The Beep Function.

[Peter Nolan]

Hello,

I have a Compaq Presario 5410UK running under Windows XP having also
installed VB 6.0 on this PC.
I am an intermediate level but inexperienced programmer in VB 6.0. I
wrote the simplest two line program to play a note or tone
in the speakers that consisted of a Declare for the Beep function and
the one line:

Beep 200,5000

where in this case the frequency of the note is 200Hz for a duration
of 5 seconds. The problem is I hear nothing
in my speakers but when I sent the program as an exe to my friend as
an email attachment
the program ran beautifully. His two PC's were running under Windows 7
however.
I did a lot of checking using google to try to find out what's up and
I read that uninstalling Norton anti virus
causes this problem. I had uninstalled Norton believe it or not! So I
tried the fixes offered but still nothing worked. See:

http://www.developerfusion.com/code/140/make-the-pc-beep/

http://www.freevbcode.com/ShowCode.asp?ID=3812

http://www.annoyances.org/exec/forum/win2000/t1003383078

http://windowssecrets.com/forums/showthread.php/108666-No-Beep-(All)

http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm

Can you help? How do I hear the note playing in my speakers when it
works fine on another PC. As I explained I tried the fixes offered
above including running the exe
in the last link listed on line six but nothing seems to work.

Regards,

Peter Nolan.
Dublin.

[Peter Nolan]

Hello,

I meant to write Compaq Presario 1519UK not 5410UK.

Regards,

Peter Nolan.
Dublin.

[Mike Williams]

"Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:491f49f4-a678-4420-b0e4-***@a40g2000vbu.googlegroups.com...
> I have a Compaq Presario 5410UK running under Windows XP.
> I wrote the simplest two line program [VB6] to play a note or tone
> in the speakers that consisted of a Declare for the Beep function
> and the one line:
> Beep 200,5000
> The problem is I hear nothing in my speakers but when I sent the
> program as an exe to my friend the program ran beautifully. His
> two PC's were running under Windows 7 however.

My advice is to forget about the Beep function and play a wav file through
the system speakers instead. Beep attempts to play the sound using the
motherboard's 8254 Programmable Timer chip, which is not guaranteed to be
available on all machines, especially on modern machines. Micro$oft dropped
support for the Beep function in Windows XP 64 bit and in Vista, although it
will still play on many machines, but not always through the 8254 chip. As
far as Windows 7 is concerned, the Beep function was rewritten by Micro$oft
so that it ignores the 8254 chip and instead plays the requested beep as a
wav file through the system speakers, which is why it worked on your
friend's two Win7 machines, although on those machines it will have played
as a wav file through the system speakers, and it would have sounded quite
different (a lot smoother and at a loudness controlled by the user's
settings) than it does through an 8254 chip. So, on some machines Beep will
produce no sound at all and on others it will play through the 8254 chip and
on others (most modern machines, especially those running Windows 7) it will
play as a wav file through the system speakers. Anyway, my advice is to play
a wav file instead.

Mike

[Mike Williams]

"Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:491f49f4-a678-4420-b0e4-***@a40g2000vbu.googlegroups.com...

> Beep 200,5000

. . . something I forgot to mention in my previous response is that you can
use the alternative MessageBeep function to play either the default beep
sound or one of the other system sounds, but they are under the control of
the user and will often produce completely different sounds on different
machines. The system default beep for example can be anything from a simple
short Beep to a five minute rendition of God Save The Queen! If you want a
simple beep waveform over which you want to have control over both the
frequency and the duration (which is what it appears you want) then my
previous suggestion is probably the best option. One thing is for certain,
and that is if you are after a Beep sound which will be heard on all
machines whether the user has his system sounds muted or not then you are
out of luck, unless of course you want to add code that will "unmute" the
system sounds and set them to your desired volume level. It is in fact
possible to achieve that in VB6, unless of course the machine does not
actually have any kind of sound card or if the speakers are either not
connected or manually switched off, but it is not something I would advise
because it will almost certainly annoy the user enough to make him throw
your program in the bin ;-)

Mike

[Peter Nolan]

On Jan 4, 4:16 pm, "Mike Williams" <***@WhiskyAndCoke.com> wrote:
> "Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:491f49f4-a678-4420-b0e4-***@a40g2000vbu.googlegroups.com...
>
> > Beep 200,5000
>
> . . . something I forgot to mention in my previous response is that you can
> use the alternative MessageBeep function to play either the default beep
> sound or one of the other system sounds, but they are under the control of
> the user and will often produce completely different sounds on different
> machines. The system default beep for example can be anything from a simple
> short Beep to a five minute rendition of God Save The Queen! If you want a
> simple beep waveform over which you want to have control over both the
> frequency and the duration (which is what it appears you want) then my
> previous suggestion is probably the best option. One thing is for certain,
> and that is if you are after a Beep sound which will be heard on all
> machines whether the user has his system sounds muted or not then you are
> out of luck, unless of course you want to add code that will "unmute" the
> system sounds and set them to your desired volume level. It is in fact
> possible to achieve that in VB6, unless of course the machine does not
> actually have any kind of sound card or if the speakers are either not
> connected or manually switched off, but it is not something I would advise
> because it will almost certainly annoy the user enough to make him throw
> your program in the bin ;-)
>
> Mike

Hello Mike,

You are very kind to reply to me. Based on what you have said I will
abandon using Beep but what a pity that is because it was so easy to
use and did exactly what I wanted to do. I was actually trying to find
code snippets in VB that I could use to play tones at any audio
frequency for a short interval. Believe it not that is all I want this
program to do and nothing more. I wonder if you can help me out by
pointing me in the direction of finding such code snippets because
after using every search combination I could think of I couldn't find
the snippets I was hunting for and that I started looking for in the
first place when I stumbled on Beep in the links I listed above . I
understand of course that I want to play WAV files say using the
PlaySound API but I'm at a loss to know how to generate those very WAV
files. I also know this is probably beyond me to do from scratch and
that is the reason why I need the snippets and the reason why Beep was
so handy for me just perfect.I am typing this message to you on a Mac
iBook where I have installed a program called Audacity that is a free
download. I can generate any tone for any duration using Audacity. So
for example I could generate several WAV files for frequencies say
200Hz, 400Hz, 600Hz and so on for say .2 of second and by transferring
them to the PC I can then easily play them as WAV files. However I
wanted to play round with different frequencies at will so preparing
each WAV file in that way makes the process hard. Still if I have to
do it like that so be it.
I want to thank you for clearing up everything. I rang MicroSoft
Support to be told I would have to pay Euro72 but I was then told that
they don't support VB 6 amy more but after a little coaxing when I
told them I was sure the problem lay not with the VB code but with
something else the so and sos offered me what he called professional
support for £199. I hung up in disgust. They never miss a chance to
make $'s I'll bet they would in any event have been at a loss to
explain what you have explained to me. I didn't mention I could hear
the tones at a low level barely audible from some onboard speaker that
is not the pair of speakers driven by the sound card.
To post the message I also had to set up an account with google folks
who are every bit as greedy and now see my new gmail address is
visible to anyone so I hope I can delete this. I"ll bet the so and sos
will make this difficult to do.
If you can help out a little more that would be great but if not I
want to thank you again for clearing all this up. It's been occupying
my waking hours for over a week now!

All the best,

Peter.

[Jim Mack]

> "Peter Nolan" wrote...

> I was actually trying to find
> code snippets in VB that I could use to play tones at any audio
> frequency for a short interval. Believe it not that is all I want this
> program to do and nothing more.

I can't help you with code snippets, but I can offer you a free VB DLL
that will make and play tones. http://www.mdxi.com/other/ToneGen.zip
contains the DLL and a usage note.

It will generate mono or stereo tones, with same or different freqs in
each channel, at any common sample rate and for any duration (within
some limits). You can save them as WAV files or play them directly in
your program.

--
Jim

[Peter Nolan]

On Jan 4, 6:46 pm, Jim Mack <no-uce-***@mdxi.com> wrote:
> > "Peter Nolan" wrote...
> >         I was actually trying to find
> > code snippets in VB that I could use to play tones at any audio
> > frequency for a short interval. Believe it not that is all I want this
> > program to do and nothing more.
>
> I can't help you with code snippets, but I can offer you a free VB DLL
> that will make and play tones.http://www.mdxi.com/other/ToneGen.zip
> contains the DLL and a usage note.
>
> It will generate mono or stereo tones, with same or different freqs in
> each channel, at any common sample rate and for any duration (within
> some limits). You can save them as WAV files or play them directly in
> your program.
>
> --
>         Jim


Hello Jim,

Many thanks. I have replied to Mike below in depth but I thank you
also for this link.

Peter.

[Mike Williams]

"Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:7b72a5b5-5662-4632-b3b9-***@z12g2000yqm.googlegroups.com...
> Based on what you have said I will abandon using Beep but what
> a pity that is because it was so easy to use and did exactly what I
> wanted to do. I was actually trying to find code snippets in VB that
> I could use to play tones at any audio frequency for a short interval.

One way that would work is to write some VB code to generate in real time a
very short wav file of the desired frequency and then play it continuously
in an unbroken loop until your desired time duration has elapsed. Here is
some code to show you how to do that. This example generates a short wav
file and then plays it in the way described. All sorts of waveforms (square,
triangle etc) are suitable for simple tones but this particular example
(which I wrote as a simple testbed to test my own hearing frequency!)
generates a sine wave which is better for that purpose. It generates a 0.1
second wav file of any desired amplitude and any desired frequency (within
the range of human hearing) and it then plays it for a selectable period in
the manner I have mentioned. It's a long time since I played with this and
it is a bit rough around the edges. In particular I have used a simple count
of the time generated by the VB Time function to set the play duration,
which will probably cause it to turn into a pumpkin if you start to play a
tone a split second before midnight ;-) That problem will be easily fixed
though. Anyway, paste the following code into a VB Form containing one
Command Button and one Timer Control:

Mike

Option Explicit
Private Declare Function sndPlaySound Lib "winmm.dll" _
Alias "sndPlaySoundA" (ByVal lpszSoundName _
As String, ByVal uFlags As Long) As Long
Private Const SND_ASYNC = &H1
Private Const SND_LOOP = &H8
Private Const SND_MEMORY = &H4
Private Const SND_SYNC = &H0
Private wavedata As String
Private EndTime As Single
Private Declare Function timeBeginPeriod Lib "winmm.dll" _
(ByVal uPeriod As Long) As Long
Private Declare Function timeEndPeriod Lib "winmm.dll" _
(ByVal uPeriod As Long) As Long
Private Declare Function timeGetTime Lib "winmm.dll" _
() As Long

Private Sub Command1_Click()
WavBeep 400, 500, 1
End Sub

Private Sub WavBeep(frequency As Long, duration As Long, _
amplitude As Single)
' amplitude is in the range 0 (min) to 1 (max)
If amplitude < 0 Or amplitude > 1 Then
amplitude = 0.5 ' default half amplitude
End If
amplitude = amplitude * 32767
MakeRawSineWave frequency, amplitude
'If Timer1.Tag = "in use" Then Exit Sub
'sndPlaySound wavedata(0), SND_SYNC Or SND_MEMORY
sndPlaySound wavedata, SND_ASYNC Or SND_MEMORY Or SND_LOOP
EndTime = Timer + (duration / 1000)
Timer1.Enabled = True
End Sub

Private Sub Timer1_Timer()
If Timer >= EndTime Then
sndPlaySound ByVal 0&, SND_SYNC Or SND_MEMORY
Timer1.Enabled = False
End If
End Sub

Private Sub Make16BitMonoWav( _
rawdata() As Integer, samplespersec As Double)
Dim s8 As String * 8, n As Long, k As Long
Dim s4 As String * 4, s0 As String * 4
s0 = String(4, "0")
' set string to exact size for wav file
wavedata = String((UBound(rawdata) - LBound _
(rawdata) + 1) * 2 + 44, 0)
' First write the string "RIFF"
Mid(wavedata, 1, 4) = "RIFF"
' The next 4 bytes are longword giving
' total length of wav file minus 8
k = Len(wavedata) - 8
s8 = Right((String(8, "0") + Hex(k)), 8)
Mid(wavedata, 5, 1) = Chr("&H" + Mid(s8, 7, 2))
Mid(wavedata, 6, 1) = Chr("&H" + Mid(s8, 5, 2))
Mid(wavedata, 7, 1) = Chr("&H" + Mid(s8, 3, 2))
Mid(wavedata, 8, 1) = Chr("&H" + Mid(s8, 1, 2))
' Now write the string "WAVE" and "fmt "
Mid(wavedata, 9, 4) = "WAVE"
Mid(wavedata, 13, 4) = "fmt "
' Now write a longword giving chunk size (decimal 16)
Mid(wavedata, 17, 4) = Chr(16) & String(3, 0)
' Now write integer for format tag = data not compressed (1)
Mid(wavedata, 21, 4) = Chr(1) & Chr(0)
' Now write integer for number of channels (1)
Mid(wavedata, 23, 4) = Chr(1) & Chr(0)
' Now write playback rate in samples per second (longword)
s8 = Right(String(8, "0") & Hex(samplespersec), 8)
Mid(wavedata, 25, 1) = Chr("&H" & Mid(s8, 7, 2))
Mid(wavedata, 26, 1) = Chr("&H" & Mid(s8, 5, 2))
Mid(wavedata, 27, 1) = Chr("&H" & Mid(s8, 3, 2))
Mid(wavedata, 28, 1) = Chr("&H" & Mid(s8, 1, 2))
' Now write average bytes per second (16 bit mono
' = samplespersec * 2) (longword)
s8 = Right(String(8, "0") & Hex(samplespersec * 2), 8)
Mid(wavedata, 29, 1) = Chr("&H" & Mid(s8, 7, 2))
Mid(wavedata, 30, 1) = Chr("&H" & Mid(s8, 5, 2))
Mid(wavedata, 31, 1) = Chr("&H" & Mid(s8, 3, 2))
Mid(wavedata, 32, 1) = Chr("&H" & Mid(s8, 1, 2))
' Now write blockalign (bytes per sample frame)
' (16 bit mono = 2) (integer)
Mid(wavedata, 33, 2) = Chr(2) & Chr(0)
' Now write bits per sample (16 for 16 bit samples)
Mid(wavedata, 35, 2) = Chr(16) & Chr(0)
' Now write the Data Chunk ID
Mid(wavedata, 37, 4) = "data"
' Now write data size (longword) (this is the actual number
' of bytes forming the sound data not counting the 8 bytes
' used by ID and Size fields nor any possible pad byte
' needed to make the chunk an even size
s8 = Right(String(8, "0") & Hex((UBound(rawdata) - LBound _
(rawdata) + 1) * 2), 8)
Mid(wavedata, 41, 1) = Chr("&H" & Mid(s8, 7, 2))
Mid(wavedata, 42, 1) = Chr("&H" & Mid(s8, 5, 2))
Mid(wavedata, 43, 1) = Chr("&H" & Mid(s8, 3, 2))
Mid(wavedata, 44, 1) = Chr("&H" & Mid(s8, 1, 2))
' Now insert the actual data
k = 43
For n = LBound(rawdata) To UBound(rawdata)
k = k + 2
s4 = Right(s0 & Hex(rawdata(n)), 4)
Mid(wavedata, k, 1) = Chr("&H" & Right(s4, 2))
Mid(wavedata, k + 1, 1) = Chr("&H" & Left(s4, 2))
Next n
End Sub

Private Sub MakeRawSineWave(frequency As Long, _
amplitude As Single)
Dim samplerate As Double, cycles As Double, totalsamples As Long
Dim n As Long, k As Double, pi As Double, b1() As Integer
samplerate = 44100 ' a standard wav high sample rate
cycles = Round(CDbl(frequency) * 0.1) ' 0.1 second sample time
' for all frequencies
totalsamples = Round(samplerate / CDbl(frequency) * cycles)
ReDim b1(1 To totalsamples)
pi = Atn(1) * 4
For k = 0 To cycles * 2 * pi - 0.01 Step _
(cycles * 2 * pi) / totalsamples
n = n + 1
b1(n) = Round(amplitude * Sin(k))
Next k
Make16BitMonoWav b1, samplerate
End Sub

Private Sub Form_Load()
timeBeginPeriod 1
Timer1.Interval = 1
End Sub

Private Sub Form_Unload(Cancel As Integer)
timeEndPeriod 1
sndPlaySound ByVal 0&, SND_SYNC Or SND_MEMORY
End Sub

[Mike Williams]

"Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:7b72a5b5-5662-4632-b3b9-***@z12g2000yqm.googlegroups.com...

> Based on what you have said I will abandon using Beep
> but what a pity that is because it was so easy to use and
> did exactly what I wanted to do.

Well . . . erm . . . actually it didn't. That's why you posted your question
;-)

Mike

[Mike Williams]

"Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:7b72a5b5-5662-4632-b3b9-***@z12g2000yqm.googlegroups.com...

> To post the message I also had to set up an account with google
> folks who are every bit as greedy and now see my new gmail
> address is visible to anyone so I hope I can delete this.

There will probably be a way of telling Google to hide your email address in
the groups, but once something is in the clouds it is effectively in them
for ever so it won't be worth bothering, although it will make it more
unlikely that the bots will 'farm' it. I assume that for this purpose you
made up a new email address which is not your main email address and which
you do not really use in earnest, in which case you can just ditch it and
never use it again. You will still be able to see all the responses to your
message in the groups. Better still would be to use a real email and
newsgroup client for your newsgroups instead of Google Groups. I use Windows
Mail myself (the equivalent of what is probably Outlook Express on your own
XP machine), although there are alternative mail and newsgroup clients out
there which are free for the taking and which many people think are better
than Outlook Express (and they probably are!). Within your client (Outlook
Express or whatever else you decide to use) you can then set up a news
account with a free newsgroup server, such as the one at
www.eternal-september.org which will provide you with free access to
thousands of newsgroups, including this VB6 group and at least one other VB6
group which gets a bit more traffic. You can set up your account so that it
displays whatever you wish as your email address. My own email address for
example is shown as ***@WhiskyAndCoke.com which is a completely ficticious
email address . . . and yes . . . before you ask . . . I do actually mix my
whisky with Coke . . . and I am not at all ashamed of it ;-)

Mike

[Gordon Levi]

"Mike Williams" <***@WhiskyAndCoke.com> wrote:

> My own email address for
>example is shown as ***@WhiskyAndCoke.com which is a completely ficticious
>email address

Not _completely_ fictitious. Anybody who is brave enough to take on
Coca-Cola's lawyers and register it will receive your spam.
WhiskyAndCoke.invalid is guaranteed to be fictitious and the mail will
be dropped by a nearby server <http://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2606.txt>.

[Mike Williams]

"Gordon Levi" <***@address.invalid> wrote in message
news:***@4ax.com...
> "Mike Williams" <***@WhiskyAndCoke.com> wrote:
>> My own email address for
>> example is shown as ***@WhiskyAndCoke.com which is
>> a completely fictitious email address
>
> Not _completely_ fictitious. Anybody who is brave enough to take
> on Coca-Cola's lawyers and register it will receive your spam.

Well of course it won't be /my/ spam they receive, but the spam of others
who have sent it to that currently fictitious email address ;-) Besides,
why should I or anyone else be bothered about the Coca Cola company? Coke is
a solid carbonaceous material derived from the controlled distillation of
coal and it has been used by the Chinese for over a thousand years and was
once widely used for domestic heating in the UK and America and in many
other countries. For many years it was believed to have medicinal properties
and hot lumps of it were often dropped into beverages of various kinds. For
all you know I might even drop hot lumps of it into my whisky! In fact coke
is still used in many real whisky distilleries, alongside peat, in the
whisky production process. And of course the Coca Cola laywers could not
even argue that my use of the upper case "C" in the email address was in
breach of their copyright, because the very same email address also uses an
upper case "A" in the word "And". Such use of upper case characters to
visually separate conjoined words is common practice. So, bring it on, Mr
Coca Cola ;-)

> WhiskyAndCoke.invalid is guaranteed to be fictitious and
> the mail will be dropped by a nearby server.

Yeah, but it hasn't quite got the same ring about it ;-)

Mike

[Gordon Levi]

"Mike Williams" <***@WhiskyAndCoke.com> wrote:

>"Gordon Levi" <***@address.invalid> wrote in message
>news:***@4ax.com...
>> "Mike Williams" <***@WhiskyAndCoke.com> wrote:
>>> My own email address for
>>> example is shown as ***@WhiskyAndCoke.com which is
>>> a completely fictitious email address
>>
>> Not _completely_ fictitious. Anybody who is brave enough to take
>> on Coca-Cola's lawyers and register it will receive your spam.
>
>Well of course it won't be /my/ spam they receive, but the spam of others
>who have sent it to that currently fictitious email address ;-) Besides,
>why should I or anyone else be bothered about the Coca Cola company? Coke is
>a solid carbonaceous material derived from the controlled distillation of
>coal and it has been used by the Chinese for over a thousand years and was
>once widely used for domestic heating in the UK and America and in many
>other countries. For many years it was believed to have medicinal properties
>and hot lumps of it were often dropped into beverages of various kinds. For
>all you know I might even drop hot lumps of it into my whisky! In fact coke
>is still used in many real whisky distilleries, alongside peat, in the
>whisky production process. And of course the Coca Cola laywers could not
>even argue that my use of the upper case "C" in the email address was in
>breach of their copyright, because the very same email address also uses an
>upper case "A" in the word "And". Such use of upper case characters to
>visually separate conjoined words is common practice. So, bring it on, Mr
>Coca Cola ;-)
>
>> WhiskyAndCoke.invalid is guaranteed to be fictitious and
>> the mail will be dropped by a nearby server.
>
>Yeah, but it hasn't quite got the same ring about it ;-)

You want a false email address and RFC2606
<http://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2606.txt> specifies how to ensure you
have one. The "ring" seems to me to be less important than your
reputation as a computer professional. Even if you insist on using a
false .com address you could avoid advising someone else to follow
your bad example.

[Mike Williams]

"Gordon Levi" <***@address.invalid> wrote in message
news:***@4ax.com...

> Even if you insist on using a false .com address you could
> avoid advising someone else to follow your bad example.

Why is it that all the idiots who pop up from time to time using names they
have never used in the group before, and who do so purely in order to
chastise me on behalf of someone else who wants to remain skulking in the
shadows, post from Australia, like yourself? What is it with you
Australians? Are you all frightened little sheep, afraid to admit who you
really are or to admit on whose behalf you are really posting? I'd
appreciate it if you just went away and played somewhere else, whoever you
really are. Go on, sonny, rattle yer dags!

Mike

[blank]

"Mike Williams" <***@WhiskyAndCoke.com> wrote in message
news:je4nl1$2bt$***@dont-email.me...
> "Gordon Levi" <***@address.invalid> wrote in message
> news:***@4ax.com...
>
>> Even if you insist on using a false .com address you could
>> avoid advising someone else to follow your bad example.
>
> Why is it that all the idiots who pop up from time to time using names
> they have never used in the group before, and who do so purely in order to
> chastise me on behalf of someone else who wants to remain skulking in the
> shadows, post from Australia, like yourself? What is it with you
> Australians? Are you all frightened little sheep, afraid to admit who you
> really are or to admit on whose behalf you are really posting? I'd
> appreciate it if you just went away and played somewhere else, whoever you
> really are. Go on, sonny, rattle yer dags!
>
> Mike
>
Well, I'm a supporter! And I'm posting from Australia. Greetings Mike. Your
expertise is much appreciated!

[Gordon Levi]

"Mike Williams" <***@WhiskyAndCoke.com> wrote:

>"Gordon Levi" <***@address.invalid> wrote in message
>news:***@4ax.com...
>
>> Even if you insist on using a false .com address you could
>> avoid advising someone else to follow your bad example.
>
>Why is it that all the idiots who pop up from time to time using names they
>have never used in the group before, and who do so purely in order to
>chastise me on behalf of someone else who wants to remain skulking in the
>shadows, post from Australia, like yourself? What is it with you
>Australians? Are you all frightened little sheep, afraid to admit who you
>really are or to admit on whose behalf you are really posting? I'd
>appreciate it if you just went away and played somewhere else, whoever you
>really are. Go on, sonny, rattle yer dags!

