quite a lot with various tempos, intervals and frequencies; 
see speaker(4) and play around.  Making a short click or thunk! should 
be easy enough, but spkrtest and echoing playstrings >/dev/speaker are 
userland processes; I've no idea how much 'fun' it would be to invoke
/dev/speaker ioctls from the kbd drivers.  But if you're really keen:

% find /sys/ -name "speaker*" -o -name "spkr*"

cheers, Ian