You _want_ a false email address and RFC2606
<http://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2606.txt> specifies exactly how to get a
false email address. What possible reason do you have for not taking
_their_ advice? I don't believe it is because you are anti-Australian
or because I have not used my real name. Is it because you enjoy being
chastised?

[Mike Williams]

"Gordon Levi" <***@address.invalid> wrote in message
news:***@4ax.com...

> You _want_ a false email address and RFC2606
> <http://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2606.txt> specifies exactly
> how to get a false email address.

I didn't say I wanted a false email address. I've already got a false email
address. Whether it might in the future cease to be false because someone
registers WhiskyAndCoke as a domain name is not my concern. I don't really
care about it, although if I ever in the future decide to create another
false email address I might just take the advice of tools.ietf.org into
consideration. Or I might not. Besides, there are dozens of people in this
newsgroup who use email address names that could legitimately be registered
as a domain name by someone. Why have you not picked on them? To be honest
you are a total waste of space on this group. You have not answered a single
programming question. You just popped up out of the blue to moan
specifically to me about doing something dozens of other people here do all
the time. You are a waste of bandwidth.

> What possible reason do you have for not taking_their_ advice?

I advised you to go play somewhere else and to rattle your dags, as you
Australians so crudely put it. What possible reason do you have for not
taking my advice? Now go away sonny and do as you're told.

Mike

[Gordon Levi]

"Mike Williams" <***@WhiskyAndCoke.com> wrote:

>"Gordon Levi" <***@address.invalid> wrote in message
>news:***@4ax.com...
>
>> You _want_ a false email address and RFC2606
>> <http://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2606.txt> specifies exactly
>> how to get a false email address.
>
> there are dozens of people in this
>newsgroup who use email address names that could legitimately be registered
>as a domain name by someone. Why have you not picked on them?

They did not advise others to do the same and, anyway, they did not
emphasise their address in the body of the post so I am unlikely to
notice it. You have provided extensive, authoritative advice to many
people including me and I am grateful. I apologise if this trivial
correction made you feel "picked on".
> To be honest
>you are a total waste of space on this group. You have not answered a single
>programming question.

Given my knowledge of VB that is probably a good thing although I have
provided some advice under a previous name.
> You just popped up out of the blue to moan
>specifically to me about doing something dozens of other people here do all
>the time. You are a waste of bandwidth.

I was trying to _save_ a little bandwidth by avoiding the domain name
lookups that failing to deliver mail addressed to you requires. The
TLD .invalid allows a spammer or his mail server to drop the spam
immediately.

[Mike Williams]

"Gordon Levi" <***@address.invalid> wrote in message
news:***@4ax.com...
>> "Mike Williams" <***@WhiskyAndCoke.com> wrote:
>> there are dozens of people in this newsgroup who use email address
>> names that could legitimately be registered as a domain name by
>> someone. Why have you not picked on them?
>
> They did not advise others to do the same . . .

Neither did I. Stick to the truth Gordon and we will get on a lot better.

> Given my knowledge of VB that is probably a good thing [never having
> answered any programming questions on the group], although I have
> provided some advice under a previous name.

Just as I suspected. You are frightened to tackle anybody up front and you
need to skulk in the shadows and pretend to be someone else when doing so.
What a wimp!

Mike

[blank]

"Gordon Levi" <***@address.invalid> wrote in message
news:***@4ax.com...
> "Mike Williams" <***@WhiskyAndCoke.com> wrote:
>
>>"Gordon Levi" <***@address.invalid> wrote in message
>>news:***@4ax.com...
>>
>>> Even if you insist on using a false .com address you could
>>> avoid advising someone else to follow your bad example.
>>
>>Why is it that all the idiots who pop up from time to time using names
>>they
>>have never used in the group before, and who do so purely in order to
>>chastise me on behalf of someone else who wants to remain skulking in the
>>shadows, post from Australia, like yourself? What is it with you
>>Australians? Are you all frightened little sheep, afraid to admit who you
>>really are or to admit on whose behalf you are really posting? I'd
>>appreciate it if you just went away and played somewhere else, whoever you
>>really are. Go on, sonny, rattle yer dags!
>
> You _want_ a false email address and RFC2606
> <http://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2606.txt> specifies exactly how to get a
> false email address. What possible reason do you have for not taking
> _their_ advice? I don't believe it is because you are anti-Australian
> or because I have not used my real name. Is it because you enjoy being
> chastised?

Well Gordon, I can tell you from personal experience that Mike is certainly
NOT anti-Australian. A search across relevant newgroups shows him spending
hours with Australians and others, irons out their vb queries.

[Mike Williams]

"blank" wrote in message news:***@dnews.tpgi.com.au...
"Gordon Levi" <***@address.invalid> wrote in message
news:***@4ax.com...
>> [some nonesense]

> Well Gordon, I can tell you from personal experience that Mike
> is certainly NOT anti-Australian. A search across relevant
> newgroups shows him spending hours with Australians and
> others, irons out their vb queries.

Actually I've visited Australia a number of times, and quite enjoyed it. My
daughter who is a senior nurse, and her husband who is a doctor, were both
born in England and they emigrated to Australia about six or seven years
ago. They absolutely love it and they have both taken up Australian
nationality.

Mike

[Mike Williams]

"Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:7b72a5b5-5662-4632-b3b9-***@z12g2000yqm.googlegroups.com...

> If you can help out a little more that would be great . . .

Here's another slightly different example in which I've used an Integer
array instead of a String and where I am generating the entire required
length of wav file data rather than generating a small 0.1 second wav and
playing it in a timed loop as did my previous example. This version will of
course allow you to then save the full length wav file to disk if you wish
to do so (see remarks in the code). Paste the code into a VB Form containing
a Command Button.

Mike

Option Explicit
Private Declare Function PlaySoundFromBytes _
Lib "winmm.dll" Alias "PlaySoundA" _
(lpBytes As Any, ByVal hModule As Long, _
ByVal dwFlags As Long) As Long
Private Declare Sub CopyMemory Lib "kernel32" _
Alias "RtlMoveMemory" (Destination As Any, _
Source As Any, ByVal Length As Long)
Private Const SND_ASYNC As Long = &H1
Private Const SND_MEMORY As Long = &H4
Private Const SND_NODEFAULT As Long = &H2
Private Const SND_SYNC As Long = &H0
Private Const SND_PURGE = &H40

Private Sub WavBeep(Frequency As Long, _
Duration As Double, Optional wait As Boolean = False)
Static wavfile() As Integer, Flags As Long
Dim SamplesPerSec As Double, samplerate As Double
Dim cycles As Double, pi As Double, k As Double
Dim n As Long, totalsamples As Long, d1 As Long
Dim Amplitude As Integer, dAngle As Double
SamplesPerSec = 44100
Amplitude = 32600 ' just under full volume
Duration = Duration / 1000 ' change to seconds
cycles = Round(Frequency * Duration)
If cycles < 1 Then cycles = 1
totalsamples = Round(SamplesPerSec / Frequency * cycles)
' Note: we may need to add padding bytes to make
' actual wav data a multiple of 4, which means for
' some 16 bit (2 byte) wav we may need and extra
' 2 bytes if totalsamples is an odd number
' (Actually on subsequent checking it appears this
' is not necessary as long as the data is a whole
' number of Integers, which of course it always will
' be at 16 bits per sample, but I may need to check
' this out further).
ReDim wavfile(1 To totalsamples + 22) ' 44 Bytes for header
wavfile(1) = &H4952 ' ) "RIFF"
wavfile(2) = &H4646 ' )
' calculate byte len of total wav file minus 8 bytes
d1 = (totalsamples + 22) * 2 - 8
' and copy the Long result into the two Integers
CopyMemory wavfile(3), d1, 4
wavfile(5) = &H4157 ' ) "WAVE"
wavfile(6) = &H4556 ' )
wavfile(7) = &H6D66 ' ) "fmt "
wavfile(8) = &H2074
d1 = 16 ' chunk size (Long)
CopyMemory wavfile(9), d1, 4 ' write Long to 2 Integers
wavfile(11) = 1 ' 1 = not compressed
wavfile(12) = 1 ' number of channels (1 for mono)
d1 = SamplesPerSec
CopyMemory wavfile(13), d1, 4
' calculate average bytes per second
' (16 bit mono = samplespersec * 2) (Long)
d1 = SamplesPerSec * 2
CopyMemory wavfile(15), d1, 4
' blockalign (bytes per sample frame)
' (16 bit mono = 2) (Integer)
wavfile(17) = 2
wavfile(18) = 16 ' 16 bits per sample
wavfile(19) = &H6164 ' ) "DATA"
wavfile(20) = &H6174 ' )
d1 = totalsamples * 2
' actual wav data bytes not counting header or padding
CopyMemory wavfile(21), d1, 4
' generate the actual sine wave data
pi = Atn(1) * 4
dAngle = (cycles * 2 * pi) / totalsamples
For n = 0 To totalsamples - 1
d1 = Amplitude * Sin(k)
wavfile(n + 23) = d1
k = k + dAngle
Next n
Flags = SND_MEMORY Or SND_NODEFAULT
If wait = True Then
Flags = Flags Or SND_SYNC
Else
Flags = Flags Or SND_ASYNC
End If
PlaySoundFromBytes wavfile(1), ByVal 0&, Flags
' Use the following commented out block of code
' as an example if you wish to save the wav file
' to disk as a standard .wav file
'Dim s1 As String, fn As Long
's1 = "c:\temp\testwav1.wav"
'fn = FreeFile
'Open s1 For Output As fn
'Close fn
'Open s1 For Binary As fn
'Put fn, 1, wavfile()
'Close 1
End Sub

Private Sub Command1_Click()
WavBeep 400, 500 ' 400 Hz for 500 milliseconds
End Sub

Private Sub Command2_Click()
' stop wav playing (most useful for stopping
' a wav that is being played using SND_LOOP
PlaySoundFromBytes ByVal 0&, ByVal 0&, _
SND_PURGE Or SND_NODEFAULT
End Sub

Private Sub Form_Unload(Cancel As Integer)
PlaySoundFromBytes ByVal 0&, ByVal 0&, _
SND_PURGE Or SND_NODEFAULT
End Sub

[Peter Nolan]

On Jan 5, 2:13 pm, "Mike Williams" <***@WhiskyAndCoke.com> wrote:
> "Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:7b72a5b5-5662-4632-b3b9-***@z12g2000yqm.googlegroups.com...
>
> > If you can help out a little more that would be great . . .
>
> Here's another slightly different example in which I've used an Integer
> array instead of a String and where I am generating the entire required
> length of wav file data rather than generating a small 0.1 second wav and
> playing it in a timed loop as did my previous example. This version will of
> course allow you to then save the full length wav file to disk if you wish
> to do so (see remarks in the code). Paste the code into a VB Form containing
> a Command Button.
>
> Mike
>
> Option Explicit
> Private Declare Function PlaySoundFromBytes _
>     Lib "winmm.dll" Alias "PlaySoundA" _
>     (lpBytes As Any, ByVal hModule As Long, _
>     ByVal dwFlags As Long) As Long
> Private Declare Sub CopyMemory Lib "kernel32" _
>     Alias "RtlMoveMemory" (Destination As Any, _
>     Source As Any, ByVal Length As Long)
> Private Const SND_ASYNC As Long = &H1
> Private Const SND_MEMORY As Long = &H4
> Private Const SND_NODEFAULT As Long = &H2
> Private Const SND_SYNC As Long = &H0
> Private Const SND_PURGE = &H40
>
> Private Sub WavBeep(Frequency As Long, _
>   Duration As Double, Optional wait As Boolean = False)
> Static wavfile() As Integer, Flags As Long
> Dim SamplesPerSec As Double, samplerate As Double
> Dim cycles As Double, pi As Double, k As Double
> Dim n As Long, totalsamples As Long, d1 As Long
> Dim Amplitude As Integer, dAngle As Double
> SamplesPerSec = 44100
> Amplitude = 32600 ' just under full volume
> Duration = Duration / 1000 ' change to seconds
> cycles = Round(Frequency * Duration)
> If cycles < 1 Then cycles = 1
> totalsamples = Round(SamplesPerSec / Frequency * cycles)
>   ' Note: we may need to add padding bytes to make
>   ' actual wav data a multiple of 4, which means for
>   ' some 16 bit (2 byte) wav we may need and extra
>   ' 2 bytes if totalsamples is an odd number
>   ' (Actually on subsequent checking it appears this
>   ' is not necessary as long as the data is a whole
>   ' number of Integers, which of course it always will
>   ' be at 16 bits per sample, but I may need to check
>   ' this out further).
> ReDim wavfile(1 To totalsamples + 22) ' 44 Bytes for header
> wavfile(1) = &H4952 ' ) "RIFF"
> wavfile(2) = &H4646 ' )
>   ' calculate byte len of total wav file minus 8 bytes
> d1 = (totalsamples + 22) * 2 - 8
>   ' and copy the Long result into the two Integers
> CopyMemory wavfile(3), d1, 4
> wavfile(5) = &H4157 ' ) "WAVE"
> wavfile(6) = &H4556 ' )
> wavfile(7) = &H6D66 ' ) "fmt "
> wavfile(8) = &H2074
> d1 = 16 ' chunk size (Long)
> CopyMemory wavfile(9), d1, 4 ' write Long to 2 Integers
> wavfile(11) = 1 ' 1 = not compressed
> wavfile(12) = 1 ' number of channels (1 for mono)
> d1 = SamplesPerSec
> CopyMemory wavfile(13), d1, 4
>   ' calculate average bytes per second
>   ' (16 bit mono = samplespersec * 2) (Long)
> d1 = SamplesPerSec * 2
> CopyMemory wavfile(15), d1, 4
>   ' blockalign (bytes per sample frame)
>   ' (16 bit mono = 2) (Integer)
> wavfile(17) = 2
> wavfile(18) = 16 ' 16 bits per sample
> wavfile(19) = &H6164 ' ) "DATA"
> wavfile(20) = &H6174 ' )
> d1 = totalsamples * 2
>   ' actual wav data bytes not counting header or padding
> CopyMemory wavfile(21), d1, 4
>   ' generate the actual sine wave data
> pi = Atn(1) * 4
> dAngle = (cycles * 2 * pi) / totalsamples
> For n = 0 To totalsamples - 1
> d1 = Amplitude * Sin(k)
>     wavfile(n + 23) = d1
>     k = k + dAngle
> Next n
> Flags = SND_MEMORY Or SND_NODEFAULT
> If wait = True Then
>   Flags = Flags Or SND_SYNC
> Else
>   Flags = Flags Or SND_ASYNC
> End If
> PlaySoundFromBytes wavfile(1), ByVal 0&, Flags
> ' Use the following commented out block of code
> ' as an example if you wish to save the wav file
> ' to disk as a standard .wav file
> 'Dim s1 As String, fn As Long
> 's1 = "c:\temp\testwav1.wav"
> 'fn = FreeFile
> 'Open s1 For Output As fn
> 'Close fn
> 'Open s1 For Binary As fn
> 'Put fn, 1, wavfile()
> 'Close 1
> End Sub
>
> Private Sub Command1_Click()
> WavBeep 400, 500 ' 400 Hz for 500 milliseconds
> End Sub
>
> Private Sub Command2_Click()
> ' stop wav playing (most useful for stopping
> ' a wav that is being played using SND_LOOP
> PlaySoundFromBytes ByVal 0&, ByVal 0&, _
>     SND_PURGE Or SND_NODEFAULT
> End Sub
>
> Private Sub Form_Unload(Cancel As Integer)
> PlaySoundFromBytes ByVal 0&, ByVal 0&, _
>     SND_PURGE Or SND_NODEFAULT
> End Sub

Hello Mike,

I just thought I posted a detailed reply to you but I don't see it. If
it doesn't appear tomorrow I will reply to you in detail again. I'm a
hunt and peck typist as they say in the States so I hope the last two
and half hours hunting and pecking have not been in vain.

Holy Moly,

Peter.

[Peter Nolan]

On Jan 5, 2:13 pm, "Mike Williams" <***@WhiskyAndCoke.com> wrote:
> "Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:7b72a5b5-5662-4632-b3b9-***@z12g2000yqm.googlegroups.com...
>
> > If you can help out a little more that would be great . . .
>
> Here's another slightly different example in which I've used an Integer
> array instead of a String and where I am generating the entire required
> length of wav file data rather than generating a small 0.1 second wav and
> playing it in a timed loop as did my previous example. This version will of
> course allow you to then save the full length wav file to disk if you wish
> to do so (see remarks in the code). Paste the code into a VB Form containing
> a Command Button.
>
> Mike
>
> Option Explicit
> Private Declare Function PlaySoundFromBytes _
>     Lib "winmm.dll" Alias "PlaySoundA" _
>     (lpBytes As Any, ByVal hModule As Long, _
>     ByVal dwFlags As Long) As Long
> Private Declare Sub CopyMemory Lib "kernel32" _
>     Alias "RtlMoveMemory" (Destination As Any, _
>     Source As Any, ByVal Length As Long)
> Private Const SND_ASYNC As Long = &H1
> Private Const SND_MEMORY As Long = &H4
> Private Const SND_NODEFAULT As Long = &H2
> Private Const SND_SYNC As Long = &H0
> Private Const SND_PURGE = &H40
>
> Private Sub WavBeep(Frequency As Long, _
>   Duration As Double, Optional wait As Boolean = False)
> Static wavfile() As Integer, Flags As Long
> Dim SamplesPerSec As Double, samplerate As Double
> Dim cycles As Double, pi As Double, k As Double
> Dim n As Long, totalsamples As Long, d1 As Long
> Dim Amplitude As Integer, dAngle As Double
> SamplesPerSec = 44100
> Amplitude = 32600 ' just under full volume
> Duration = Duration / 1000 ' change to seconds
> cycles = Round(Frequency * Duration)
> If cycles < 1 Then cycles = 1
> totalsamples = Round(SamplesPerSec / Frequency * cycles)
>   ' Note: we may need to add padding bytes to make
>   ' actual wav data a multiple of 4, which means for
>   ' some 16 bit (2 byte) wav we may need and extra
>   ' 2 bytes if totalsamples is an odd number
>   ' (Actually on subsequent checking it appears this
>   ' is not necessary as long as the data is a whole
>   ' number of Integers, which of course it always will
>   ' be at 16 bits per sample, but I may need to check
>   ' this out further).
> ReDim wavfile(1 To totalsamples + 22) ' 44 Bytes for header
> wavfile(1) = &H4952 ' ) "RIFF"
> wavfile(2) = &H4646 ' )
>   ' calculate byte len of total wav file minus 8 bytes
> d1 = (totalsamples + 22) * 2 - 8
>   ' and copy the Long result into the two Integers
> CopyMemory wavfile(3), d1, 4
> wavfile(5) = &H4157 ' ) "WAVE"
> wavfile(6) = &H4556 ' )
> wavfile(7) = &H6D66 ' ) "fmt "
> wavfile(8) = &H2074
> d1 = 16 ' chunk size (Long)
> CopyMemory wavfile(9), d1, 4 ' write Long to 2 Integers
> wavfile(11) = 1 ' 1 = not compressed
> wavfile(12) = 1 ' number of channels (1 for mono)
> d1 = SamplesPerSec
> CopyMemory wavfile(13), d1, 4
>   ' calculate average bytes per second
>   ' (16 bit mono = samplespersec * 2) (Long)
> d1 = SamplesPerSec * 2
> CopyMemory wavfile(15), d1, 4
>   ' blockalign (bytes per sample frame)
>   ' (16 bit mono = 2) (Integer)
> wavfile(17) = 2
> wavfile(18) = 16 ' 16 bits per sample
> wavfile(19) = &H6164 ' ) "DATA"
> wavfile(20) = &H6174 ' )
> d1 = totalsamples * 2
>   ' actual wav data bytes not counting header or padding
> CopyMemory wavfile(21), d1, 4
>   ' generate the actual sine wave data
> pi = Atn(1) * 4
> dAngle = (cycles * 2 * pi) / totalsamples
> For n = 0 To totalsamples - 1
> d1 = Amplitude * Sin(k)
>     wavfile(n + 23) = d1
>     k = k + dAngle
> Next n
> Flags = SND_MEMORY Or SND_NODEFAULT
> If wait = True Then
>   Flags = Flags Or SND_SYNC
> Else
>   Flags = Flags Or SND_ASYNC
> End If
> PlaySoundFromBytes wavfile(1), ByVal 0&, Flags
> ' Use the following commented out block of code
> ' as an example if you wish to save the wav file
> ' to disk as a standard .wav file
> 'Dim s1 As String, fn As Long
> 's1 = "c:\temp\testwav1.wav"
> 'fn = FreeFile
> 'Open s1 For Output As fn
> 'Close fn
> 'Open s1 For Binary As fn
> 'Put fn, 1, wavfile()
> 'Close 1
> End Sub
>
> Private Sub Command1_Click()
> WavBeep 400, 500 ' 400 Hz for 500 milliseconds
> End Sub
>
> Private Sub Command2_Click()
> ' stop wav playing (most useful for stopping
> ' a wav that is being played using SND_LOOP
> PlaySoundFromBytes ByVal 0&, ByVal 0&, _
>     SND_PURGE Or SND_NODEFAULT
> End Sub
>
> Private Sub Form_Unload(Cancel As Integer)
> PlaySoundFromBytes ByVal 0&, ByVal 0&, _
>     SND_PURGE Or SND_NODEFAULT
> End Sub


Hello Mike,

I want to thank you for the two fandabadozi blocks of code you have
sent me. I'm indebted to you. I will now implement the code and study
it till I understand what each line actually does. I'm a physicist by
profession so the technical or mathematical aspects of the code to do
with sine functions is readily understandable to me in addition to my
being able to understand A/D to conversion and it's converse D/A
conversion so you will be happy to know that while I'm not an ace
coder like you are I am not totally clueless about what is going on
here either. :)
I want to tell you what I'm trying to do. I have mild depression as
distinct from clinical depression and while mild depression isn't too
serious it is nevertheless debilitating enough and I earnestly wish
that I had an overall brighter outlook on life. This is a bit of a
long story but because I've probably lost you already having just told
you what I have and so I won't go into all the ins and outs of how I
imagine I thought I have might have a possible treatment for mild
depression especially and probably only in the case of reactive
depression as distinct from indigenous depression that is caused by
real physical upset to the brain/body system because it's always so
important to factor in that component that is the body part or role
played by the whole body.
Many years ago, me thinking I don't want to lose you in all this, I
heard that depression is anger turned inwards. I think this is a
brilliant insight. Now, Mike, imagine looking at the computer screen
as you are doing now but imagine never being able to change that
perspective. Imagine having that fixed outlook that is staring forever
at a computer screen and never be able to switch off the screen and
oneself and say to then enjoy everything else that is going on around
one in life noting the phrase "around one". That is a sort of away to
think about depression that is to be forever fixed in one's outlook
peering straight ahead never being able to take the more panoramic
viewpoint that any normal person should be able to hold during the
very varied day that it's possible for many to live.
Now take all that into account and consider the possibility that it
might be possible to induce in someone suffering from depression that
feeling of being able to look around one three hundred and sixty
degree style.
So this is my idea. Years ago 2001 I designed and built a little
pacemaker for runners that simply emits a beep at some settable rate
according to how fast the runner wants to run. Don't get the wrong
idea that I am a whizz electronic design engineer like the fellas in
the newsgroup sci.design.electronics Some of those guys are just
amazing just like you are at coding. Just amazing! I had high hopes to
make some money here but it all came to nothing when it turns out a
company called Garmin make such a device using GPS and simply worn on
the wrist. No way could I compete with them.
However during the last week or two because this project of mine is
only in it's infancy I would sit there comfortably and place the
beeping pacemaker behind my back behind where I'm sitting in the chair
close my eyes and try to focus entirely on the beep beeping at a rate
of about one beep per second. I gotta say I really have noticed a
difference in how I feel even after only say six sessions with each
session lasting say half an hour. You see now immediately why I wanted
the PC to do all this that that little hardware based beeper does. I
got really excited about being able to just choose at will any
frequency for the beep in the PC's speakers and so on and I'll bet you
can relate to how disappointed I felt when it didn't work on my PC.
So I'm trying to train my mind to have a broader outlook by for
example just sitting there for half an hour each day listening to a
beep being emitted right there, not in front of me where my focus
always is, but behind my back. I don't blame you if this doesn't make
the slightest bit of sense to you as a guy who is exceedingly bright
but maybe I'm onto something here that might just give relief. When I
implement the code on my PC I will be able to see much more clearly
any potential this very novel approach might have. I think at least
that this is worth exploring and if it doesn't work and I think it
might already have done just that I will only have lost a bit of time
and I will have made contact with a fantastic coder called Mike
Williams and that's a good thing. That's a great thing.
It will take me a little time to implement the code so please bear
with me. I will let you know how things pan out through
comp.lang.basic.visual.misc.
With regard to posting to NG's I can tell you I use a Mac iBook and I
was able to use MT-Newswatcher on this machine. However there was a
hiccup of some sort when I tried to post to this NG this time round
and so I had to go through google. If spam starts coming in I
discovered I can just delete the gmail address and so long as no one
knows my other email address from my ISP all should be well.

Best Wishes,

Peter Nolan. Ph.D.
33 Templeville Rd.
Templeogue
Dublin 6W

[Peter Nolan]

On Jan 5, 2:13 pm, "Mike Williams" <***@WhiskyAndCoke.com> wrote:
> "Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:7b72a5b5-5662-4632-b3b9-***@z12g2000yqm.googlegroups.com...
>
> > If you can help out a little more that would be great . . .
>
> Here's another slightly different example in which I've used an Integer
> array instead of a String and where I am generating the entire required
> length of wav file data rather than generating a small 0.1 second wav and
> playing it in a timed loop as did my previous example. This version will of
> course allow you to then save the full length wav file to disk if you wish
> to do so (see remarks in the code). Paste the code into a VB Form containing
> a Command Button.
>
> Mike
>
> Option Explicit
> Private Declare Function PlaySoundFromBytes _
>     Lib "winmm.dll" Alias "PlaySoundA" _
>     (lpBytes As Any, ByVal hModule As Long, _
>     ByVal dwFlags As Long) As Long
> Private Declare Sub CopyMemory Lib "kernel32" _
>     Alias "RtlMoveMemory" (Destination As Any, _
>     Source As Any, ByVal Length As Long)
> Private Const SND_ASYNC As Long = &H1
> Private Const SND_MEMORY As Long = &H4
> Private Const SND_NODEFAULT As Long = &H2
> Private Const SND_SYNC As Long = &H0
> Private Const SND_PURGE = &H40
>
> Private Sub WavBeep(Frequency As Long, _
>   Duration As Double, Optional wait As Boolean = False)
> Static wavfile() As Integer, Flags As Long
> Dim SamplesPerSec As Double, samplerate As Double
> Dim cycles As Double, pi As Double, k As Double
> Dim n As Long, totalsamples As Long, d1 As Long
> Dim Amplitude As Integer, dAngle As Double
> SamplesPerSec = 44100
> Amplitude = 32600 ' just under full volume
> Duration = Duration / 1000 ' change to seconds
> cycles = Round(Frequency * Duration)
> If cycles < 1 Then cycles = 1
> totalsamples = Round(SamplesPerSec / Frequency * cycles)
>   ' Note: we may need to add padding bytes to make
>   ' actual wav data a multiple of 4, which means for
>   ' some 16 bit (2 byte) wav we may need and extra
>   ' 2 bytes if totalsamples is an odd number
>   ' (Actually on subsequent checking it appears this
>   ' is not necessary as long as the data is a whole
>   ' number of Integers, which of course it always will
>   ' be at 16 bits per sample, but I may need to check
>   ' this out further).
> ReDim wavfile(1 To totalsamples + 22) ' 44 Bytes for header
> wavfile(1) = &H4952 ' ) "RIFF"
> wavfile(2) = &H4646 ' )
>   ' calculate byte len of total wav file minus 8 bytes
> d1 = (totalsamples + 22) * 2 - 8
>   ' and copy the Long result into the two Integers
> CopyMemory wavfile(3), d1, 4
> wavfile(5) = &H4157 ' ) "WAVE"
> wavfile(6) = &H4556 ' )
> wavfile(7) = &H6D66 ' ) "fmt "
> wavfile(8) = &H2074
> d1 = 16 ' chunk size (Long)
> CopyMemory wavfile(9), d1, 4 ' write Long to 2 Integers
> wavfile(11) = 1 ' 1 = not compressed
> wavfile(12) = 1 ' number of channels (1 for mono)
> d1 = SamplesPerSec
> CopyMemory wavfile(13), d1, 4
>   ' calculate average bytes per second
>   ' (16 bit mono = samplespersec * 2) (Long)
> d1 = SamplesPerSec * 2
> CopyMemory wavfile(15), d1, 4
>   ' blockalign (bytes per sample frame)
>   ' (16 bit mono = 2) (Integer)
> wavfile(17) = 2
> wavfile(18) = 16 ' 16 bits per sample
> wavfile(19) = &H6164 ' ) "DATA"
> wavfile(20) = &H6174 ' )
> d1 = totalsamples * 2
>   ' actual wav data bytes not counting header or padding
> CopyMemory wavfile(21), d1, 4
>   ' generate the actual sine wave data
> pi = Atn(1) * 4
> dAngle = (cycles * 2 * pi) / totalsamples
> For n = 0 To totalsamples - 1
> d1 = Amplitude * Sin(k)
>     wavfile(n + 23) = d1
>     k = k + dAngle
> Next n
> Flags = SND_MEMORY Or SND_NODEFAULT
> If wait = True Then
>   Flags = Flags Or SND_SYNC
> Else
>   Flags = Flags Or SND_ASYNC
> End If
> PlaySoundFromBytes wavfile(1), ByVal 0&, Flags
> ' Use the following commented out block of code
> ' as an example if you wish to save the wav file
> ' to disk as a standard .wav file
> 'Dim s1 As String, fn As Long
> 's1 = "c:\temp\testwav1.wav"
> 'fn = FreeFile
> 'Open s1 For Output As fn
> 'Close fn
> 'Open s1 For Binary As fn
> 'Put fn, 1, wavfile()
> 'Close 1
> End Sub
>
> Private Sub Command1_Click()
> WavBeep 400, 500 ' 400 Hz for 500 milliseconds
> End Sub
>
> Private Sub Command2_Click()
> ' stop wav playing (most useful for stopping
> ' a wav that is being played using SND_LOOP
> PlaySoundFromBytes ByVal 0&, ByVal 0&, _
>     SND_PURGE Or SND_NODEFAULT
> End Sub
>
> Private Sub Form_Unload(Cancel As Integer)
> PlaySoundFromBytes ByVal 0&, ByVal 0&, _
>     SND_PURGE Or SND_NODEFAULT
> End Sub


Hello Mike,

I hope you see this reply. Both blocks of code you gave me worked
first time. I copied and pasted them into my drafts folder on my Apple
Mac iBook G4 directly from comp.lang.basic.visual.misc. Being able to
copy text from Safari, my default browser, to then be able to paste
the text to virtually anywhere is a wonder to me. I don't know enough
about computing to understand how natural all that is. I did notice
years ago it wasn't possible to copy and paste Word text into Outlook
EXpress except in a garbled form but maybe that is possible today.
Apart from that one case it seems possible to copy and paste all over
the place. Brilliant! I then saved both blocks in a Word .doc file
onboard my iBook. Sometime ago I learned how to connect my iBook to my
Presario 1519UK PC using an Internet cable. I love connecting
computers together and having them exchange files. It took me a long
time to configure the PC to share folders but at long last I got the
hang of it. I don't know what your own experience is of tutorial
material on the web but just like my PC wouldn't play tones on my PC
using the Beep function I couldn't see in my case how to implement the
instructions in that tutorial but after clicking here there and
everywhere I finally got it down pat. I even use my own approach to
transfer files by copying and pasting folders into windows on both
machines. It's magic to see for example the folder or file I've just
pasted into the appropriate window on the iBook appear magically in
the shared folder on my PC. For me it's just a matter of copy and
paste everything time on both machines to effect the transfer. So now
I had a .doc file on my PC with your two blocks of code with your
advice and instructions and I used the onboard default Word app to
list the code from where with a few little hiccups I was able to paste
the code into two VB programs that worked as I was telling you first
time. I can easily use the code to now build the program I want that
is to emit a short tone of any desired audio frequency at a certain
rate like once a second, say.
My friend whom I sent the exe to play tones using the Beep function
has been reading this thread and he advises me not to divulge personal
information and also advises me not to reveal my home address. Up to
ten per cent of any population has mild depression at any given time
and it can descend on anyone during life to people who are strong and
healthy when a difficult situation that is very hard to cope with
suddenly presents itself. We here in Ireland are now in the bust phase
of a property boom and thousands of people everywhere across the
country who bought a house during the boom now have homes/houses that
are only worth half what they paid for the home/house during the boom.
Many people who were full of the joys of life are now deeply
downhearted with mild depression trying to carry that terrible burden
everyday.
I have always noticed how coy people are at never revealing their home
address in NG's. What are they afraid of I ask? I just don't get it!
Once again, Mike, I want to tell you how grateful I am to you for
having given me the very code I was looking for in the first place and
if anything comes of my hunch, because that is all it is at the
moment, I will let you know through this great NG.
Just by the way we see the Aussie made Neighbours here. I myself I am
not a big fan of what people call soap dramas but there were quite a
few Aussie beauties in Neighbours. One of them took part in a
celebrity dancing competition on BBC 1 called Strictly Come Dancing
recently and she is called Holly Vallance. Gorgeous!

Regards,

Peter Nolan.
Dublin
Ireland.

[Mike Williams]

"Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:7b75dfb9-f79d-4fd1-a1de-***@v13g2000yqc.googlegroups.com...

> Hello Mike. Both blocks of code you gave me worked
> first time. I will now implement the code and study it till
> I understand what each line actually does.

You're welcome. There is one thing I'd like to point out though and that is
the fact that both blocks of code were written in such a way that the main
loop which generates the sample data for the waveform does it a fairly
simple way (by that I mean the easiest way to understand), and not in the
fastest way. You won't notice this for most of the wav files you generate
(your short one second or so wav files) but you will definitely notice it if
you decide, for example, to generate a wav file lasting one minute, in which
case even when run as a compiled exe the code would take about a quarter of
a second (depending on the speed of your machine) to generate the one minute
wav file. So if you were generating the wav file from scratch (rather than
playing a previously generated wav file) there would be a noticeable delay
between pressing the button and hearing the sound. To see what I mean, have
a look at the main loop in the second example, which is as follows:

For n = 0 To totalsamples - 1
d1 = Amplitude * Sin(k)
wavfile(n + 23) = d1
k = k + dAngle
Next n

The value of totalsamples represents the total number of voltage samples in
the entire wav file being generated, and it uses the relatively slow Sin
function on variables of the Double data type to calculate each one of them
(and there are also some relatively slow "under the hood" conversions from
integer to floating point going on, because d1 is currently a Long and the
result of Amplitude * Sin(k) is a Double). For a wav file that is one minute
long and that uses a sample rate of 44100 samples per second the above loop
would need to generate something approaching three million samples, which is
why it takes about a quarter of a second to generate the data (on my own
machine). For the time being you might like to leave it that way, but if you
ever get to the stage where you need to use it to generate long wav files
then you might like to look at ways of speeding it up.

There are all sorts ways of performing the task in a faster way. For example
with your own background you will almost certainly realise that when
generating a continuous tone where each cycle is mathematically described,
such as a sine wave, you really only need to generate a block of cycles of
such length that when you join a large number of those blocks together (in
order to create the full wav file) there will not be a "glitch" between the
end of one block and the start of the next block. Since the first block
starts at a zero voltage level and is rising then you just need to ensure
the length of the block is such that it ends at a point where the final
sample of the block is also at (or at least very close to) a rising zero
crossing point. The cycle length of this block of course will depend on the
relationship between the sample rate (44100 Hz CD rate in this case) and on
the frequency of the tone you are generating, but it can readily be
calculated, and the block will in virtually all cases be extremely small
compared to the overall length of the entire wav file data. You can then
write a bit more code to simply "stitch lots of these small blocks together"
to produce the total wav file. This will be orders of magnitude faster for
long wav files.

Another way would be to continue to use the existing "generate all the
possibly millions of samples for the whole wav file" method but to modify
the code so that it can readily use a lookup table rather than using the Sin
function, although you would still be using floating point and you would
still have either explicit or "under the hood" relatively slow floating
point to integer conversions, so it would probably only be two or three
times faster. You can carry this technique further though by modifying the
code so that it both uses a lookup table and also uses only integers in the
loop (this would require more significant modification). This method, even
though it still generates all the possibly millions of samples, would be
very much faster than the existing method, probaby an order of magnitude
faster. In fact although the first suggestion would be the fastest I think I
would prefer to use this method myself on the grounds that it would be
readily suitable for producing wav files in which the waveform required is
more complex than a simple Sine wave, one with perhaps lots of harmonics.

Don't get me wrong, I am not by any means an expert in wav file generation
or in musical sounds in general. In fact what I know about thse things can
be written on the back of a postage stamp (!) but I do have a passing
interest in such stuff. I was actually going to address some of the other
points in the rest of your message at this point, but I think I've waffled
on enough already!

Mike

[Peter Nolan]

On Jan 5, 2:13 pm, "Mike Williams" <***@WhiskyAndCoke.com> wrote:
> "Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:7b72a5b5-5662-4632-b3b9-***@z12g2000yqm.googlegroups.com...
>
> > If you can help out a little more that would be great . . .
>
> Here's another slightly different example in which I've used an Integer
> array instead of a String and where I am generating the entire required
> length of wav file data rather than generating a small 0.1 second wav and
> playing it in a timed loop as did my previous example. This version will of
> course allow you to then save the full length wav file to disk if you wish
> to do so (see remarks in the code). Paste the code into a VB Form containing
> a Command Button.
>
> Mike
>
> Option Explicit
> Private Declare Function PlaySoundFromBytes _
>     Lib "winmm.dll" Alias "PlaySoundA" _
>     (lpBytes As Any, ByVal hModule As Long, _
>     ByVal dwFlags As Long) As Long
> Private Declare Sub CopyMemory Lib "kernel32" _
>     Alias "RtlMoveMemory" (Destination As Any, _
>     Source As Any, ByVal Length As Long)
> Private Const SND_ASYNC As Long = &H1
> Private Const SND_MEMORY As Long = &H4
> Private Const SND_NODEFAULT As Long = &H2
> Private Const SND_SYNC As Long = &H0
> Private Const SND_PURGE = &H40
>
> Private Sub WavBeep(Frequency As Long, _
>   Duration As Double, Optional wait As Boolean = False)
> Static wavfile() As Integer, Flags As Long
> Dim SamplesPerSec As Double, samplerate As Double
> Dim cycles As Double, pi As Double, k As Double
> Dim n As Long, totalsamples As Long, d1 As Long
> Dim Amplitude As Integer, dAngle As Double
> SamplesPerSec = 44100
> Amplitude = 32600 ' just under full volume
> Duration = Duration / 1000 ' change to seconds
> cycles = Round(Frequency * Duration)
> If cycles < 1 Then cycles = 1
> totalsamples = Round(SamplesPerSec / Frequency * cycles)
>   ' Note: we may need to add padding bytes to make
>   ' actual wav data a multiple of 4, which means for
>   ' some 16 bit (2 byte) wav we may need and extra
>   ' 2 bytes if totalsamples is an odd number
>   ' (Actually on subsequent checking it appears this
>   ' is not necessary as long as the data is a whole
>   ' number of Integers, which of course it always will
>   ' be at 16 bits per sample, but I may need to check
>   ' this out further).
> ReDim wavfile(1 To totalsamples + 22) ' 44 Bytes for header
> wavfile(1) = &H4952 ' ) "RIFF"
> wavfile(2) = &H4646 ' )
>   ' calculate byte len of total wav file minus 8 bytes
> d1 = (totalsamples + 22) * 2 - 8
>   ' and copy the Long result into the two Integers
> CopyMemory wavfile(3), d1, 4
> wavfile(5) = &H4157 ' ) "WAVE"
> wavfile(6) = &H4556 ' )
> wavfile(7) = &H6D66 ' ) "fmt "
> wavfile(8) = &H2074
> d1 = 16 ' chunk size (Long)
> CopyMemory wavfile(9), d1, 4 ' write Long to 2 Integers
> wavfile(11) = 1 ' 1 = not compressed
> wavfile(12) = 1 ' number of channels (1 for mono)
> d1 = SamplesPerSec
> CopyMemory wavfile(13), d1, 4
>   ' calculate average bytes per second
>   ' (16 bit mono = samplespersec * 2) (Long)
> d1 = SamplesPerSec * 2
> CopyMemory wavfile(15), d1, 4
>   ' blockalign (bytes per sample frame)
>   ' (16 bit mono = 2) (Integer)
> wavfile(17) = 2
> wavfile(18) = 16 ' 16 bits per sample
> wavfile(19) = &H6164 ' ) "DATA"
> wavfile(20) = &H6174 ' )
> d1 = totalsamples * 2
>   ' actual wav data bytes not counting header or padding
> CopyMemory wavfile(21), d1, 4
>   ' generate the actual sine wave data
> pi = Atn(1) * 4
> dAngle = (cycles * 2 * pi) / totalsamples
> For n = 0 To totalsamples - 1
> d1 = Amplitude * Sin(k)
>     wavfile(n + 23) = d1
>     k = k + dAngle
> Next n
> Flags = SND_MEMORY Or SND_NODEFAULT
> If wait = True Then
>   Flags = Flags Or SND_SYNC
> Else
>   Flags = Flags Or SND_ASYNC
> End If
> PlaySoundFromBytes wavfile(1), ByVal 0&, Flags
> ' Use the following commented out block of code
> ' as an example if you wish to save the wav file
> ' to disk as a standard .wav file
> 'Dim s1 As String, fn As Long
> 's1 = "c:\temp\testwav1.wav"
> 'fn = FreeFile
> 'Open s1 For Output As fn
> 'Close fn
> 'Open s1 For Binary As fn
> 'Put fn, 1, wavfile()
> 'Close 1
> End Sub
>
> Private Sub Command1_Click()
> WavBeep 400, 500 ' 400 Hz for 500 milliseconds
> End Sub
>
> Private Sub Command2_Click()
> ' stop wav playing (most useful for stopping
> ' a wav that is being played using SND_LOOP
> PlaySoundFromBytes ByVal 0&, ByVal 0&, _
>     SND_PURGE Or SND_NODEFAULT
> End Sub
>
> Private Sub Form_Unload(Cancel As Integer)
> PlaySoundFromBytes ByVal 0&, ByVal 0&, _
>     SND_PURGE Or SND_NODEFAULT
> End Sub

Hello Mike,

As I was telling you both blocks of code you gave me worked perfectly
but sadly there is a problem and maybe you know something about this
too. When I play a tone using your second code block just above I hear
a pop or click that I would describe more as a popping sound or thud
at the start of playing the sound. It is not nice to listen to and
that same popping sound sounds when the WAV file stops playing. To
check this out further I used the Audacity app on my Mac iBook G4 to
make two WAV files at 440Hz amd 600Hz respectively playing for periods
of one second and a half a second respectively. Here is the thing
though. When I play those two WAV files in Audacity on my iBook I hear
the same popping sound at the start and end of playing the WAV file.
So downhearted and fearing the worst I transferred both of these WAV
files to my PC and ran a simple program in VB 6 to play the 440Hz WAV
file using the PlaySound API. Sadly I hear the popping sound again.
The popping sound doesn't sound when I play say WAV files that come
pre-loaded on the PC such as ding.wav for example so it cannot be a
hardware problem. Do you know what is going on and how to prevent the
pop?

Regards,

Peter.

[Thorsten Albers]

Peter Nolan <***@gmail.com> schrieb im Beitrag
<d97642fd-e661-424f-8030-***@a40g2000vbu.googlegroups.com>...
> I used the Audacity app on my Mac iBook G4 to
> make two WAV files at 440Hz amd 600Hz

This and a previous posting of yours let me suspect that you are not aware
of the fact that Audacity is available both for MacOS _and_ for Windows:

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

--
Thorsten Albers

gudea at gmx.de

[Jim Mack]

> I used the Audacity app on my Mac iBook G4 to
> make two WAV files at 440Hz amd 600Hz respectively playing for periods
> of one second and a half a second respectively. Here is the thing
> though. When I play those two WAV files in Audacity on my iBook I hear
> the same popping sound at the start and end of playing the WAV file.

If you examine the waveform in Audacity (which you should put on your
PC as well) you might see that it doesn't start and end at the
baseline. You can cure that in code, or you can just use Audacity to
trim off a few samples so that the waveform begins at 0.

Alternatively, select the first few cycles and apply a "fade in"
effect. The same at the tail, with "fade out".


--
Jim

[Peter Nolan]

On Jan 10, 4:44 pm, Jim Mack <no-uce-***@mdxi.com> wrote:
> > I used the Audacity app on my Mac iBook G4 to
> > make two WAV files at 440Hz amd 600Hz respectively playing for periods
> > of one second and a half a second respectively. Here is the thing
> > though. When I play those two WAV files in Audacity on my iBook I hear
> > the same popping sound at the start and end of playing the WAV file.
>
> If you examine the waveform in Audacity (which you should put on your
> PC as well) you might see that it doesn't start and end at the
> baseline. You can cure that in code, or you can just use Audacity to
> trim off a few samples so that the waveform begins at 0.
>
> Alternatively, select the first few cycles and apply a "fade in"
> effect. The same at the tail, with "fade out".
>
> --
>         Jim


Hello Jim,

Yes. I get it. Many thanks. Check out my more detailed reply to Mike
where I describe how I was able to use Audacity to eliminate the pops
and gain insight.

Regards,

Peter.

[Mike Williams]

"Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:d97642fd-e661-424f-8030-***@a40g2000vbu.googlegroups.com...

> Hello Mike, As I was telling you both blocks of code you gave me
> worked perfectly but sadly there is a problem and maybe you know
> something about this too. When I play a tone I hear a pop or click
> that I would describe more as a popping sound or thud at the start
> of playing the sound. It is not nice to listen to and that same popping
> sound sounds when the WAV file stops playing. To check this out
> further I used the Audacity app on my Mac iBook G4 to make two
> WAV files at 440Hz amd 600Hz respectively playing for periods
> of one second and a half a second respectively. Here is the thing
> though. When I play those two WAV files in Audacity on my iBook
> I hear the same popping sound at the start and end of playing the
> WAV file. I transferred both of these WAV files to my PC and ran
> a simple program in VB 6 to play the 440Hz WAV file using the
> PlaySound API. Sadly I hear the popping sound again. The popping
> sound doesn't sound when I play say WAV files that come
> pre-loaded on the PC such as ding.wav for example so it cannot
> be a hardware problem. Do you know what is going on and how
> to prevent the pop?

Yes. The click or sometimes popping sound at the start and end is almost
certainly due to the fact that in the simple VB6 testbed code the sine
waveform which makes up the wav file is generated at a fixed amplitude
throughout, in other words the shape and amplitude of each cycle of the sine
wave is exactly the same from start to finish. This is also the case when
you use Audacity's Generate/Tone menu to create a similar tone. That is why
you heard the popping sounds you have described both for the VB generated
tones and the Audacity generated tones, both on your Mac iBook and on your
PC.

Most real world sounds are not like that, partly because natural sounds tend
to vary in pitch and amplitude throught most of the waveform and, more
importantly in this specific respect, because they generally start at low
amplitude and gradually build up to to their normal amplitude over a short
period. This is called "fade in". They do the opposite at the end, gradually
falling from normal amplitude to zero, usually over a slightly longer
period. This is called "fade out". You will be able to add some code the the
VB6 routine I posted which performs these tasks for you as it generates the
wav file data. The main loop looks something like this:

For n = 0 To totalsamples - 1
d1 = Amplitude * Sin(k)
wavfile(n + 23) = d1
k = k + dAngle
Next n

The totalsamples variable of course is the total number of voltage samples
for the entire waveform, and as far as the finished wav file is concerned
each increment of n within the For Next loop represents a "playing time
period" of 1/44100 seconds, or about 0.0227 milliseconds, because the code
is generating samples at the rate of 44100 samples per second. What you need
to do is decide on a suitable "fade in" time (in milliseconds) and divide it
by 0.0227. This will give you how many voltage samples need to be "faded
in". Let's say for arguments sake that it comes to 1200 voltage samples.
Then you need to select a similar suitable "fade out" time and similarly
calculate the desired number of "fade out" samples. You then need to add
code to perform the actual fading at both ends. With a bit of thought you
can perform this within the loop itself, but initially it might be easier to
leave the loop as it currently stands and follow it with an additional
little For Next loop to modify the "first 1200 voltage samples" of the
actual voltage sample data of the wavfile() array (you'll notice that the
first voltage sample is at position 23 in the array) so that you multiply
them by a floating point variable which starts with the value zero and
builds up to the value 1 over the full 1200 iterations of the loop, placing
the result back in the array. A similar additional For Next loop will be
needed for the 1200 (or whatever you decide) voltage sample items at the end
of of the voltage sample data in the wavfile() array. It is of course
possible to generate fades of all sorts of different shape, but a simple
linear shape as described should be fine for your purposes.

I would actually write that for you but I'm a bit pressed for time today and
tomorrow, and in any case with your own physics background you should have
no trouble sorting it out. It will also be a good programming exercise.
Before you do any of that stuff though it might be worth generating a Sine
wave file in Audacity which has the required fade in and fade out periods at
the beginning and end and testing it out for how it sounds on both your Mac
iBook and on your PC. In that way you will be able to hear the difference it
makes and you will also be in a position to decide whether the lack of such
fades actually was the cause of your "popping" sound. I'm fairly confident
that it is, but if you do still hear the same popping sound even with a
properly faded waveform (which I very much doubt) then you might wish to
find out what is causing that on your machine before you spend time making
the code adjustments I have mentioned.

On either you Mac iBook or your PC go to Audacity and generate your half
second 440 Hz (or 600 Hz) sine wave exactly as you did before (presumably
using the Audacity Generate / Tone menu). Then stroke the mouse across the
first (say) 0.05 second portion of the waveform (to select that portion)
and use Audacity's Effect / Fade In menu. Select a similarly sized portion
at the end of the waveform and use Audacity's Effect / Fade Out menu. Now
select the entire waveform and play it. What does that sound like?

Mike

[Peter Nolan]

On Jan 10, 5:19 pm, "Mike Williams" <***@WhiskyAndCoke.com> wrote:
> "Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:d97642fd-e661-424f-8030-***@a40g2000vbu.googlegroups.com...
>
>
>
> > Hello Mike, As I was telling you both blocks of code you gave me
> > worked perfectly but sadly there is a problem and maybe you know
> > something about this too. When I play a tone I hear a pop or click
> > that I would describe more as a popping sound or thud at the start
> > of playing the sound. It is not nice to listen to and that same popping
> > sound sounds when the WAV file stops playing. To check this out
> > further I used the Audacity app on my Mac iBook G4 to make two
> > WAV files at 440Hz amd 600Hz respectively playing for periods
> > of one second and a half a second respectively. Here is the thing
> > though. When I play those two WAV files in Audacity on my iBook
> > I hear the same popping sound at the start and end of playing the
> > WAV file. I transferred both of these WAV files to my PC and ran
> > a simple program in VB 6 to play the 440Hz WAV file using the
> > PlaySound API. Sadly I hear the popping sound again. The popping
> > sound doesn't sound when I play say WAV files that come
> > pre-loaded on the PC such as ding.wav for example so it cannot
> > be a hardware problem. Do you know what is going on and how
> > to prevent the pop?
>
> Yes. The click or sometimes popping sound at the start and end is almost
> certainly due to the fact that in the simple VB6 testbed code the sine
> waveform which makes up the wav file is generated at a fixed amplitude
> throughout, in other words the shape and amplitude of each cycle of the sine
> wave is exactly the same from start to finish. This is also the case when
> you use Audacity's Generate/Tone menu to create a similar tone. That is why
> you heard the popping sounds you have described both for the VB generated
> tones and the Audacity generated tones, both on your Mac iBook and on your
> PC.
>
> Most real world sounds are not like that, partly because natural sounds tend
> to vary in pitch and amplitude throught most of the waveform and, more
> importantly in this specific respect, because they generally start at low
> amplitude and gradually build up to to their normal amplitude over a short
> period. This is called "fade in". They do the opposite at the end, gradually
> falling from normal amplitude to zero, usually over a slightly longer
> period. This is called "fade out". You will be able to add some code the the
> VB6 routine I posted which performs these tasks for you as it generates the
> wav file data. The main loop looks something like this:
>
>   For n = 0 To totalsamples - 1
>       d1 = Amplitude * Sin(k)
>       wavfile(n + 23) = d1
>       k = k + dAngle
>   Next n
>
> The totalsamples variable of course is the total number of voltage samples
> for the entire waveform, and as far as the finished wav file is concerned
> each increment of n within the For Next loop represents a "playing time
> period" of 1/44100 seconds, or about 0.0227 milliseconds, because the code
> is generating samples at the rate of 44100 samples per second. What you need
> to do is decide on a suitable "fade in" time (in milliseconds) and divide it
> by 0.0227. This will give you how many voltage samples need to be "faded
> in". Let's say for arguments sake that it comes to 1200 voltage samples.
> Then you need to select a similar suitable "fade out" time and similarly
> calculate the desired number of "fade out" samples. You then need to add
> code to perform the actual fading at both ends. With a bit of thought you
> can perform this within the loop itself, but initially it might be easier to
> leave the loop as it currently stands and follow it with an additional
> little For Next loop to modify the "first 1200 voltage samples" of the
> actual voltage sample data of the wavfile() array (you'll notice that the
> first voltage sample is at position 23 in the array) so that you multiply
> them by a floating point variable which starts with the value zero and
> builds up to the value 1 over the full 1200 iterations of the loop, placing
> the result back in the array. A similar additional For Next loop will be
> needed for the 1200 (or whatever you decide) voltage sample items at the end
> of of the voltage sample data in the wavfile() array. It is of course
> possible to generate fades of all sorts of different shape, but a simple
> linear shape as described should be fine for your purposes.
>
> I would actually write that for you but I'm a bit pressed for time today and
> tomorrow, and in any case with your own physics background you should have
> no trouble sorting it out. It will also be a good programming exercise.
> Before you do any of that stuff though it might be worth generating a Sine
> wave file in Audacity which has the required fade in and fade out periods at
> the beginning and end and testing it out for how it sounds on both your Mac
> iBook and on your PC. In that way you will be able to hear the difference it
> makes and you will also be in a position to decide whether the lack of such
> fades actually was the cause of your "popping" sound. I'm fairly confident
> that it is, but if you do still hear the same popping sound even with a
> properly faded waveform (which I very much doubt) then you might wish to
> find out what is causing that on your machine before you spend time making
> the code adjustments I have mentioned.
>
> On either you Mac iBook or your PC go to Audacity and generate your half
> second 440 Hz (or 600 Hz) sine wave exactly as you did before (presumably
> using the Audacity Generate / Tone menu). Then stroke the mouse across the
> first (say)  0.05 second portion of the waveform (to select that portion)
> and use Audacity's Effect / Fade In menu. Select a similarly sized portion
> at the end of the waveform and use Audacity's Effect / Fade Out menu. Now
> select the entire waveform and play it. What does that sound like?
>
> Mike


Hello Mike,

It's great to hear from you. I went to Audacity that I now see you are
familiar with and convinced that there was an answer to the popping I
generated a 440Hz tone for one second. Easy to do. Then I clicked on
Effects>Fade In and I could see a graphical representation of the
waveform that is amplitude against or versus time that now had a ramp
envelope. I played the WAV to find that the start pop had been
eliminated. I then clicked Effects>Fade Out to find that the pop was
eliminated at the end of playing. I went further by clicking on
Effect>Normalize that brought the volume up. Perfect. I now had
insight.I can tell you that, as you point out normal sounds nearly
always have an initial gradual increasing of the volume, the sudden
increase in amplitude or the sudden decrease in amplitude that is
characteristic of a WAV file that starts with and ends with full
cycles of the sine wave at max amplitude will create pops at both end.
It's like having step functions at the start and end of waveform.
I understand exactly what you have written above about writing code
that will allow the amplitude to build up or ramp up slowly enough or
as importantly end slowly enough so as not to create the sudden step
function like start and end to the waveform.
While I have a firm grasp of everything that is happening here it's
very unlikely I would be able to code in that ramp at the start and
end of the waveform that must be tailor made for each frequency and
duration of that WAV. So I ask you in your own time to do this for me
pointing out that I will be so happy to get it that there is no
problem for me just to wait for as long as it takes for you to write
the code. I would be happy to wait weeks if that is the time you might
need to build in this adjustment to the code. Don't worry at all about
how long it might take you to do it.
I wish I could write this code myself.

Regards,

Peter.

[DaveO]

"Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:7a47f23c-fede-4d93-b47b-
>While I have a firm grasp of everything it's
>very unlikely I would be able to code in that ramp at the start and
>end of the waveform that must be tailor made for each frequency and
>duration of that WAV. So I ask you in your own time to do this for me
>pointing out that I will be so happy to get it that there is no
>problem for me just to wait for as long as it takes for you to write
>the code. I would be happy to wait weeks if that is the time you might
>need to build in this adjustment to the code. Don't worry at all about
>how long it might take you to do it.
>I wish I could write this code myself.


You will never be able to do it yourself if you don't try!

Looking at the code from Mike there is a variable called "Amplitude", you
should be able to work out what that's for

Presumably all you need to do is for the first n samples increase Amplitude
from zero to the full value and for the last n samples reduce it to zero.

The value n which should probably be proportional (possibly inversely
proportional) to frequency could easily be established by trial and error



Regards

DaveO

[Peter Nolan]

On Jan 11, 3:21 pm, "DaveO" <***@dial.pipex.com> wrote:
> "Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:7a47f23c-fede-4d93-b47b-
>
> >While I have a firm grasp of everything  it's
> >very unlikely I would be able to code in that ramp at the start and
> >end of the waveform that must be tailor made for each frequency and
> >duration of that WAV. So I ask you in your own time to do this for me
> >pointing out that I will be so happy to get it that there is no
> >problem for me just to wait for as long as it takes for you to write
> >the code. I would be happy to wait weeks if that is the time you might
> >need to build in this adjustment to the code. Don't worry at all about
> >how long it might take you to do it.
> >I wish I could write this code myself.
>
> You will never be able to do it yourself if you don't try!
>
> Looking at the code from Mike there is a variable called "Amplitude", you
> should be able to work out what that's for
>
> Presumably all you need to do is for the first n samples increase Amplitude
> from zero to the full value and for the last n samples reduce it to zero.
>
> The value n which should probably be proportional (possibly inversely
> proportional) to frequency could easily be established by trial and error
>
> Regards
>
> DaveO


Hello DaveO,

Many thanks for taking an interest in this case. I really do have the
know how to build ie to code in ramps at the beginning and end of a
WAV file but I'm no coder like you and Mike and Jim are in this NG.
What would take you a some given length of time will take me that same
length of time multiplied by a certain factor. It's to do with my way
of thinking/feeling about the machine that is the modern PC one of the
triumphs of the human mind viewed from the perspective of the whole of
human history and to then find that a certain Bill Gates single
handedly destroyed our experience of this machine with buggy software.
If I say write:

10 Print "Hello"

in Qbasic for example I as a intuitive physicist want to know about
every process that happens inside the machine from the sending of the
return character into the computer's deepest place and so on. This is
however impossible. One is either a hardware guy or a software guy
just talking now in broad generalities. When you write a line a code,
any line of code, I'm guessing, only guessing, that so long as that
line executes flawlessly then you are completely happy inside yourself
and again, just guessing, you will never want to dig deeper to know
and feel the electronic processes that are initiated by any line of
code. Believe it or not I want to know all that and have to then have
feel for what are happening but at 58 and a lot younger than that when
I was writing little BBC BASIC programs mainly for data acquisition I
will now never have that feel. You can scarcely believe or understand
what I'm writing here but even still it makes kinda sense to me. The
sheer speed of computers and I'm including in that the BBC Model B
microcomputer that I used for data acquisition between October 1981
and August 1985 while doing my doctorate makes almost no physical
sense to me ie I have no feel for and I've often wondered if that is
why I'm no coder like you are. My next door neighbour has a Ph.D. in
computer science and she was telling me she doesn't want to become a
coder because she was telling me that pro coders are expected to write
100 lines of code per hour. I couldn't write a hundred lines of code
in an hour to save my very life.
There is another thing that sends me around the bend when I try to
code and that is the error messages that have never told me anything.
When I was an undergrad 1971/1975 I wrote a short little program in
FORTRAN to calculate the energy levels that the proton might have in
the hydrogen chloride molecule if it could go into orbit around the
chlorine ion. That was the first time I ran into error messages that I
couldn't make head or tail of. Just the other day I made the mistake
of connecting my iBook and Presario 1519UK PC to my modem at the same
to get an error message when I tried to type more than the one
character into google using IE. I hadn't the faintest idea what the
error message meant till it hit me much later what I had done wrong by
connecting the two machines to the modem at the same time. I tried all
kinds of rather drastic measures to remedy things including
uninstalling MS Visual Studio.NET 2003 that I had installed in the
hopes I could learn the very basics of VC++. I'm ashamed to admit that
but that is typical of my peculiar response to computers when things
go wrong.
For all those reasons and for the reason that I'm not a computer
scientist anyway like you are that while I can and have coded many
little programs I have the hardest time getting a program to work.
From that emotional perspective that while I have the know how I'm not
emotionally configured to cope with the debug. If I type in a few
lines of code and run it to get an error message that is coming at me
at quite literally at the speed of light itself I find that I'm
literally taken aback in the chair in front of the screen.
If I run into problems in the lab doing physics I just dive in with
gusto to solve every problem I have ever encountered and that also
includes making little programs work to do a job.
I'd just love to soften the WAV files to eliminate the pops but this
will take me a long time indeed to get all that down pat. I can follow
your instructions fine but...
Once again many thanks for taking an interest in this case.

Regards,

Peter.

[blank]

"Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:ff462f86-bd0b-42bf-b52d-***@t8g2000yqg.googlegroups.com...
On Jan 11, 3:21 pm, "DaveO" <***@dial.pipex.com> wrote:

...If I say write:

10 Print "Hello"

in Qbasic for example I as a intuitive physicist want to know about
every process that happens inside the machine...
...
There is another thing that sends me around the bend when I try to
code and that is the error messages that have never told me anything.
...

If I type in a few lines of code and run it to get an error message that is
coming at me
at quite literally at the speed of light itself I find that I'm literally
taken aback in the chair in front of the screen...

Peter.

Hi Peter

I too am interested in this case and your approach. I came very late to VB6
and at 71 I find it becoming more and more intuitive. Although Micro$oft
have dumped it in favour of dot.net (which is NOT intuitive and doesn't even
have proper printer support) I love VB6. I started in 1980 and my first
programs were on a TRS-80 in interpreter BASIC, which I taught myself. You
talk about error messages that drive you mad. Well, there's nothing new
under the sun. Back in the 1980s you would often get an error message in
BASIC that said, literally, 'Too many lines in 295'! In fact, as I
discovered purely by trial and error, that meant that meant that the floppy
disc drive door was open!

I moved on to QBASIC, which I though was magic with very fast compiling, and
ran my engineering office with a networked application on DOS that never
gave a hiccup. Then I was dragged kicking and screming into VB6. After a bit
of a learning curve I am so glad I was. It's great.

And you are so right to thank Mike. Despite the remarks of some here, Mike
is an absolute VB6 expert and can spend hours putting people on the straight
and narrow.

[ralph]

On Fri, 13 Jan 2012 12:40:45 +1100, "blank" <***@blankety.blank.com>
wrote:

>
>I moved on to QBASIC, which I though was magic with very fast compiling, and
>ran my engineering office with a networked application on DOS that never
>gave a hiccup. Then I was dragged kicking and screming into VB6. After a bit
>of a learning curve I am so glad I was. It's great.
>

I'm sure you meant QuickBasic and not QBasic, as QBasic didn't have a
compiler.

>And you are so right to thank Mike. Despite the remarks of some here, Mike
>is an absolute VB6 expert and can spend hours putting people on the straight
>and narrow.
>

I'm sure the admiration is mutual. It is although you two think and
write as one. <bg>

-ralph

[blank]

"ralph" <***@yahoo.net> wrote in message
news:***@4ax.com...
> On Fri, 13 Jan 2012 12:40:45 +1100, "blank" <***@blankety.blank.com>
> wrote:
>
>>
>>I moved on to QBASIC, which I though was magic with very fast compiling,
>>and
>>ran my engineering office with a networked application on DOS that never
>>gave a hiccup. Then I was dragged kicking and screming into VB6. After a
>>bit
>>of a learning curve I am so glad I was. It's great.
>>
>
> I'm sure you meant QuickBasic and not QBasic, as QBasic didn't have a
> compiler.
>
>>And you are so right to thank Mike. Despite the remarks of some here, Mike
>>is an absolute VB6 expert and can spend hours putting people on the
>>straight
>>and narrow.
>>
>
> I'm sure the admiration is mutual. It is although you two think and
> write as one. <bg>
>
> -ralph

Well Ralph, I can assure you we are not the same person. In fact some time
ago we had quite a quarrel!

[Peter Nolan]

On Jan 13, 1:40 am, "blank" <***@blankety.blank.com> wrote:
> "Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:ff462f86-bd0b-42bf-b52d-***@t8g2000yqg.googlegroups.com...
> On Jan 11, 3:21 pm, "DaveO" <***@dial.pipex.com> wrote:
>
> ...If I say write:
>
> 10 Print "Hello"
>
> in Qbasic for example I as a intuitive physicist want to know about
> every process that happens inside the machine...
> ...
> There is another thing that sends me around the bend when I try to
> code and that is the error messages that have never told me anything.
> ...
>
> If I type in a few lines of code and run it to get an error message that is
> coming at me
> at quite literally at the speed of light itself I find that I'm literally
> taken aback in the chair in front of the screen...
>
> Peter.
>
> Hi Peter
>
> I too am interested in this case and your approach. I came very late to VB6
> and at 71 I find it becoming more and more intuitive. Although Micro$oft
> have dumped it in favour of dot.net (which is NOT intuitive and doesn't even
> have proper printer support) I love VB6.  I started in 1980 and my first
> programs were on a TRS-80 in interpreter BASIC, which I taught myself. You
> talk about error messages that drive you mad. Well, there's nothing new
> under the sun. Back in the 1980s you would often get an error message in
> BASIC that said, literally, 'Too many lines in 295'!   In fact, as I
> discovered purely by trial and error, that meant that meant that the floppy
> disc drive door was open!
>
> I moved on to QBASIC, which I though was magic with very fast compiling, and
> ran my engineering office with a networked application on DOS that never
> gave a hiccup. Then I was dragged kicking and screming into VB6. After a bit
> of a learning curve I am so glad I was. It's great.
>
> And you are so right to thank Mike. Despite the remarks of some here, Mike
> is an absolute VB6 expert and can spend hours putting people on the straight
> and narrow.


Hello Blank, :)

Many thanks once again for saying hello. Great to hear from you. I am
indebted to Mike. While I will in the course of this century write the
code to soften the WAV files there is no possible way I would have
been able to write the two blocks of code Mike gave me and the whole
group. No possible way. I hope there was much copying and pasting of
this most useful code.
You are dong very well indeed to start programming VB6 at 71 and this
gives me great hope at 58 I have enough ideas at the moment to occupy
me for many life times on the 3rd Rock From the Sun.

Regards,

Peter.
Dublin.

[blank]

"Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:6dc23c76-f26f-45e5-b1b7-***@q8g2000yqa.googlegroups.com...
...You are dong very well indeed to start programming VB6 at 71 and this
gives me great hope at 58 I have enough ideas at the moment to occupy
me for many life times on the 3rd Rock From the Sun.

Hi Peter

Actually I started VB6 some years ago. Maybe 6 or so?

[DaveO]

"Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:ff462f86-bd0b-42bf-b52d-

>in Qbasic for example I as a intuitive physicist want to know about
>every process that happens inside the machine from the sending of the
>return character into the computer's deepest place and so on.



The first computer I built, and by "built" I mean hand soldered from a
design published in Wireless World, none of this sissy Sinclair junk, was
based on a Z80 with a calculator chip as a sort of maths coprocessor. On
that I was able to program directly in machine code (assembler is for
wimps!) and I knew exactly what was happening. However in 30 years or so
since then CPUs have got a tiny bit more complex., the instruction set is
far more complex and the architecture of the chip is too complicated for
anybody to fully understand, each member of the design team will fully
understand their part and have a broad understanding of other parts but no
individual person will understand exactly how every part of the chip
functions. As a physicist you should recognise emergent complexity when you
see it so any attempt to follow the course of an electron through the chip
is doomed to fail before you start. There is no shame in treating the CPU as
a "black box" where input A gives output B.



>If I run into problems in the lab doing physics I just dive in with
>gusto to solve every problem I have ever encountered and that also
>includes making little programs work to do a job.



So what's the problem? Ramping a variable for the first and last n steps of
a loop is pretty trivial however I've no idea if it will actually work to
fade in and out the WAV, the easiest way to find out would be to try it out.
Never be intimidated by error messages, it's really hard to do any real
damage in software, generally the worst that can happen is the PC will need
to be re-booted, not exactly a catastrophe. Also you can learn a lot more
when things fail. You know that a negative result is not necessarily a bad
thing, if the LHC fails to locate the Higgs boson it's not the end of the
world, much the opposite for it will open up a new phase of physics as the
theoreticians try to work out what confers mass and the experimentalists see
if they are right, it would be quite exciting.



DaveO

[Peter Nolan]

On Jan 13, 11:06 am, "DaveO" <***@dial.pipex.com> wrote:
> "Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:ff462f86-bd0b-42bf-b52d-
>
> >in Qbasic for example I as a intuitive physicist want to know about
> >every process that happens inside the machine from the sending of the
> >return character into the computer's deepest place and so on.
>
> The first computer I built, and by "built" I mean hand soldered from a
> design published in Wireless World, none of this sissy Sinclair junk, was
> based on a Z80 with a calculator chip as a sort of maths coprocessor. On
> that I was able to program directly in machine code (assembler is for
> wimps!) and I knew exactly what was happening. However in 30 years or so
> since then CPUs have got a tiny bit more complex., the instruction set is
> far more complex and the architecture of the chip is too complicated for
> anybody to fully understand, each member of the design team will fully
> understand their part and have a broad understanding of other parts but no
> individual person will understand exactly how every part of the chip
> functions. As a physicist you should recognise emergent complexity when you
> see it so any attempt to follow the course of an electron through the chip
> is doomed to fail before you start. There is no shame in treating the CPU as
> a "black box" where input A gives output B.
>
> >If I run into problems in the lab doing physics I just dive in with
> >gusto to solve every problem I have ever encountered and that also
> >includes making little programs work to do a job.
>
> So what's the problem? Ramping a variable for the first and last n steps of
> a loop is pretty trivial however I've no idea if it will actually work to
> fade in and out the WAV, the easiest way to find out would be to try it out.
> Never be intimidated by error messages, it's really hard to do any real
> damage in software, generally the worst that can happen is the PC will need
> to be re-booted, not exactly a catastrophe. Also you can learn a lot more
> when things fail. You know that a negative result is not necessarily a bad
> thing, if the LHC fails to locate the Higgs boson it's not the end of the
> world, much the opposite for it will open up a new phase of  physics as the
> theoreticians try to work out what confers mass and the experimentalists see
> if they are right, it would be quite exciting.
>
> DaveO


Hello DaveO

Softening up the WAV file using ramps at the start and finish of the
file will definitely work because I have checked all this out using
Audacity. It's just a matter of getting the code to build in the two
ramp functions to work and then playing round with the slope of that
function to eliminate the pops.
I understand everything you write about how complex say the CPU is
today and how no one engineer knows everything but I'm actually hoping
that some sterling soul will come along to upgrade the PC hardwarewise
and who would then hopefully have built a new OS that could if I'm not
mistaken be a commercial product but also be open source somehow even
if that is all too much to hope for. I think that while we are only
beginning to see uses for the PC it has been out of date for years
because M$ has the whole thing tied up forcing companies like Intel,
who have a huge plant right here in Ireland employing 5000, to
continue to make CPU's that should be upgraded many fold so much so
that we could look ahead to the distant future by building in
advancements that would anticipate great developments in the decades
to follow meaning that CPU's that could be designed today wouldn't go
out of date for a long time. Then I would breathe a little more easily
and be able to stop cussing Bill Gates everyday!
I have to leave my iBbook right now but I hope to add a few more
comments tomorrow. I want to understand how coders actually think/
feel.

Regards,

Peter.

[DaveO]

"Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:b064af06-d5b9-4181-8d1a-***@r5g2000yqc.googlegroups.com...
On Jan 13, 11:06 am, "DaveO" <***@dial.pipex.com> wrote:
> "Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message

>we are only
>beginning to see uses for the PC it has been out of date for years
>because M$ has the whole thing tied up forcing companies like Intel,
>who have a huge plant right here in Ireland employing 5000, to
>continue to make CPU's that should be upgraded many fold so much so
>that we could look ahead to the distant future by building in
>advancements that would anticipate great developments in the decades
>to follow meaning that CPU's that could be designed today wouldn't go
>out of date for a long time.

You seem to be at cross purposes there, you bemoan the fact that CPUs have
remained backward and forward compatible for a long time, then say the
design should be updated so it can be compatible for a long time.



While the current CPU architecture does have its roots in the 8086 chip from
when dinosaurs roamed the Earth there have been many changes but both Intel
and AMD have still maintained some compatibility which is a remarkable
achievement.



There have been many alternative chip designs over the years (remember the
world changing Transputer?) and there will continue to be more in the future
but regrettably the vast majority of users are mired in the Windows
ecosystem and that (at least for now) means they have to use chips that are
descendants of the venerable 8086.



CPUs as such don't go out of date, you can still do useful work with a Z80
in fact many process controllers are little more than a Z80 with a few I/O
circuits and some memory on a single chip, the reason processors have
increased in capability since the 8086 is the demands put on them by
software, if you don't want whizzy graphics and keep off-line then a 80286
running DOS, Windows 3.11 or even Gem will work exactly as well today as the
day it was fresh and shiny. Don't forget that the entire Apollo program ran
on less computing power than a contemporary bottom of the range mobile
phone.



Regards

DaveO

[Peter Nolan]

On Jan 13, 3:09 pm, "DaveO" <***@dial.pipex.com> wrote:
> "Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:b064af06-d5b9-4181-8d1a-***@r5g2000yqc.googlegroups.com...
> On Jan 13, 11:06 am, "DaveO" <***@dial.pipex.com> wrote:
>
> > "Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message
> >we are only
> >beginning to see uses for the PC it has been out of date for years
> >because M$ has the whole thing tied up forcing companies like Intel,
> >who have a huge plant right here in Ireland employing 5000, to
> >continue to make CPU's that should be upgraded many fold so much so
> >that we could look ahead to the distant future by building in
> >advancements that would anticipate great developments in the decades
> >to follow meaning that CPU's that could be designed today wouldn't go
> >out of date for a long time.
>
> You seem to be at cross purposes there, you bemoan the fact that CPUs have
> remained backward and forward compatible for a long time, then say the
> design should be updated so it can be compatible for a long time.
>
> While the current CPU architecture does have its roots in the 8086 chip from
> when dinosaurs roamed the Earth there have been many changes but both Intel
> and AMD have still maintained some compatibility which is a remarkable
> achievement.
>
> There have been many alternative chip designs over the years (remember the
> world changing Transputer?) and there will continue to be more in the future
> but regrettably the vast majority of users are mired in the Windows
> ecosystem and that (at least for now) means they have to use chips that are
> descendants of the venerable 8086.
>
> CPUs as such don't go out of date, you can still do useful work with a Z80
> in fact many process controllers are little more than a Z80 with a few I/O
> circuits and some memory on a single chip, the reason processors have
> increased in capability since the 8086 is the demands put on them by
> software, if you don't want whizzy graphics and keep off-line then a 80286
> running DOS, Windows 3.11 or even Gem will work exactly as well today as the
> day it was fresh and shiny. Don't forget that the entire Apollo program ran
> on less computing power than a contemporary bottom of the range mobile
> phone.
>
> Regards
>
> DaveO


Hello DaveO,

First up that in the same way I'm no coder I am also not an electronic
engineer. However I probably do know enough to be able to say that the
86 processor should be set aside in favour of a CPU that would be
more advanced so much so that it would be more likely to be state of
the art decades from now even if it can be very hard to predict how
things develop in the real world over time measured say in decades.
When I was a post doctoral investigator in the Marine Sciences
Institute of the University Of Connecticut on the coast right beside a
beautiful little town called Groton where there is a huge submarine
base, no photography allowed, I used an IBM AT or XT that was the
first PC and built by IBM using off the shelf components something IBM
will regret doing for the rest of that company's history giving others
the chance to decode the BIOS and then free to build their own PC's.
The rest is history. The clock speed of the 86 has increased at such a
rapid rate that I hear talk now how the value the speed of light, a
natural constant so far as we know today, will impose limits on how
high that clock speed can be using the formula frequency times the
wavelength is the speed. By playing round with values for the clock
frequencies available today one can see that the wavelengths are
approaching the actual size of physical size of the chip itself.
Amazing. All this is grand and these developments had to take place
first I guess but I want to see PC's that are better and above all no
longer part of the M$ eco system as you so eloquently put it. I
couldn't be happier knowing there's "Intel Inside" and indeed I woud
be feeling fine overall if Gates's Windows didn't exist. I think
though that a commercially available OS to start with is the best way
to go but whose blueprint would be known to one and all that could be
cleaned up by the worldwide panel of interested experts like indeed
you in this NG who could easily learn how to write code for that OS.
My belly ache here is simple. The computer means so much to me and to
all us techies worldwide and I yearn for rock solid flawlessly clean
software. We don't have that. That's my basic beef and because we are
all part of the M$ eco system I will be long dead before the complete
gorgeous system I want will come into existence. I know OS's are
complex but over time with use the errors are ironed out. That the way
it works.
I bought the Mac iBook G4 in 2006 when I could no longer sit a Windows
run PC never knowing when it was going to crash or freeze words that
seem to hve fallen out of use today only a few years after everyone
was talking about crashing PC's and so on. The anxiety caused by Gates
worldwide is unquantifiable and now he has a stranglehold on the whole
industry unless someone comes along to change all this. This is heart
breaking to me.
I'm quite happy with my iBook but it was very expensive and I have no
interest in having a computer that has been designed to look good
somehow. I try to remind myself that it really is a bone fide computer
by ignoring as best I can it's design calculated to appeal to the more
artistic eye. We techies just can't win at the moment.
It's interesting to read what you say about CPU's not going out of
date. When I was an undergrad 1971/1975 we were taught about the 74
series of chips and this series is still being used in circuits today.
The little pacemaker I built that I was telling you about was based on
chips that had been available for years even though I was advised to
build the device using a PIC. I would have had to learn how to program
a PIC so I opted to use chips I knew about including the 555 timer. I
regret not using a PIC though. The whole circuit would have been much
simpler.
We have learned so much now about computers in such a short amount of
time because there's money to be made that it is a shame not to use
all that new understanding to start from scratch to build new systems.

Regards,

Peter.

[Helmut_Meukel]

Peter Nolan wrote:
...
[rant about Windows and Intel, deleted]
...

I admit the x86 architecture isn't the best possible...
However, I remember a time when Microsoft supported with NT four
different CPU types: Intel x86, Mips, Alpha, ???(don't remember the
name). According to most, the RISC CPUs were better than the x86, but
bad marketing decisions allowed Intel to dominate the consumer market.
The other concentrated on servers and high-end workstations and finally
lost even there.

Helmut.

[ralph]

On Sat, 14 Jan 2012 14:56:04 +0100, Helmut_Meukel
<***@bn-hof.invalid> wrote:

>Peter Nolan wrote:
>...
>[rant about Windows and Intel, deleted]
>...
>
>I admit the x86 architecture isn't the best possible...
>However, I remember a time when Microsoft supported with NT four
>different CPU types: Intel x86, Mips, Alpha, ???(don't remember the
>name). According to most, the RISC CPUs were better than the x86, but
>bad marketing decisions allowed Intel to dominate the consumer market.
>The other concentrated on servers and high-end workstations and finally
>lost even there.
>

You're probably thinking of the "PowerPC" a RISC colaboration of
Apple, Motorola, and IBM. Or perhaps the AIM coloaboration - the two
were so similar in strategy and shared much of the same "hype", ie,
the utimate Intel killer.

I remember getting caught up in the hype surrounding the PowerPC.
(Hey, I was young and greedy.) Microsoft mailed out CD packages
containing libraries (c) and utilities, and with IBM offered several
'free' seminars - I was primed and ready. ... The phone never rang. In
fact I can't remember ever seeing a PowerPC box outside a vendor
stall. <g>

-ralph

[Helmut_Meukel]

ralph schrieb:
> On Sat, 14 Jan 2012 14:56:04 +0100, Helmut_Meukel
> <***@bn-hof.invalid> wrote:
>
>> Peter Nolan wrote:
>> ...
>> [rant about Windows and Intel, deleted]
>> ...
>>
>> I admit the x86 architecture isn't the best possible...
>> However, I remember a time when Microsoft supported with NT four
>> different CPU types: Intel x86, Mips, Alpha, ???(don't remember the
>> name). According to most, the RISC CPUs were better than the x86, but
>> bad marketing decisions allowed Intel to dominate the consumer market.
>> The other concentrated on servers and high-end workstations and finally
>> lost even there.
>>
>
> You're probably thinking of the "PowerPC" a RISC colaboration of
> Apple, Motorola, and IBM. Or perhaps the AIM coloaboration - the two
> were so similar in strategy and shared much of the same "hype", ie,
> the utimate Intel killer.
>
> I remember getting caught up in the hype surrounding the PowerPC.
> (Hey, I was young and greedy.) Microsoft mailed out CD packages
> containing libraries (c) and utilities, and with IBM offered several
> 'free' seminars - I was primed and ready. ... The phone never rang. In
> fact I can't remember ever seeing a PowerPC box outside a vendor
> stall. <g>
>
> -ralph

Yes, it was the PowerPC.
I got versions of NT for 4 processor types with my MSDN Universal
subscription.

One big german distributor offered an Alpha tower, but I had to drive
120 km to their superstore. I was interested and drove to the Vobis
superstore in Leipzig, but got the impression they weren't really
interested in selling it. They had just one box for display and told me
I have to wait at least 8 weeks, probably much longer to get one. In
addition I have to fetch it from the superstore, neither home delivery
possible nor getting it from their local store in my home town. :-(

I didn't order it, hoping they would finally offer it in all stores.
Three month later it wasn't available at all. :-(

About a year later I finally purchased another Intel PC.

Helmut.

[Peter Nolan]

On Jan 14, 1:56 pm, Helmut_Meukel <***@bn-hof.invalid>
wrote:
> Peter Nolan wrote:
>
> ...
> [rant about Windows and Intel, deleted]
> ...
>
> I admit the x86 architecture isn't the best possible...
> However, I remember a time when Microsoft supported with NT four
> different CPU types: Intel x86, Mips, Alpha, ???(don't remember the
> name). According to most, the RISC CPUs were better than the x86, but
> bad marketing decisions allowed Intel to dominate the consumer market.
> The other concentrated on servers and high-end workstations and finally
> lost even there.
>
> Helmut.

Hello Helmut,

You know far more than I do about computers with respect to the
hardware and software. However I have always loved computers. Nowadays
and for for many years physicists have been using computers. Have you
heard of DEC's PDP 8E or 8F or DEC's PDP 11? I played round with both
of these machines. When I eventually got hold of 32 kilobytes of core
memory for the 8E I was over the moon. All I had up till then was 8
kilobytes but the 8E could do all kinds of things like acquire data
from an electronic device that measured and displayed the spectrum of
water droplet radii on a little screen. You describe traveling 120Km
for a machine. Well I travelled from Galway on the west coast of
Ireland by road and ferry to Bristol University in the UK where I
collected all kinds of spares for the 8E including that extra memory.
Nowadays I can just about make it to a local shop for milk and the
paper!
My beef is simple. I'm deeply upset by what DaveO calls the MS eco
system and so annoyed that Bill Gates has a stranglehold on PC
software. If Windoows was solid I wouldn't feel so bad but it's not
and while errors are corrected in each new upgrade the new versions
are full of new errors in the new features that are being added on
and so on it goes forever meaning we the public never get a good OS.
This is just wrong and there is nothing we can do. Governments could
do a lot but Gates has many Republican friends in Washington who will
scupper any attempt at fixing things over there. I am only repeating
myself over and over again so I will stop and just add that almost
every techie in the world feels the same way I do about M$ that is
Bill Gates who is just an amateur programmer and was never anything
more than that. His talent is making money just like any other
entrepreneur who has little understanding of what it is he actually
sells.

Regards,

Peter.

[Schmidt]

Am 15.01.2012 12:39, schrieb Peter Nolan:

> My beef is simple. I'm deeply upset by what DaveO calls the MS eco
> system and so annoyed that Bill Gates has a stranglehold on PC
> software. If Windoows was solid I wouldn't feel so bad but it's not
> and while errors are corrected in each new upgrade the new versions
> are full of new errors in the new features that are being added on
> and so on it goes forever meaning we the public never get a good OS.

Define "good OS"... ;-)

An OS is responsible, to allow the interaction
of different hardware-parts over a software-
layer, which does make usage of these hardware-
parts and devices easier in the "Userland-layer"
(the layer, where "normal Programs run on" finally).
This is achieved over more or less "standardized" APIs,
which talk finally (under the covers) to "driver-software",
which in turn is managed by "the kernel" of the OS.

Such a mechanism, being entirely free of any errors
is a goal, which will never be accomplished, I think.

Mostly due to the fact, that many drivers are
not even known to the current OS or kernel
at the time of an OS-release.
There is a constant stream of new (pluggable)
devices (and their new drivers), which an released OS
needs to be able to "consume and understand" - be it
a new graphics-card on PCI-e or a new USB-device.

Pluggable, new devices is (and was) always the beauty
of a PC - it was open to a whole lot of additional
hardware-extensions (with the just mentioned caveats,
in case the drivers were not error-free, or were
hitting a so far unknown quirk in the communication
with the kernel).

The "Apple-machines" (at least the early ones -
the new ones are also open for extensions over
FireWire or USB, etc.) always had the advantage
of a "more calculatable Hardware-Universe" on
which they were build, and thus somewhat "more
reliable and stable".


> This is just wrong and there is nothing we can do.
I'd say, your above sentence is "just wrong" too... ;-)

If you are into "we, the public" - and - "we need to do
something about it" ... well, there's tens of thousands
of developers, who thought the same (already decades ago).

The result is "free software" at all levels:
At the OS-Level (Linux, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, etc.)
At the Userland-Level (FireFox, OpenOffice, MySQL, Python, etc.)

So it is entirely your choice, what you will use
on your PCs hardware (you are not "condemned" to sail
within the "MS-software-universe").

> Governments could do a lot but Gates has many Republican friends...
Since you wrote in plural ("Governments") - I don't
quite see, what it has to do with "Republican friends"... ;-)

There are many governments (Brazil, Russia, China, etc.)
who have put the use of more OpenSource-software on their
agendas, and encourage its usage (in favour of the MS-stack).

Also there's a whole load of new devices (tablets and
phones for example), which already do use an adapted
Linux-kernel (Android, MeeGo, HPs WebOS), to run
their software-stack on top of it.

So, this part of your "rant" (the "political side" -
in the sense of "we are tied forever to the MS-OS")
is not very well founded - since you are free, to use
alternatives immediately, it's only a download and a
CD-Iso-burn away...

As for the technical side of your rant (a missing
"completely error-free OS") - that's something we
could talk about - and although not reachable, there's
surely things which could be done, to make an OS
less error-prone, perhaps starting with "loosing fat again"
(in terms of complexity, introducing the KISS-principle anew).


Olaf

[Peter Nolan]

On Jan 15, 4:39 pm, Schmidt <***@online.de> wrote:
> Am 15.01.2012 12:39, schrieb Peter Nolan:
>
> > My beef is simple. I'm deeply upset by what DaveO calls the MS eco
> > system and so annoyed that Bill Gates has a stranglehold on PC
> > software. If Windoows was solid I wouldn't feel so bad but it's not
> > and while errors are corrected in each new upgrade the new versions
> > are full of new errors in the new features that are being added on
> > and so on it goes forever meaning we the public never get a good OS.
>
> Define "good OS"... ;-)
>
> An OS is responsible, to allow the interaction
> of different hardware-parts over a software-
> layer, which does make usage of these hardware-
> parts and devices easier in the "Userland-layer"
> (the layer, where "normal Programs run on" finally).
> This is achieved over more or less "standardized" APIs,
> which talk finally (under the covers) to "driver-software",
> which in turn is managed by "the kernel" of the OS.
>
> Such a mechanism, being entirely free of any errors
> is a goal, which will never be accomplished, I think.
>
> Mostly due to the fact, that many drivers are
> not even known to the current OS or kernel
> at the time of an OS-release.
> There is a constant stream of new (pluggable)
> devices (and their new drivers), which an released OS
> needs to be able to "consume and understand" - be it
> a new graphics-card on PCI-e or a new USB-device.
>
> Pluggable, new devices is (and was) always the beauty
> of a PC - it was open to a whole lot of additional
> hardware-extensions (with the just mentioned caveats,
> in case the drivers were not error-free, or were
> hitting a so far unknown quirk in the communication
> with the kernel).
>
> The "Apple-machines" (at least the early ones -
> the new ones are also open for extensions over
> FireWire or USB, etc.) always had the advantage
> of a "more calculatable Hardware-Universe" on
> which they were build, and thus somewhat "more
> reliable and stable".
>
> > This is just wrong and there is nothing we can do.
>
> I'd say, your above sentence is "just wrong" too... ;-)
>
> If you are into "we, the public" - and - "we need to do
> something about it" ... well, there's tens of thousands
> of developers, who thought the same (already decades ago).
>
> The result is "free software" at all levels:
> At the OS-Level (Linux, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, etc.)
> At the Userland-Level (FireFox, OpenOffice, MySQL, Python, etc.)
>
> So it is entirely your choice, what you will use
> on your PCs hardware (you are not "condemned" to sail
> within the "MS-software-universe").
>
> > Governments could do a lot but Gates has many Republican friends...
>
> Since you wrote in plural ("Governments") - I don't
> quite see, what it has to do with "Republican friends"... ;-)
>
> There are many governments (Brazil, Russia, China, etc.)
> who have put the use of more OpenSource-software on their
> agendas, and encourage its usage (in favour of the MS-stack).
>
> Also there's a whole load of new devices (tablets and
> phones for example), which already do use an adapted
> Linux-kernel (Android, MeeGo, HPs WebOS), to run
> their software-stack on top of it.
>
> So, this part of your "rant" (the "political side" -
> in the sense of "we are tied forever to the MS-OS")
> is not very well founded - since you are free, to use
> alternatives immediately, it's only a download and a
> CD-Iso-burn away...
>
> As for the technical side of your rant (a missing
> "completely error-free OS") - that's something we
> could talk about - and although not reachable, there's
> surely things which could be done, to make an OS
> less error-prone, perhaps starting with "loosing fat again"
> (in terms of complexity, introducing the KISS-principle anew).
>
> Olaf


Hello Olaf,

I have read what you wrote but I really only have one thing to say.
When Windows 98 was released into the wild it wasn't long till M$
heard from PC users all over the world about errors in the OS in other
words about the problems they were having using Windows 98. For
example I would be sitting there in Outlook Express running under
Windows 98 typing out a message such as this to find that for no
reason and certainly nothing I was doing, that the keyboard would
loose it's connection with the PC whereupon I would then have to press
alt-ctrl-del to reboot the PC, if I was lucky, and lose everything
that I might have spent a whole hour typing. This was happening all
over the world. The point is though that Bill would have heard about
this whose technicians would then go on to find the problem and fix
it. There were many other reasons why PC's would freeze and so on but
bit by bit these bugs that Gates knew were there because as you
correctly point out OS's are by their very nature complex. So after a
certain period of time Gates would then have had a stable OS Windows
98 that if he was decent and didn't have an insatiable appetite for
money like his class of people does he would then release the pristine
version of Windows 98. I understand that new ideas about new features
means adding more to the OS to boost it's performance and so on and so
it's inevitable that new errors will be made but we the public never
get a pristine OS that we could have for the reasons I've just
explained using the mechanism of continuous repair over a certain
period as a result of the worldwide public using that OS by just using
the PC everyday running what they now call applications. Take my own
case. The only use I have for a PC is for email and checking stuff out
on the Internet things that interest me. I should quickly add that
recently I'm using this NG also. Apart from that and maybe having a
simple word processor I have no other use for a computer. If I was
still in a lab, that I hope to return to soon enough, I would have
other uses for a PC and so on. I demand a simple PC that just does the
basic things I require of it but I can't have such a PC because of the
ongoing developments that are taking place. I think there is a huge
demand for such a simple PC whose software would have no errors and
that would run in the way I as a physicist expect any machine to run.
I want to add a little more now that I am typing and with respect I
want to now wrap up my contribution to this thread for the reason that
we will never see eye to eye on this and for the following reason. I
have a beautiful Toyota Yaris because to me Japanese cars, especially
the Toyota, are the best in the world. All other makes are over
engineered in companies where the engineer is king. In Japan the
designer is king. I digress. When I sit in to my Yaris and turn the
ignition key the engine immediately turns over beautifully. Imagine
the nightmare it would be if when I turned the ignition key I might
hear some error message in a little dashboard speaker telling me I
need to make some adjustment to the car's electronics and so on. That
is what is happening in the industry that is the PC industry. If cars
gave the trouble PC's give those companies would be shut down
immediately. I add that some of the fellas in this NG appear to revel
in the sheer complexity of say an OS and the applications that run
over it. Do you feel that you must be extraordinarily intelligent to
be able to handle the PC hardware and it's bloated software so that
the more troublesome the PC is the more awesomely complex it is and so
the more intelligent you are to cope this with giant sprawling thing?
You see I don't feel like that at all. When I build a system in the
lab I build it to work and to work every time. For the reasons I just
explained in detail above you are not entitled to put your hands up in
the air and surrender to the almighty complexity of the whole thing,
the PC. I just want to repeat that if any other company caused the
depth of suffering caused by MS they would have been just shut down
years ago.
As I just said we will never see eye to eye on this. I don't enjoy
flying but I have flown a little bit. I don't want to board a plane
like the 747 or A380 and worry that such a machine many times more
complicated than any PC is or ever will be, will be prone to
mechanical errors resulting in loss of life if the plane crashes. It's
true planes crash but because the odds are good people continue to fly
everywhere.
While any member of the public knows when any other product is faulty
that same member of the public is just baffled by the PC and it's
ways. The best any member of the public can do is contact the seller
of their PC or call a call centre. Sadly it's just not the case that
the public will ever see that Bill Gates is the problem and not them
just because when they did some routine thing their PC stops working.
How does one go about educating the public? I don't know but I do know
that s a difficult problem.
I'm replying also to both Ralph and Blank a young 71 at the moment. By
the way Ralph I watched a great documentary about Steve Jobs yesterday
on BBC 2 about his life that included the history of modern computing
and the key role played by the less well known Wozniak who was the
brain behind the Apple to start with. He himself describes himself as
a "computer genius"! He was just that.

Regards,

Peter.
Dublin.

[DaveO]

"Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:5d28d617-a0b6-4696-b300-***@u32g2000yqe.googlegroups.com...
On Jan 15, 4:39 pm, Schmidt <***@online.de> wrote:

Do you even read what you type? If the "keyboard would loose (sic) its
connection with the PC" then what exactly would pressing Ctrl Alt Delete
achieve? The reset button, yes, but keys, no.



Your car analogy is seriously flawed, your Toyota works well because every
part was designed or chosen by Toyota to work as a unit. How well do you
think it would work if you replaced the engine block with one from a Ford,
the pistons from a Bugatti, the transmission from a Nissan and the
electronics from a VW because that is a better analogy to a PC, the
operating system needs to work with pretty much any combination of
components and must also cope with the user changing components during the
life of the PC. If I want I can fit a better video card from a different
manufacturer and it'll still work, if the starter motor died in your car you
would have to replace it with the exact same part or your car won't go.



Your aircraft reference is not so good either, aircraft tend to have triple
redundant systems so when (not "if" but "when") a systems fails there are 2
more to take over, if PCs had triple redundancy then they would probably
never fall over either, but would cost about 4 times what they cost now (you
have seen how much a 747 or Airbus 380 costs?).



If all you want a PC for is Word Processing and Newsgroups access there is
absolutely no reason to suffer Windows when there are lots of Linux
distributions which will work on the same hardware and there is a wide range
of WP & NG software available mostly for free.



While Microsoft have done some stupid things in their time and released some
pretty duff software on the whole and hating myself for it I am forced to
say the computer using public has gained more from Windows than they have
lost.



Regards

DaveO

[Peter Nolan]

On Jan 16, 2:39 pm, "DaveO" <***@dial.pipex.com> wrote:
> "Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:5d28d617-a0b6-4696-b300-***@u32g2000yqe.googlegroups.com...
> On Jan 15, 4:39 pm, Schmidt <***@online.de> wrote:
>
> Do you even read what you type? If the "keyboard would loose (sic) its
> connection with the PC" then what exactly would pressing Ctrl Alt Delete
> achieve? The reset button, yes, but keys, no.
>
> Your car analogy is seriously flawed, your Toyota works well because every
> part was designed or chosen by Toyota to work as a unit. How well do you
> think it would work if you replaced the engine block with one from a Ford,
> the pistons from a Bugatti, the transmission from a Nissan and the
> electronics from a VW because that is a better analogy to a PC, the
> operating system needs to work with pretty much any combination of
> components and must also cope with the user changing components during the
> life of the PC. If I want I can fit a better video card from a different
> manufacturer and it'll still work, if the starter motor died in your car you
> would have to replace it with the exact same part or your car won't go.
>
> Your aircraft reference is not so good either, aircraft tend to have triple
> redundant systems so when (not "if" but "when") a systems fails there are 2
> more to take over, if PCs had triple redundancy then they would probably
> never fall over either, but would cost about 4 times what they cost now (you
> have seen how much a 747 or Airbus 380 costs?).
>
> If all you want a PC for is Word Processing and Newsgroups access there is
> absolutely no reason to suffer Windows when there are lots of Linux
> distributions which will work on the same hardware and there is a wide range
> of WP & NG software available mostly for free.
>
> While Microsoft have done some stupid things in their time and released some
> pretty duff software on the whole and hating myself for it I am forced to
> say the computer using public has gained more from Windows than they have
> lost.
>
> Regards
>
> DaveO


Hello DaveO,

I promised to end my contributions to this thread but I see your post
above. We will never see eye to eye here. We are both looking at
things from different perspectives and because I wrote above that some
people just enjoy interacting with such a complex system such as the
PC I felt I should just check in to see if anyone was offended by that
remark because it is not a very nice thing to say. To defend myself
however I as a scientist revel in the simple thing. I just love to
think of an idea that I can think/feel explains so much. So for
example think of Newton's law of gravitation that I am sure you know
much about. Well when we apply that law we can understand so much
about the motion of the planets for example. I'm sure you know all
about Einstein's correction to Newton's law but Newton's law was
widely applicable and helped scientists greatly. What is fundamental
to the PC? The answer is of course the binary system of numbers. The
whole field of computers with the exception of analogue computers
depends on the 1 and the zero. That makes me happy to think about
digital electronics in that simple way but many, maybe like you, want
to expand on all that and enjoy feeling powerful able to command such
complexity in much the same way I feel powerful able to think that the
motion of the planets is describable by just that one simple law. It's
just that we are different and I was hoping that Mike maybe or anyone
else in this NG would help me understand how a great coders like you
actually feel when I tried my best to tell you how I feel about the
whole thing.
To finish up I want to point out that when my keyboard froze in the
middle of typing a email, hunt and peck style, I had no reset button
and had to press alt-ctrl-del to exit Outlook Express if I was lucky.
More often than not that just wouldn't work so that I then had to
unplug the PC altogether risking damaging the HDD. I was lucky to have
never done that.
The cost to economies worldwide to keep PC's running under Windows is
enormous running probably into billions of dollars per year in the US
alone and you would do well to research all this in the hope that you
can grasp in a way you seem not to be able to grasp how terribly bad
things are in the M$ ecosystem.

Keep well,

Peter.
Dublin.

[DaveO]

"Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:49709546-d9bb-4e14-8c92-***@g27g2000yqa.googlegroups.com...
On Jan 16, 2:39 pm, "DaveO" <***@dial.pipex.com> wrote:
> "Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message

You are missing the point:



>I want to point out that when my keyboard froze in the
>middle of typing a email, hunt and peck style, I had no reset button
>and had to press alt-ctrl-del



If the keyboard was "frozen" then pressing Ctrl Alt Delete would have no
effect. If Ctrl Alt Delete did work then the keyboard was not frozen. You
cannot have it both ways. If the keyboard was locked then the mouse should
still work to allow you to close and possibly save your work, if the mouse
did not work then the PC was crashed however what I suspect was the case is
that the application had frozen and the keyboard and mouse were perfectly
fine except in the stricken program.



The TCO of a PC is more than the purchase price regardless of the operating
system but overall Apple seem to have the higher TCO than Windows and then
Linux is generally cheapest. (Apple hardware and software is more expensive
and there are a lot more experienced Windows administrators than Apple ones
so the Apple ones can command a higher salary. Linux admins are also scarce
and relatively expensive but the software is on average significantly
cheaper)



You rail against Microsoft but you use Windows, Bill Gates is (probably) not
holding a gun to your head so you are free to dump everything from them but
you don't, why is this when there a several workable alternatives out there?
Could it be that Windows works better for you than the alternatives? Could
it be that you know Windows and are loathe to learn how to use something
different? Could it be that you like having something to complain about?



Commercially while Windows does have unforeseen costs they are trivial
compared to the cost of retraining an entire workforce to use something else
which is why for the short term at least, Windows is here to stay.



DaveO

[Peter Nolan]

On Jan 17, 2:17 pm, "DaveO" <***@dial.pipex.com> wrote:
> "Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:49709546-d9bb-4e14-8c92-***@g27g2000yqa.googlegroups.com...
> On Jan 16, 2:39 pm, "DaveO" <***@dial.pipex.com> wrote:
>
> > "Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> You are missing the point:
>
> >I want to point out that when my keyboard froze in the
> >middle of typing a email, hunt and peck style, I had no reset button
> >and had to press alt-ctrl-del
>
> If the keyboard was "frozen" then pressing Ctrl Alt Delete would have no
> effect. If Ctrl Alt Delete did work then the keyboard was not frozen. You
> cannot have it both ways. If the keyboard was locked then the mouse should
> still work to allow you to close and possibly save your work, if the mouse
> did not work then the PC was crashed however what I suspect was the case is
> that the application had frozen and the keyboard and mouse were perfectly
> fine except in the stricken program.
>
> The TCO of a PC is more than the purchase price regardless of the operating
> system but overall Apple seem to have the higher TCO than Windows and then
> Linux is generally cheapest. (Apple hardware and software is more expensive
> and there are a lot more experienced Windows administrators than Apple ones
> so the Apple ones can command a higher salary. Linux admins are also scarce
> and relatively expensive but the software is on average significantly
> cheaper)
>
> You rail against Microsoft but you use Windows, Bill Gates is (probably) not
> holding a gun to your head so you are free to dump everything from them but
> you don't, why is this when there a several workable alternatives out there?
> Could it be that Windows works better for you than the alternatives? Could
> it be that you know Windows and are loathe to learn how to use something
> different? Could it be that you like having something to complain about?
>
> Commercially while Windows does have unforeseen costs they are trivial
> compared to the cost of retraining an entire workforce to use something else
> which is why for the short term at least, Windows is here to stay.
>
> DaveO

Hello DaveO,

My clear memory is that while none of the keys on the keyboard worked
alt-ctrl-del would sometimes work to reboot the PC. When I say that
the keyboard froze I meant that none of the keys would respond apart
from the sequence alt-ctrl-del. That's how it worked. Trust me! When
the keyboard wouldn't respond the mouse invariably failed as well.
I abandoned using a Windows PC in 2006 when I bought a Mac Mini and
then soon after that a very expensive, to me, Mac iBook G4. I haven't
used a Windows PC for many years. I really must check out running a PC
under Linux and I had documentation on that but setting the whole
thing up seemed to me to be very sensitive to one's making a mistake.
It was for that reason and other reasons I haven't gotten round to
doing that. I heard about all that years ago from a fellow physicist
whom I was talking to over the phone.
I have had a virtually trouble free experience emailing and surfing
the Internet with the iBook. I don't even have any virus protection on
the iBook because the hackers are leaving the Mac's alone. Still I am
not happy for the simple reason that Mac's are over priced by about
50% for what they actually do. I do not like the arty appearance of
the iBook itself sitting there white and shiny. This is what the
customer is paying for though, the white and shiny bit. It's really
early days and young people today can look forward to better days.
It's only a matter of time before Windows PC's will be obsolete but
not in my lifetime sadly.To say that what we have today will be the
future too in the infancy of personal computing today is just
ridiculous.
Years ago I was in communication with a top gun electronic design
engineer from New York who told me at that time it cost companies
$6000 per year to keep each PC up and running in the US. That's a 6
with three not two zeroes after it. I knew this but didn't tell you.
If you are really want to know how bad things are you will have to
research all this yourself. I have just given you a figure that is a
measure of the extent of the problem but it will be up to you to use
the Internet to get the facts and figures that will show you how bad
things are.
You say people get a lot from the PC that is more than the trouble
they experience so that the whole thing balances out. I have thought
for years that Bill Gates goes to bed each night and really does fall
asleep by telling himself just that. He knows all about the problems
but he tells himself that some work actually gets done. It's like
saying that all is well when someone gets in a car that breaks down
when the driver and passengers are only half way there but that at
least they got halfway there to where they wanted to go. Thank heavens
car companies sell cars that get us all the way there in most cases.
I don't mean to shatter your illusions but you appear to have no
insight into what is actually happening in the real world of the
Windows PC and till you check all this out yourself with ruthless
objectivity you will continue to live in a fantasy world.

Regards,

Peter.

[Henning]

"Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> skrev i meddelandet
news:9b96d3cc-b51b-4723-8126-***@e8g2000yqd.googlegroups.com...
On Jan 17, 2:17 pm, "DaveO" <***@dial.pipex.com> wrote:
> "Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:49709546-d9bb-4e14-8c92-***@g27g2000yqa.googlegroups.com...
> On Jan 16, 2:39 pm, "DaveO" <***@dial.pipex.com> wrote:
>
> > "Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> You are missing the point:
>
> >I want to point out that when my keyboard froze in the
> >middle of typing a email, hunt and peck style, I had no reset button
> >and had to press alt-ctrl-del
>
> If the keyboard was "frozen" then pressing Ctrl Alt Delete would have no
> effect. If Ctrl Alt Delete did work then the keyboard was not frozen. You
> cannot have it both ways. If the keyboard was locked then the mouse should
> still work to allow you to close and possibly save your work, if the mouse
> did not work then the PC was crashed however what I suspect was the case
> is
> that the application had frozen and the keyboard and mouse were perfectly
> fine except in the stricken program.
>
> The TCO of a PC is more than the purchase price regardless of the
> operating
> system but overall Apple seem to have the higher TCO than Windows and then
> Linux is generally cheapest. (Apple hardware and software is more
> expensive
> and there are a lot more experienced Windows administrators than Apple
> ones
> so the Apple ones can command a higher salary. Linux admins are also
> scarce
> and relatively expensive but the software is on average significantly
> cheaper)
>
> You rail against Microsoft but you use Windows, Bill Gates is (probably)
> not
> holding a gun to your head so you are free to dump everything from them
> but
> you don't, why is this when there a several workable alternatives out
> there?
> Could it be that Windows works better for you than the alternatives? Could
> it be that you know Windows and are loathe to learn how to use something
> different? Could it be that you like having something to complain about?
>
> Commercially while Windows does have unforeseen costs they are trivial
> compared to the cost of retraining an entire workforce to use something
> else
> which is why for the short term at least, Windows is here to stay.
>
> DaveO

Hello DaveO,

My clear memory is that while none of the keys on the keyboard worked
alt-ctrl-del would sometimes work to reboot the PC. When I say that
the keyboard froze I meant that none of the keys would respond apart
from the sequence alt-ctrl-del. That's how it worked. Trust me! When
the keyboard wouldn't respond the mouse invariably failed as well.
I abandoned using a Windows PC in 2006 when I bought a Mac Mini and
then soon after that a very expensive, to me, Mac iBook G4. I haven't
used a Windows PC for many years. I really must check out running a PC
under Linux and I had documentation on that but setting the whole
thing up seemed to me to be very sensitive to one's making a mistake.
It was for that reason and other reasons I haven't gotten round to
doing that. I heard about all that years ago from a fellow physicist
whom I was talking to over the phone.
I have had a virtually trouble free experience emailing and surfing
the Internet with the iBook. I don't even have any virus protection on
the iBook because the hackers are leaving the Mac's alone. Still I am
not happy for the simple reason that Mac's are over priced by about
50% for what they actually do. I do not like the arty appearance of
the iBook itself sitting there white and shiny. This is what the
customer is paying for though, the white and shiny bit. It's really
early days and young people today can look forward to better days.
It's only a matter of time before Windows PC's will be obsolete but
not in my lifetime sadly.To say that what we have today will be the
future too in the infancy of personal computing today is just
ridiculous.
Years ago I was in communication with a top gun electronic design
engineer from New York who told me at that time it cost companies
$6000 per year to keep each PC up and running in the US. That's a 6
with three not two zeroes after it. I knew this but didn't tell you.
If you are really want to know how bad things are you will have to
research all this yourself. I have just given you a figure that is a
measure of the extent of the problem but it will be up to you to use
the Internet to get the facts and figures that will show you how bad
things are.
You say people get a lot from the PC that is more than the trouble
they experience so that the whole thing balances out. I have thought
for years that Bill Gates goes to bed each night and really does fall
asleep by telling himself just that. He knows all about the problems
but he tells himself that some work actually gets done. It's like
saying that all is well when someone gets in a car that breaks down
when the driver and passengers are only half way there but that at
least they got halfway there to where they wanted to go. Thank heavens
car companies sell cars that get us all the way there in most cases.
I don't mean to shatter your illusions but you appear to have no
insight into what is actually happening in the real world of the
Windows PC and till you check all this out yourself with ruthless
objectivity you will continue to live in a fantasy world.

Regards,

Peter.

I've followed this threed, and find it amazing that the only one NOT using a
PC with Windows is the one knowing most about how bad a combination that
is!? Personally I have used Windows since 3.1 and had none of the mentioned
problems, and I have LOTS of apps installed. As Dave have pointed out,
problems allmost always have the root in badly written 3:rd party drivers.

/Henning

[DaveO]

"Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:9b96d3cc-b51b-4723-8126-***@e8g2000yqd.googlegroups.com...
On Jan 17, 2:17 pm, "DaveO" <***@dial.pipex.com> wrote:
> "Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message

For Linux I would have suggested using Ubuntu but they have changed the
desktop manager to the unpopular Unity but as you are used to Macs you might
not find Unity as jarring as many other have found it, you can use KDE with
Ubuntu but that's a bit trickier to set up. The installation of Ubuntu is
absurdly simple. On my home PC because of the difficulty in making Windows
fully secure I never go online with Windows but instead dual boot into
Ubuntu figuring that it is a) a lot less vulnerable and b) a doddle to
reinstall should it go tits-up.



The figure of $6000 is not that different for any business PC regardless of
the OS. That cost is a mixture of depreciation, a fraction of the
administrator, recurring software subscription charges and factored one off
software charges, power & network charges, user training and a host of other
expenses which all mount up over the lifetime of a PC. Compare that against
doing the same work with a typewriter and slide rule and it's a bargain.
(yes I remember how to use, and still own a slide rule)



As for the trouble caused by Windows PCs, well I have been using computers
of various kinds since before microprocessors were readily available (I
first learned on a Varian v70 minicomputer then a crappy IBM 1130 before I
got my hands on a microprocessor based machine) and still maintain that even
accounting for its many failings Windows is a remarkable achievement.
Compared to CP/M, George, OS/2, NeXtStep or BSD it is the epitome of
reliability and user friendliness.



You go on about how reliable cars are now but you ignore my point about the
non-interchangeability of car components compared to the massive
interchangeability of PC components. If you tried to swap car parts like you
can swap PC parts then no car would ever run for more than a few miles
before needing repair



As for insight into the wonderful real world then considering I am actually
working in a real company with a few hundred Windows machines and do some
administration of them, before that I worked for an Internet provider and
have been pretty much involved one way or another for most of my working
life while on the other hand you are a (retired?) physicist who probably
spent most of your career nestled in academia and insulated from the
commercial world. Sorry but I suspect it is your illusions that a dose of
reality would shatter.



Regards

DaveO

[Henning]

"DaveO" <***@dial.pipex.com> skrev i meddelandet
news:jf48rn$3hu$***@dont-email.me...
>
> "Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:9b96d3cc-b51b-4723-8126-***@e8g2000yqd.googlegroups.com...
> On Jan 17, 2:17 pm, "DaveO" <***@dial.pipex.com> wrote:
>> "Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> For Linux I would have suggested using Ubuntu but they have changed the
> desktop manager to the unpopular Unity but as you are used to Macs you
> might not find Unity as jarring as many other have found it, you can use
> KDE with Ubuntu but that's a bit trickier to set up. The installation of
> Ubuntu is absurdly simple. On my home PC because of the difficulty in
> making Windows fully secure I never go online with Windows but instead
> dual boot into Ubuntu figuring that it is a) a lot less vulnerable and b)
> a doddle to reinstall should it go tits-up.
>
>
>
> The figure of $6000 is not that different for any business PC regardless
> of the OS. That cost is a mixture of depreciation, a fraction of the
> administrator, recurring software subscription charges and factored one
> off software charges, power & network charges, user training and a host of
> other expenses which all mount up over the lifetime of a PC. Compare that
> against doing the same work with a typewriter and slide rule and it's a
> bargain. (yes I remember how to use, and still own a slide rule)
>
>
>
> As for the trouble caused by Windows PCs, well I have been using computers
> of various kinds since before microprocessors were readily available (I
> first learned on a Varian v70 minicomputer then a crappy IBM 1130 before I
> got my hands on a microprocessor based machine) and still maintain that
> even accounting for its many failings Windows is a remarkable achievement.
> Compared to CP/M, George, OS/2, NeXtStep or BSD it is the epitome of
> reliability and user friendliness.
>
>
>
> You go on about how reliable cars are now but you ignore my point about
> the non-interchangeability of car components compared to the massive
> interchangeability of PC components. If you tried to swap car parts like
> you can swap PC parts then no car would ever run for more than a few miles
> before needing repair
>
>
>
> As for insight into the wonderful real world then considering I am
> actually working in a real company with a few hundred Windows machines and
> do some administration of them, before that I worked for an Internet
> provider and have been pretty much involved one way or another for most of
> my working life while on the other hand you are a (retired?) physicist who
> probably spent most of your career nestled in academia and insulated from
> the commercial world. Sorry but I suspect it is your illusions that a dose
> of reality would shatter.
>
>
>
> Regards
>
> DaveO
>
>
If you don't mind changes beeing lost, it can even run from a CD.

/Henning

[Peter Nolan]

On Jan 17, 4:50 pm, "DaveO" <***@dial.pipex.com> wrote:
> "Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:9b96d3cc-b51b-4723-8126-***@e8g2000yqd.googlegroups.com...
> On Jan 17, 2:17 pm, "DaveO" <***@dial.pipex.com> wrote:
>
> > "Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> For Linux I would have suggested using Ubuntu but they have changed the
> desktop manager to the unpopular Unity but as you are used to Macs you might
> not find Unity as jarring as many other have found it, you can use KDE with
> Ubuntu but that's a bit trickier to set up. The installation of Ubuntu is
> absurdly simple. On my home PC because of the difficulty in making Windows
> fully secure I never go online with Windows but instead dual boot into
> Ubuntu figuring that it is a) a lot less vulnerable and b) a doddle to
> reinstall should it go tits-up.
>
> The figure of $6000 is not that different for any business PC regardless of
> the OS. That cost is a mixture of depreciation, a fraction of the
> administrator, recurring software subscription charges and factored one off
> software charges, power & network charges, user training and a host of other
> expenses which all mount up over the lifetime of a PC. Compare that against
> doing the same work with a typewriter and slide rule and it's a bargain.
> (yes I remember how to use, and still own a slide rule)
>
> As for the trouble caused by Windows PCs, well I have been using computers
> of various kinds since before microprocessors were readily available (I
> first learned on a Varian v70 minicomputer then a crappy IBM 1130 before I
> got my hands on a microprocessor based machine) and still maintain that even
> accounting for its many failings Windows is a remarkable achievement.
> Compared to CP/M, George, OS/2, NeXtStep or BSD it is the epitome of
> reliability and user friendliness.
>
> You go on about how reliable cars are now but you ignore my point about the
> non-interchangeability of car components compared to the massive
> interchangeability of PC components. If you tried to swap car parts like you
> can swap PC parts then no car would ever run for more than a few miles
> before needing repair
>
> As for insight into the wonderful real world then considering I am actually
> working in a real company with a few hundred Windows machines and do some
> administration of them, before that I worked for an Internet provider and
> have been pretty much involved one way or another for most of my working
> life while on the other hand you are a (retired?) physicist who probably
> spent most of your career nestled in academia and insulated from the
> commercial world. Sorry but I suspect it is your illusions that a dose of
> reality would shatter.
>
> Regards
>
> DaveO

Hello DaveO,

Again many thanks for all the great info you have provided me with
above. I have read all of the other follow on comments from Olaf and
Helmut and found myself dashing to the dictionary onboard my iBook to
double check the meaning of troll. Here is what it says:

troll 1 |trōl|
noun
a mythical, cave-dwelling being depicted in folklore as either a giant
or a dwarf, typically having a very ugly appearance.
ORIGIN from Old Norse and Swedish troll, Danish trold; adopted into
English from Scandinavian in the mid 19th cent.

So there you have it.
Now I know or imagine I know that an NG troll is a very unwelcome
visitor to an NG who just stirs up trouble for their own enjoyment or
something along those lines. In addition a troll is someone who may
not even stand by whatever system of principles they promote only
interested in persecuting others.
I now want to say to DaveO that while I may just have my wires crossed
about the keyboard freezing while being able to get a reboot action
from alt-ctrl-del I have the clearest recollection of having to unplug
the PC many times to then have to restart it and so on. It can happen
actually on the iBook that the keyboard and mouse will fail to work
when I can then do what Mac calls a force quit by pressing the alt and
escape keys simultaneously with a key called the command key. That is
not a reboot, though, but just forcing a quit from Safari, the default
browser, on my iBook say.
Now I must clear up something else. I first bought a PC for my own
personal use in September 1999 the Compaq Presario 5410 that I
continued to use, without a single hardware problem, till maybe around
2005. I wrote simple little programs in VB6 on that machine that were
enchanting to me nevertheless even if they are as simple as programs
could be really. Again it's the way I feel about computers. As I was
telling you I get excited when I see Hello on the screen after say: 10
Print "Hello" but that is clearly a whole other story with regard to
how different people, techies in this case, feel about computers.
Sadly I can't quite remember what happened next except to say that I
then bought a much more powerful PC the Compaq Presario 1519UK. I just
want to add that my 5410 had a 4.3Gb HDD whereas my 1519UK has a 160Gb
HDD a massive increase in capacity after only a few years passing by.
Amazing! I just wasn't happy and I really forgot to mention how
anxious I became about malware and so between the jigs and the reels I
then decided to buy a Mac and this I did. I kept the beautiful 1519UK
though and it is sitting right there beside me as I type this on my
iBook that is now probably out of date itself even if I have a huge
32Gb of free space on it's HDD that I will probably never use anyway.
You might also be interested to know that I wrote many short little
programs for a handheld, a HP Jornada 540(?), and wrote the programs
on the 5410 that I could then download or pipe to the Jornada from the
5410. Again these programs were very simple but they all worked and
did what I wanted them to do.
So to ease my mind by avoiding the apt to crash 5410 and infernal
malware I then bought the Mac Mini followed quickly by the purchase of
the expensive iBook in 2006 that I have been using ever since. It has
only been within recent weeks that I had the idea to generate notes
using VB6 on the 1519UK so when I am not using the iBook I can just
switch on the 1519UK that is almost never connected to the Internet
not because it is unreliable but because I uninstalled Norton on it
and so I have no virus protection of any kind on the 1519UK. I would
just like to point out to Blank, if he is reading this, that you can
download for free MS Visual Studio Express to have a go at programming
VB from there. You should have no problem with VB 2008 either based on
the little I know compared to all of you.
So I have used the 1519Uk running under Windows XP very little over
the last number of years.
I also want to say you that I haven't the slightest doubt that you
have the firmest grip on reality and I withdraw any remarks I made
about you not being in touch with reality as just a silly thing for me
to say. I am so annoyed about the way things have evolved in the world
of the personal computer though.
It's a law of life, a natural law, that we get what we pay for because
all of us have to make a living to eat and so I am all in favour of
paying for an OS if it does the job. It's just that M$ just keep
making money at every turn in a way that I object to. I would be very
happy more than happy to buy a naked PC and to then buy a version of
Windows that I knew was stable. I don't believe I can do this today!

Regards,

Peter.(a mythical, cave-dwelling being depicted in folklore as either
a giant or a dwarf, typically having a very ugly appearance)

[DaveO]

"Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:2482e967-854b-4210-beb5-***@s18g2000vby.googlegroups.com...
> you can download for free MS Visual Studio Express to have a go at
> programming VB from there. You should have no problem with VB 2008

You really are going out of your way to annoy people here aren't you?

This NG is for the original VB only and that means versions up to VB6
inclusive.

The majority consensus here is that the versions of "VB" after 6 are not a
logical progression from VB6 and as such do not merit the name "VB". While
the .NET versions of "VB" may well be adequate languages in their own right
they are not an evolution from VB6, there is some similarity in keywords and
the syntax at first glance is similar but that is as far as it goes.
Converting a program that is significantly more complex than "Hello World"
from VB6 to VB.NET is so tricky that in the majority of cases it's less
effort to start again from scratch.



DaveO

[Peter Nolan]

On Jan 18, 2:35 pm, "DaveO" <***@dial.pipex.com> wrote:
> "Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:2482e967-854b-4210-beb5-***@s18g2000vby.googlegroups.com...
>
> > you can download for free MS Visual Studio Express to have a go at
> > programming VB from there. You should have no problem with VB 2008
>
> You really are going out of your way to annoy people here aren't you?
>
> This NG is for the original VB only and that means versions up to VB6
> inclusive.
>
> The majority consensus here is that the versions of "VB" after 6 are not a
> logical progression from VB6 and as such do not merit the name "VB". While
> the .NET versions of "VB" may well be adequate languages in their own right
> they are not an evolution from VB6, there is some similarity in keywords and
> the syntax at first glance is similar but that is as far as it goes.
> Converting a program that is significantly more complex than "Hello World"
> from VB6 to VB.NET is so tricky that in the majority of cases it's less
> effort to start again from scratch.
>
> DaveO

Hello DaveO,

I wasn't trying to annoy anyone.

Regards,

Peter.

[ralph]

On Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:35:24 -0000, "DaveO" <***@dial.pipex.com>
wrote:

>
>"Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message
>news:2482e967-854b-4210-beb5-***@s18g2000vby.googlegroups.com...
>> you can download for free MS Visual Studio Express to have a go at
>> programming VB from there. You should have no problem with VB 2008
>
>You really are going out of your way to annoy people here aren't you?
>
>This NG is for the original VB only and that means versions up to VB6
>inclusive.
>
>The majority consensus here is that the versions of "VB" after 6 are not a
>logical progression from VB6 and as such do not merit the name "VB". While
>the .NET versions of "VB" may well be adequate languages in their own right
>they are not an evolution from VB6, there is some similarity in keywords and
>the syntax at first glance is similar but that is as far as it goes.
>Converting a program that is significantly more complex than "Hello World"
>from VB6 to VB.NET is so tricky that in the majority of cases it's less
>effort to start again from scratch.
>

I agree.

Microsoft newsgroups were all initially setup based on specific
"products". There is no doubt or possibility of debate that this
newsgroup was for the "Visual Basic Windows Development Platform" or
the "Visual Basic Programming System (v5)" products.

["VBA" too was setup to apply to a specific product - "Visual Basic
for Applications", which was mostly included with various Microsoft
products, but could also be licensed separately.]

It is useful to note that no "Visual Basic" language exists outside or
separate from a specific editor/compiler "product". One can easily
trace the evolution of the "Visual Basic" products through the various
editors and runtimes published with each version.

VB.Net is not part of that evolution. It is purely a marketing ploy to
feed off VB's extreme popularity by naming a new BASIC-esque language
"Visual Basic", thus I would go farther and say any similarity between
VB.Net and VB is purely illusionary - or as Webster would say - A
serious erroneous perception of reality. <bg>

-ralph

[blank]

> You really are going out of your way to annoy people here aren't you?
>
> This NG is for the original VB only and that means versions up to VB6
> inclusive.
>
> The majority consensus here is that the versions of "VB" after 6 are not a
> logical progression from VB6 and as such do not merit the name "VB". While
> the .NET versions of "VB" may well be adequate languages in their own
> right they are not an evolution from VB6, there is some similarity in
> keywords and the syntax at first glance is similar but that is as far as
> it goes. Converting a program that is significantly more complex than
> "Hello World" from VB6 to VB.NET is so tricky that in the majority of
> cases it's less effort to start again from scratch.
>
>
>
> DaveO
>
I don't agree that he is, Dave. What he says has plenty of valid points in
it, and it doesn't annoy me in the slightest. .

On the other hand, I think your encapsulation of the dreaded dot.net is spot
on!

[DaveO]

"blank" <***@blankety.blank.com> wrote in message
news:4f171281$***@dnews.tpgi.com.au...
>> You really are going out of your way to annoy people here aren't you?
>>
> I don't agree that he is, Dave. What he says has plenty of valid points
> in it, and it doesn't annoy me in the slightest. .

My comment referred to his suggestion of downloading VS2008 with VB.NET
which is certainly not a welcome suggestion here.

Regards
DaveO.

[Peter Nolan]

On Jan 19, 11:33 am, "DaveO" <***@dial.pipex.com> wrote:
> "blank" <***@blankety.blank.com> wrote in message
>
> news:4f171281$***@dnews.tpgi.com.au...
>
> >> You really are going out of your way to annoy people here aren't you?
>
> > I don't agree that he is, Dave.  What he says has plenty of valid points
> > in it, and it doesn't annoy me in the slightest. .
>
> My comment referred to his suggestion of downloading VS2008 with VB.NET
> which is certainly not a welcome suggestion here.
>
> Regards
> DaveO.


Hello DaveO,

I understand this thread is now dead but I happened to read about
this:

http://tabtimes.com/news/ittech-manufacturers/2012/01/10/cooking-storm-french-company-unleashes-culinary-tablet-ces

in a newspaper last night and I thought of you. It costs a lot and I
just read that they are charging people to access more content on a
monthly basis. The reason I thought of you is because this gadget runs
under Linux or so they say so at least in just this one case we would
have a computer not running under Windows or the Mac OS. That is a
little bit like a breath of fresher air to me. I'm sure, though, you
know of many other examples of this that I don't know about.I live and
learn.

Regards,

Peter.

[Peter Nolan]

On Jan 18, 6:42 pm, "blank" <***@blankety.blank.com> wrote:
> > You really are going out of your way to annoy people here aren't you?
>
> > This NG is for the original VB only and that means versions up to VB6
> > inclusive.
>
> > The majority consensus here is that the versions of "VB" after 6 are not a
> > logical progression from VB6 and as such do not merit the name "VB". While
> > the .NET versions of "VB" may well be adequate languages in their own
> > right they are not an evolution from VB6, there is some similarity in
> > keywords and the syntax at first glance is similar but that is as far as
> > it goes. Converting a program that is significantly more complex than
> > "Hello World" from VB6 to VB.NET is so tricky that in the majority of
> > cases it's less effort to start again from scratch.
>
> > DaveO
>
> I don't agree that he is, Dave.  What he says has plenty of valid points in
> it, and it doesn't annoy me in the slightest. .
>
> On the other hand, I think your encapsulation of the dreaded dot.net is spot
> on!

Hello Blank,

Many thanks for that kind remark. I read up as best I could about .net
and just like I cannot understand what a class is I couldn't
understand what .net is all about. I thought that VB contained in M$'s
express version of Visual Studio is just an upgrade of VB 6 but it
appears that I have no idea what is going on really. I have MS Visual
Studio.NET 2003 on CD that I installed and then uninstalled on my
1519UK in the hopes I could write some very simple programs in VC++
but I remain gloriously confused about the whole thing.

Regards,

Peter.

[blank]

"Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:4d198377-aa7a-4832-b6c3-***@do4g2000vbb.googlegroups.com...
On Jan 18, 6:42 pm, "blank" <***@blankety.blank.com> wrote:
> > You really are going out of your way to annoy people here aren't you?
>
> > This NG is for the original VB only and that means versions up to VB6
> > inclusive.
>
> > The majority consensus here is that the versions of "VB" after 6 are not
> > a
> > logical progression from VB6 and as such do not merit the name "VB".
> > While
> > the .NET versions of "VB" may well be adequate languages in their own
> > right they are not an evolution from VB6, there is some similarity in
> > keywords and the syntax at first glance is similar but that is as far as
> > it goes. Converting a program that is significantly more complex than
> > "Hello World" from VB6 to VB.NET is so tricky that in the majority of
> > cases it's less effort to start again from scratch.
>
> > DaveO
>
> I don't agree that he is, Dave. What he says has plenty of valid points in
> it, and it doesn't annoy me in the slightest. .
>
> On the other hand, I think your encapsulation of the dreaded dot.net is
> spot
> on!

Hello Blank,

Many thanks for that kind remark. I read up as best I could about .net
and just like I cannot understand what a class is I couldn't
understand what .net is all about. I thought that VB contained in M$'s
express version of Visual Studio is just an upgrade of VB 6 but it
appears that I have no idea what is going on really. I have MS Visual
Studio.NET 2003 on CD that I installed and then uninstalled on my
1519UK in the hopes I could write some very simple programs in VC++
but I remain gloriously confused about the whole thing.

Regards,

Peter.

Hi Peter. VisualBasic 6 (sometimes called Classic Visual Basic) is a high
level language with a superb Integrated Design Environment and is a
development from VB5, itself a development from earlier versions. Some years
ago Microsoft issued Dot.net (Visual Studio.Net is an example of that) and
although they called it Visual Basic, it was completely new, and to my mind
quite useless (does not have proper printer support amongst other things).
They dropped the REAL visual basic, of which VB6 is the last (for now...)
and thus marooned millions of programmers worldwide. However VB6 still works
up to Windows 8 (and possibly beyond) so there are plenty of people coding
in it. I was lucky enough to buy a fully licenced copy of VB6 Professional
and I absolutely love it.

[Peter Nolan]

On Jan 19, 6:17 pm, "blank" <***@blankety.blank.com> wrote:
> "Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:4d198377-aa7a-4832-b6c3-***@do4g2000vbb.googlegroups.com...
> On Jan 18, 6:42 pm, "blank" <***@blankety.blank.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > > You really are going out of your way to annoy people here aren't you?
>
> > > This NG is for the original VB only and that means versions up to VB6
> > > inclusive.
>
> > > The majority consensus here is that the versions of "VB" after 6 are not
> > > a
> > > logical progression from VB6 and as such do not merit the name "VB".
> > > While
> > > the .NET versions of "VB" may well be adequate languages in their own
> > > right they are not an evolution from VB6, there is some similarity in
> > > keywords and the syntax at first glance is similar but that is as far as
> > > it goes. Converting a program that is significantly more complex than
> > > "Hello World" from VB6 to VB.NET is so tricky that in the majority of
> > > cases it's less effort to start again from scratch.
>
> > > DaveO
>
> > I don't agree that he is, Dave. What he says has plenty of valid points in
> > it, and it doesn't annoy me in the slightest. .
>
> > On the other hand, I think your encapsulation of the dreaded dot.net is
> > spot
> > on!
>
> Hello Blank,
>
> Many thanks for that kind remark. I read up as best I could about .net
> and just like I cannot understand what a class is I couldn't
> understand what .net is all about. I thought that VB contained in M$'s
> express version of Visual Studio is just an upgrade of VB 6 but it
> appears that I have no idea what is going on really. I have MS Visual
> Studio.NET 2003 on CD that I installed and then uninstalled on my
> 1519UK in the hopes I could write some very simple programs in VC++
> but I remain gloriously confused about the whole thing.
>
> Regards,
>
> Peter.
>
> Hi Peter. VisualBasic 6 (sometimes called Classic Visual Basic) is a high
> level language with a superb Integrated Design Environment and is a
> development from VB5, itself a development from earlier versions. Some years
> ago Microsoft issued Dot.net (Visual Studio.Net is an example of that) and
> although they called it Visual Basic, it was completely new, and to my mind
> quite useless (does not have proper printer support amongst other things).
> They dropped the REAL visual basic, of which VB6 is the last (for now...)
> and thus marooned millions of programmers worldwide. However VB6 still works
> up to Windows 8 (and possibly beyond) so there are plenty of people coding
> in it. I was lucky enough to buy a fully licenced copy of VB6 Professional
> and I absolutely love it.


Hello Blank,

I would hope to learn a little bit about .net at some point just to be
clued in more than I am.

Regards,

Peter.

[Jason Keats]

Peter Nolan wrote:
>
> I would hope to learn a little bit about .net at some point just to be
> clued in more than I am.
>

You should have started 10 years ago - as it's evolved since then,
making it a little more complicated to learn (if you want to use all the
latest features).

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/hh388573

[Peter Nolan]

On Jan 20, 12:40 pm, Jason Keats <***@melbpcDeleteThis.org.au>
wrote:
> Peter Nolan wrote:
>
> > I would hope to learn a little bit about .net at some point just to be
> > clued in more than I am.
>
> You should have started 10 years ago - as it's evolved since then,
> making it a little more complicated to learn (if you want to use all the
> latest features).
>
> http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/hh388573

Hello Jason,

I would be happy though with just a kind of broad understanding
of .net without being able to go in too deep.
Many thanks for the link.

Regards,

Peter.

[blank]

"Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:144b70ff-01fc-4159-9202-***@k28g2000yqc.googlegroups.com...
...
Hello Blank,

I would hope to learn a little bit about .net at some point just to be
clued in more than I am.

Regards,

Peter.

Honestly Peter, I would not bother! It is a a truly dreadful
bastardisation. You would be far better familiarising yourself with Classic
Visual Basi 6

[Peter Nolan]

On Jan 21, 4:20 am, "blank" <***@blankety.blank.com> wrote:
> "Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:144b70ff-01fc-4159-9202-***@k28g2000yqc.googlegroups.com...
> ...
> Hello Blank,
>
> I would hope to learn a little bit about .net at some point just to be
> clued in more than I am.
>
> Regards,
>
> Peter.
>
> Honestly Peter, I would not bother!  It is a a truly dreadful
> bastardisation. You would be far better familiarising yourself with Classic
> Visual Basi 6

Hello Blank,

As I just pointed out to Jason I would be happy just to know roughly
how it all works in much the same way it is my hope to write a few
very simple programs in VC++ for the only reason that is to have a
feel for VC++.

Regards,

Peter.

[blank]

"DaveO" <***@dial.pipex.com> wrote in message
news:jf8v1k$3b0$***@dont-email.me...
>
> "blank" <***@blankety.blank.com> wrote in message
> news:4f171281$***@dnews.tpgi.com.au...
>>> You really are going out of your way to annoy people here aren't you?
>>>
>> I don't agree that he is, Dave. What he says has plenty of valid points
>> in it, and it doesn't annoy me in the slightest. .
>
> My comment referred to his suggestion of downloading VS2008 with VB.NET
> which is certainly not a welcome suggestion here.
>
> Regards
> DaveO.
Yes, sorry. I agree. Dot.net is a total fraud. But as a beginner he would at
first be fooled by M$oft calling it 'Visual Basic'!

[Schmidt]

Am 17.01.2012 16:22, schrieb Peter Nolan:
> ...
> I abandoned using a Windows PC in 2006 when I bought a Mac...
>...
> I haven't used a Windows PC for many years...
>...
> I don't mean to shatter your illusions but you appear to
> have no insight into what is actually happening in the
> real world of the Windows PC ...

Peter, do you concur, that there's a little twist
in your above statements, which does not make it
any easier for us, to wholeheartedly agree with you?
;-)


Olaf

[Helmut_Meukel]

Peter Nolan stated:
>
> I abandoned using a Windows PC in 2006 when I bought a Mac Mini and
> then soon after that a very expensive, to me, Mac iBook G4. I haven't
> used a Windows PC for many years.

Peter, you are a troll.
In your original posting you wrote:

> I have a Compaq Presario 5410UK running under Windows XP having also
> installed VB 6.0 on this PC.
> I am an intermediate level but inexperienced programmer in VB 6.0. I
> wrote the simplest two line program to play a note or tone
> in the speakers that consisted of a Declare for the Beep function and
> the one line:
>
> Beep 200,5000

When did you do this programming? Back in 2006, before you abandoned
Windows?
So why are you now - 6 years later - asking the question here?

Peter, you are a troll!

Helmut.

[DaveO]

"Helmut_Meukel" <***@bn-hof.invalid> wrote in message
news:jf4rq5$uh9$***@dont-email.me...
> Peter Nolan stated:
>>
>> I abandoned using a Windows PC in 2006 when I bought a Mac Mini and
>> then soon after that a very expensive, to me, Mac iBook G4. I haven't
>> used a Windows PC for many years.
>
> Peter, you are a troll.
> In your original posting you wrote:
>
>> I have a Compaq Presario 5410UK running under Windows XP having also
>> installed VB 6.0 on this PC.
>> I am an intermediate level but inexperienced programmer in VB 6.0. I
>> wrote the simplest two line program to play a note or tone
>> in the speakers that consisted of a Declare for the Beep function and
>> the one line:
>>
>> Beep 200,5000
>
> When did you do this programming? Back in 2006, before you abandoned
> Windows?
> So why are you now - 6 years later - asking the question here?
>
> Peter, you are a troll!
>
> Helmut.
>
>

[DaveO]

"DaveO" <***@dial.pipex.com> wrote in message
news:jf62dt$7qg$***@dont-email.me...

Oops, sorry about the blank message before, not sure what happened there.



What I had meant to say was that I suppose it is possible for him to have
stopped using Windows at home but still have it in the workplace.



What worries me that as a scientist he is using hearsay "a top gun
electronic design engineer from New York who told me at that time it cost
companies $6000 per year to keep each PC " from a single unverified source
as his evidence. If any "scientist" working for me did that I'd throw him
out of the lab. It's as stupid as using Wikipedia as your sole source.



DaveO.

[ralph]

On Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:22:54 -0000, "DaveO" <***@dial.pipex.com>
wrote:

>
>"DaveO" <***@dial.pipex.com> wrote in message
>news:jf62dt$7qg$***@dont-email.me...
>
>Oops, sorry about the blank message before, not sure what happened there.
>
>
>
>What I had meant to say was that I suppose it is possible for him to have
>stopped using Windows at home but still have it in the workplace.
>
>
>
>What worries me that as a scientist he is using hearsay "a top gun
>electronic design engineer from New York who told me at that time it cost
>companies $6000 per year to keep each PC " from a single unverified source
>as his evidence. If any "scientist" working for me did that I'd throw him
>out of the lab. It's as stupid as using Wikipedia as your sole source.
>

But a very common phenomena in our industry. I shudder when I think of
how many major IT decisions are made based on idle chatter on a golf
course. <g>

Calulating TCO can be interesting and often produces astonishing
results.

Some more "hearsay":
After 30 years the one constant I've discovered is that for any given
entity (corporation, enterprise, shop, business, home, ...) the TCO
will vary dramatically, especially if one factors in risk (comfort
level).

Sure you can take a survey and come up with an average and a working
number to feed to a business plan. But that is as far as it can go. At
some point one needs to take a hard look at the actual cost and risks
for their domain. Again the results are often amazing.

-ralph

[Helmut_Meukel]

DaveO wrote:
>
> What I had meant to say was that I suppose it is possible for him to have
> stopped using Windows at home but still have it in the workplace.
>

I thought about this, but as a "scientist" he then shouldn't have
written:
> I haven't used a Windows PC for many years.

Helmut.

[ralph]

On Sun, 15 Jan 2012 03:39:17 -0800 (PST), Peter Nolan
<***@gmail.com> wrote:


>My beef is simple. I'm deeply upset by what DaveO calls the MS eco
>system and so annoyed that Bill Gates has a stranglehold on PC
>software. If Windoows was solid I wouldn't feel so bad but it's not
>and while errors are corrected in each new upgrade the new versions
>are full of new errors in the new features that are being added on
>and so on it goes forever meaning we the public never get a good OS.
>This is just wrong and there is nothing we can do. Governments could
>do a lot but Gates has many Republican friends in Washington who will
>scupper any attempt at fixing things over there. I am only repeating
>myself over and over again so I will stop and just add that almost
>every techie in the world feels the same way I do about M$ that is
>Bill Gates who is just an amateur programmer and was never anything
>more than that. His talent is making money just like any other
>entrepreneur who has little understanding of what it is he actually
>sells.
>

I can understand anyone's annoyance with Microsoft's apparent
stranglehold on PC software, but if it hadn't been Microsoft it would
have been someone else. That fact must be understood no matter what
else I might add below.

Difficult to wrap up the history of the PC in a few words. The
information is out there if you really wanted to know, but consider
just a few items which you seem to be unaware of.

Back in the dawn of the "PC" (actually you could include every "micro
system" or heavy-iron in this as well, but I'll stick to the PC to
keep it simple) every new box/chip was a new O/S, and needed new
devices, and specific hardware. It was a bloody nightmare. Some kind
of "standardization" was needed. But no one was truly willing to give
or adopt anyone else's "standard" - everyone wanted to be "THE PC".

There were definitely superior products/chips, but once IBM released
its PC - the market changed. The "IBM PC" (and "clones") became king.
[The very existence of the "IBM Clone" and how it drove the market
choices for thousands is something ofter overlooked.]

As for software. There were a ton of competing products. And of the
major ones defined as having very large established user bases, NOT
ONE was from Microsoft (except of course MS DOS. And ever there there
were alternatives. Alternatives that died.).

Word Processors: WordStar and WordPerfect ruled.
But within a year of its release MS Word had the market. Why? It
offered WYSIWYG, univeral printers, and lo and behold - A MENU! <g>

Spreadsheets: VisiCalc, Lotus 123, Easy As, ...
But within a year MS Excel beat them all. (Incidentally Excel was
original written for the Apple.)

Local Databases: dBase, Informix, PARADOX, rBase, ...
But you guessed it ... within a year MS Access ruled.

[
Good place to note two interesting but little understood facts.
1) MS introduced ODBC. (Along with IBM. But IBM wanted to keep it
proprietary. Part of the OS/2 breakdown.
Until then programmically working with a database was an adventure.
First you had to buy a proprietary ($$$) library, ... ODBC changed all
that.
2) MS introduced "Printer Independence". Up until then every
application had its own devices/drivers and each printer was an
adventure.

We take universal connectivity and printing for granted today.
]

Programming languages and development platforms: Borland ruled.
Period!
MS released Visual Studio and it was all over with - again.

Now I appreciate any real MS-Hater worth his salt, will come up with a
ton of conspiracy theories on how MS won out. But the simple fact is
if you look back you'll see that every single vendor that had a chance
of competing shot themselves in the foot as much as anything MS did.

Borland's demise for example reads like a sitcom.

As for government conspiracy theories - you are letting your own
prejudges blind you to one simple fact - corporations bribe and
support those in power who can actually do something for them. The
Republicans haven't been in power (except for a few short interludes)
for decades. MS, Google, Sun, ... all provide massive donations to the
Democrats and Liberal agendas.

Whew! Turned out longer than I meant it to be. The story of Microsoft
is one of opportunity, marketing, corporate greed, and business savvy.
However it could have been someone else - if it had, I'm positive
you'd be just has convinced of their evil. <g>

I know this will change your eccentric views not one iota.

-ralph
[It should be noted that one of MS's nearest and best competitor is
and always has been *free* and yet - ... ]

[blank]

"ralph" <***@yahoo.net> wrote in message
news:***@4ax.com...
> On Sun, 15 Jan 2012 03:39:17 -0800 (PST), Peter Nolan
> <***@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>My beef is simple. I'm deeply upset by what DaveO calls the MS eco
>>system and so annoyed that Bill Gates has a stranglehold on PC
>>software. If Windoows was solid I wouldn't feel so bad but it's not
>>and while errors are corrected in each new upgrade the new versions
>>are full of new errors in the new features that are being added on
>>and so on it goes forever meaning we the public never get a good OS.
>>This is just wrong and there is nothing we can do. Governments could
>>do a lot but Gates has many Republican friends in Washington who will
>>scupper any attempt at fixing things over there. I am only repeating
>>myself over and over again so I will stop and just add that almost
>>every techie in the world feels the same way I do about M$ that is
>>Bill Gates who is just an amateur programmer and was never anything
>>more than that. His talent is making money just like any other
>>entrepreneur who has little understanding of what it is he actually
>>sells.
>>
>
> I can understand anyone's annoyance with Microsoft's apparent
> stranglehold on PC software, but if it hadn't been Microsoft it would
> have been someone else. That fact must be understood no matter what
> else I might add below.
>
> Difficult to wrap up the history of the PC in a few words. The
> information is out there if you really wanted to know, but consider
> just a few items which you seem to be unaware of.
>
> Back in the dawn of the "PC" (actually you could include every "micro
> system" or heavy-iron in this as well, but I'll stick to the PC to
> keep it simple) every new box/chip was a new O/S, and needed new
> devices, and specific hardware. It was a bloody nightmare. Some kind
> of "standardization" was needed. But no one was truly willing to give
> or adopt anyone else's "standard" - everyone wanted to be "THE PC".
>
> There were definitely superior products/chips, but once IBM released
> its PC - the market changed. The "IBM PC" (and "clones") became king.
> [The very existence of the "IBM Clone" and how it drove the market
> choices for thousands is something ofter overlooked.]
>
> As for software. There were a ton of competing products. And of the
> major ones defined as having very large established user bases, NOT
> ONE was from Microsoft (except of course MS DOS. And ever there there
> were alternatives. Alternatives that died.).
>
> Word Processors: WordStar and WordPerfect ruled.
> But within a year of its release MS Word had the market. Why? It
> offered WYSIWYG, univeral printers, and lo and behold - A MENU! <g>
>
> Spreadsheets: VisiCalc, Lotus 123, Easy As, ...
> But within a year MS Excel beat them all. (Incidentally Excel was
> original written for the Apple.)
>
> Local Databases: dBase, Informix, PARADOX, rBase, ...
> But you guessed it ... within a year MS Access ruled.
>
> [
> Good place to note two interesting but little understood facts.
> 1) MS introduced ODBC. (Along with IBM. But IBM wanted to keep it
> proprietary. Part of the OS/2 breakdown.
> Until then programmically working with a database was an adventure.
> First you had to buy a proprietary ($$$) library, ... ODBC changed all
> that.
> 2) MS introduced "Printer Independence". Up until then every
> application had its own devices/drivers and each printer was an
> adventure.
>
> We take universal connectivity and printing for granted today.
> ]
>
> Programming languages and development platforms: Borland ruled.
> Period!
> MS released Visual Studio and it was all over with - again.
>
> Now I appreciate any real MS-Hater worth his salt, will come up with a
> ton of conspiracy theories on how MS won out. But the simple fact is
> if you look back you'll see that every single vendor that had a chance
> of competing shot themselves in the foot as much as anything MS did.
>
> Borland's demise for example reads like a sitcom.
>
> As for government conspiracy theories - you are letting your own
> prejudges blind you to one simple fact - corporations bribe and
> support those in power who can actually do something for them. The
> Republicans haven't been in power (except for a few short interludes)
> for decades. MS, Google, Sun, ... all provide massive donations to the
> Democrats and Liberal agendas.
>
> Whew! Turned out longer than I meant it to be. The story of Microsoft
> is one of opportunity, marketing, corporate greed, and business savvy.
> However it could have been someone else - if it had, I'm positive
> you'd be just has convinced of their evil. <g>
>
> I know this will change your eccentric views not one iota.

But Ralph, your final paragraph actually agrees with and encapsulates th
majority of Peter's feelings. Great potted history by the way! I'm a 1980s
4K man, just BEFORE he PC so know a bit about the goings on...

[blank]

"Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:c3bf2579-baaf-4395-bc44-***@e8g2000yqd.googlegroups.com...
On Jan 14, 1:56 pm, Helmut_Meukel <***@bn-hof.invalid>
wrote:
> Peter Nolan wrote:
... so annoyed that Bill Gates has a stranglehold on PC
software. If Windoows was solid I wouldn't feel so bad but it's not
and while errors are corrected in each new upgrade the new versions
are full of new errors in the new features that are being added on
and so on it goes forever meaning we the public never get a good OS.
This is just wrong and there is nothing we can do. Governments could
do a lot but Gates has many Republican friends in Washington who will
scupper any attempt at fixing things over there. I am only repeating
myself over and over again so I will stop and just add that almost
every techie in the world feels the same way I do about M$ that is
Bill Gates who is just an amateur programmer and was never anything
more than that. His talent is making money just like any other
entrepreneur who has little understanding of what it is he actually
sells.

My feelings exactly, except that Bill Gates was not a programmer. He is
salesman who made a lucky purchase years ago when IBM needed DOS and he was
at the right place at the right time and employed/bought out the right
people. For that good judgement (or luck?) he should be admired.

As it happens, one of their products which does deserve great praise, is VB6
or VB Classic as many call it (what this group is devoted to). It is a
brilliant language and environment which you really should look into deeply.
Characteristically, Microsoft dropped it after millions of progrmmers
worldwide taught themselves how to use it or even went on expensive courses
to learn. It has been replaced by dot.net which is a hopeless system from a
business point of view, and no doubt *that* will be dropped again if and
when the $ in M$oft determines it.

[Peter Nolan]

On Jan 15, 7:55 pm, "blank" <***@blankety.blank.com> wrote:
> "Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:c3bf2579-baaf-4395-bc44-***@e8g2000yqd.googlegroups.com...
> On Jan 14, 1:56 pm, Helmut_Meukel <***@bn-hof.invalid>
> wrote:> Peter Nolan wrote:
>
> ... so annoyed that Bill Gates has a stranglehold on PC
> software. If Windoows was solid I wouldn't feel so bad but it's not
> and while errors are corrected in each new upgrade the new versions
> are full of new errors in the new features that are being added on
> and so on it goes forever meaning we the public never get a good OS.
> This is just wrong and there is nothing we can do. Governments could
> do a lot but Gates has many Republican friends in Washington who will
> scupper any attempt at fixing things over there. I am only repeating
> myself over and over again so I will stop and just add that almost
> every techie in the world feels the same way I do about M$ that is
> Bill Gates who is just an amateur programmer and was never anything
> more than that. His talent is making money just like any other
> entrepreneur who has little understanding of what it is he actually
> sells.
>
> My feelings exactly, except that Bill Gates was not a programmer. He is
> salesman who made a lucky purchase years ago when IBM needed DOS and he was
> at the right place at the right time and employed/bought out the right
> people. For that good judgement (or luck?) he should be admired.
>
> As it happens, one of their products which does deserve great praise, is VB6
> or VB Classic as many call it (what this group is devoted to). It is a
> brilliant language and environment which you really should look into deeply.
> Characteristically, Microsoft dropped it after millions of progrmmers
> worldwide taught themselves how to use it or even went on expensive courses
> to learn. It has been replaced by dot.net which is a hopeless system from a
> business point of view, and no doubt *that* will be dropped again if and
> when the $ in M$oft determines it.


Hello Blank,

Yes. I knew that the IBM DOS was crucial in the whole story. I recall
somehow that Gates lost his grip on it at some point and learned a
great lesson about copyright. I am almost certain I heard him say
something like that on TV at one point. He was interviewed on BBC 1
news at six one night recently and it felt to me that George Alagiah
or whoever it was interviewing him was addressing him as if he was now
a God, Roman Emperor style, and that Gates felt that he had to choose
his every word in case he said any wrong little thing that might
affect the path of the earth's orbit around the sun!
I have to now withdraw from this thread so take care of yourself.

Regards,

Peter.

[Mike Williams]

"Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:b064af06-d5b9-4181-8d1a-***@r5g2000yqc.googlegroups.com...
On Jan 13, 11:06 am, "DaveO" <***@dial.pipex.com> wrote:
>> So what's the problem? Ramping a variable for the first and
>> last n steps of a loop is pretty trivial however I've no idea if
>> it will actually work to fade in and out the WAV, the easiest
>> way to find out would be to try it out.
>
> Hello DaveO. Softening up the WAV file using ramps at the
> start and finish of the file will definitely work because I have
> checked all this out using Audacity. It's just a matter of getting
> the code to build in the two ramp functions to work and then
> playing round with the slope of that function to eliminate the pops.

I hope you don't take this the wrong way Peter but I'm having a little
trouble reconciling your desire to "know what goes on under the hood" with
your reluctance to have a go at modifying the existing wav file code in
order to produce the fade in and the fade out sections.

Don't worry about writing code that fails to work first time, or even that
fails to work at all. We all do that sometimes. In fact we all do it a lot,
if we are honest with ourselves. That's how we learn. If it fails to work
first time then try again. If after trying for some time you find that you
just cannot get it at all then you haven't lost anything, except perhaps a
bit of time, and you might actually have learned quite a lot. Also, the
people here will be far more inclined to help you with the details of your
code if you have tried and failed than they will if you have never tried at
all. As a starter, have a look at the declaration of the main array in the
example code, which is as follows:

ReDim wavfile(1 To totalsamples + 22)

That array is an array of VB Integers. The first 22 elements of it contain
the "description of the wav file" and the remaining elements contain the
actual sample voltage data. So, for simplicity you could start off by
declaring two new variables that contain the start point and the end point
of the actual wave data samples in the wavfile array, perhaps something
like:

Dim FirstSample as Long, LastSample as Long
FirstSample = 23
LastSample = totalSamples + 22

Next you need to decide how many samples you want to modify at each end in
order to create the fade-in and the fade-out so as to reduce or eliminate
the "blip noise". My own suggestion is to start off using about one
hundredth of a second at each end of the total waveform. If this doesn't
reduce the "pop" sufficiently then use a larger value, perhaps two, three or
four hundredths of a second (although I think the first one will work for
you). This particular code always generates a wav file at the sample rate of
44100 samples per second (what used to be known as the standard "CD music"
rate). So, if there are always 44100 samples in one second then there will
always be 441 samples in one hundredth of a second, regardless of the sine
wave frequency of the tone the code is generating. So that gets you another
variable you can declare and populate:

SlopeSamples = 441

I would suggest that for simplicity you tackle the "fade-in" section first.
Also, both for simplicity and for speed, I would suggest that you add your
own "fade-in" code AFTER the main waveform has been fully created, in other
words AFTER the following section in the existing code:

For n = 0 To totalsamples - 1
d1 = Amplitude * Sin(k)
wavfile(n + 23) = d1
k = k + dAngle
Next n

So, immediately after the code shown above you will need to add your own
variable declarations and populate them with the correct values (as already
explained above) and you will need to add your own For . . . Next loop for
the "Fade In" code which (for this simple linear fade) reads one by one the
first 441 actual data samples and modifies each of them by multiplying it by
some value in the range zero to 1 and and dumps it back. For the "fade-in"
the 441 samples should in turn be multiplied by a floating point value which
gradually increases from zero to one over the complete 441 samples.

When you think you have got it right then run the program and see what
happens. Make sure that you uncomment the lines near the end of the code so
that an actual .wav file is saved to disk. If your code runs without error
you can then load that .wav file into Audacity and see what it looks like.
You should be able to see the short one hundredth of a second "ramp up from
zero" of the waveform.

Give it a go, Peter. You'll learn much more by trying than you will by
reading code that has been posted. In fact you will probably learn much more
by trying and failing than you will be trying and succeeding. Believe me.

Mike

[blank]

"Mike Williams" <***@WhiskyAndCoke.com> wrote in message
news:jeqbgd$kmt$***@dont-email.me...
> "Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:b064af06-d5b9-4181-8d1a-***@r5g2000yqc.googlegroups.com...
> On Jan 13, 11:06 am, "DaveO" <***@dial.pipex.com> wrote:
>>> So what's the problem? Ramping a variable for the first and
>>> last n steps of a loop is pretty trivial however I've no idea if
>>> it will actually work to fade in and out the WAV, the easiest
>>> way to find out would be to try it out.
>>
>> Hello DaveO. Softening up the WAV file using ramps at the
>> start and finish of the file will definitely work because I have
>> checked all this out using Audacity. It's just a matter of getting
>> the code to build in the two ramp functions to work and then
>> playing round with the slope of that function to eliminate the pops.
>
> I hope you don't take this the wrong way Peter but I'm having a little
> trouble reconciling your desire to "know what goes on under the hood" with
> your reluctance to have a go at modifying the existing wav file code in
> order to produce the fade in and the fade out sections.
>
> Don't worry about writing code that fails to work first time, or even that
> fails to work at all. We all do that sometimes. In fact we all do it a
> lot, if we are honest with ourselves. That's how we learn. If it fails to
> work first time then try again. If after trying for some time you find
> that you just cannot get it at all then you haven't lost anything, except
> perhaps a bit of time, and you might actually have learned quite a lot.
> Also, the people here will be far more inclined to help you with the
> details of your code if you have tried and failed than they will if you
> have never tried at all. As a starter, have a look at the declaration of
> the main array in the example code, which is as follows:
>
> ReDim wavfile(1 To totalsamples + 22)
>
> That array is an array of VB Integers. The first 22 elements of it contain
> the "description of the wav file" and the remaining elements contain the
> actual sample voltage data. So, for simplicity you could start off by
> declaring two new variables that contain the start point and the end point
> of the actual wave data samples in the wavfile array, perhaps something
> like:
>
> Dim FirstSample as Long, LastSample as Long
> FirstSample = 23
> LastSample = totalSamples + 22
>
> Next you need to decide how many samples you want to modify at each end in
> order to create the fade-in and the fade-out so as to reduce or eliminate
> the "blip noise". My own suggestion is to start off using about one
> hundredth of a second at each end of the total waveform. If this doesn't
> reduce the "pop" sufficiently then use a larger value, perhaps two, three
> or four hundredths of a second (although I think the first one will work
> for you). This particular code always generates a wav file at the sample
> rate of 44100 samples per second (what used to be known as the standard
> "CD music" rate). So, if there are always 44100 samples in one second then
> there will always be 441 samples in one hundredth of a second, regardless
> of the sine wave frequency of the tone the code is generating. So that
> gets you another variable you can declare and populate:
>
> SlopeSamples = 441
>
> I would suggest that for simplicity you tackle the "fade-in" section
> first. Also, both for simplicity and for speed, I would suggest that you
> add your own "fade-in" code AFTER the main waveform has been fully
> created, in other words AFTER the following section in the existing code:
>
> For n = 0 To totalsamples - 1
> d1 = Amplitude * Sin(k)
> wavfile(n + 23) = d1
> k = k + dAngle
> Next n
>
> So, immediately after the code shown above you will need to add your own
> variable declarations and populate them with the correct values (as
> already explained above) and you will need to add your own For . . . Next
> loop for the "Fade In" code which (for this simple linear fade) reads one
> by one the first 441 actual data samples and modifies each of them by
> multiplying it by some value in the range zero to 1 and and dumps it back.
> For the "fade-in" the 441 samples should in turn be multiplied by a
> floating point value which gradually increases from zero to one over the
> complete 441 samples.
>
> When you think you have got it right then run the program and see what
> happens. Make sure that you uncomment the lines near the end of the code
> so that an actual .wav file is saved to disk. If your code runs without
> error you can then load that .wav file into Audacity and see what it looks
> like. You should be able to see the short one hundredth of a second "ramp
> up from zero" of the waveform.
>
> Give it a go, Peter. You'll learn much more by trying than you will by
> reading code that has been posted. In fact you will probably learn much
> more by trying and failing than you will be trying and succeeding. Believe
> me.
>
> Mike
>
...and Peter. Here it a small tip that might save you a lot of puzzling!
When you see a variable (that you create yourself) like CricketForIndia, you
might be puzzled by the use of capitals. That is simply a convention to help
break up compound words. It is not essential . The variable could have no
capitals. It would just be harder to read.

[Peter Nolan]

On Jan 13, 10:34 pm, "Mike Williams" <***@WhiskyAndCoke.com> wrote:
> "Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:b064af06-d5b9-4181-8d1a-***@r5g2000yqc.googlegroups.com...
> On Jan 13, 11:06 am, "DaveO" <***@dial.pipex.com> wrote:
>
> >> So what's the problem? Ramping a variable for the first and
> >> last n steps of a loop is pretty trivial however I've no idea if
> >> it will actually work to fade in and out the WAV, the easiest
> >> way to find out would be to try it out.
>
> > Hello DaveO. Softening up the WAV file using ramps at the
> > start and finish of the file will definitely work because I have
> > checked all this out using Audacity. It's just a matter of getting
> > the code to build in the two ramp functions to work and then
> > playing round with the slope of that function to eliminate the pops.
>
> I hope you don't take this the wrong way Peter but I'm having a little
> trouble reconciling your desire to "know what goes on under the hood" with
> your reluctance to have a go at modifying the existing wav file code in
> order to produce the fade in and the fade out sections.
>
> Don't worry about writing code that fails to work first time, or even that
> fails to work at all. We all do that sometimes. In fact we all do it a lot,
> if we are honest with ourselves. That's how we learn. If it fails to work
> first time then try again. If after trying for some time you find that you
> just cannot get it at all then you haven't lost anything, except perhaps a
> bit of time, and you might actually have learned quite a lot. Also, the
> people here will be far more inclined to help you with the details of your
> code if you have tried and failed than they will if you have never tried at
> all. As a starter, have a look at the declaration of the main array in the
> example code, which is as follows:
>
> ReDim wavfile(1 To totalsamples + 22)
>
> That array is an array of VB Integers. The first 22 elements of it contain
> the "description of the wav file" and the remaining elements contain the
> actual sample voltage data. So, for simplicity you could start off by
> declaring two new variables that contain the start point and the end point
> of the actual wave data samples in the wavfile array, perhaps something
> like:
>
> Dim FirstSample as Long, LastSample as Long
> FirstSample = 23
> LastSample = totalSamples + 22
>
> Next you need to decide how many samples you want to modify at each end in
> order to create the fade-in and the fade-out so as to reduce or eliminate
> the "blip noise". My own suggestion is to start off using about one
> hundredth of a second at each end of the total waveform. If this doesn't
> reduce the "pop" sufficiently then use a larger value, perhaps two, three or
> four hundredths of a second (although I think the first one will work for
> you). This particular code always generates a wav file at the sample rate of
> 44100 samples per second (what used to be known as the standard "CD music"
> rate). So, if there are always 44100 samples in one second then there will
> always be 441 samples in one hundredth of a second, regardless of the sine
> wave frequency of the tone the code is generating. So that gets you another
> variable you can declare and populate:
>
> SlopeSamples = 441
>
> I would suggest that for simplicity you tackle the "fade-in" section first.
> Also, both for simplicity and for speed, I would suggest that you add your
> own "fade-in" code AFTER the main waveform has been fully created, in other
> words AFTER the following section in the existing code:
>
> For n = 0 To totalsamples - 1
> d1 = Amplitude * Sin(k)
>     wavfile(n + 23) = d1
>     k = k + dAngle
> Next n
>
> So, immediately after the code shown above you will need to add your own
> variable declarations and populate them with the correct values (as already
> explained above) and you will need to add your own For . . . Next loop for
> the "Fade In" code which (for this simple linear fade) reads one by one the
> first 441 actual data samples and modifies each of them by multiplying it by
> some value in the range zero to 1 and and dumps it back. For the "fade-in"
> the 441 samples should in turn be multiplied by a floating point value which
> gradually increases from zero to one over the complete 441 samples.
>
> When you think you have got it right then run the program and see what
> happens. Make sure that you uncomment the lines near the end of the code so
> that an actual .wav file is saved to disk. If your code runs without error
> you can then load that .wav file into Audacity and see what it looks like.
> You should be able to see the short one hundredth of a second "ramp up from
> zero" of the waveform.
>
> Give it a go, Peter. You'll learn much more by trying than you will by
> reading code that has been posted. In fact you will probably learn much more
> by trying and failing than you will be trying and succeeding. Believe me.
>
> Mike

Hello Mike,

You write below:

...and Peter. Here it a small tip that might save you a lot of
puzzling!
When you see a variable (that you create yourself) like
CricketForIndia, you
might be puzzled by the use of capitals. That is simply a convention
to help
break up compound words. It is not essential . The variable could
have no
capitals. It would just be harder to read.

and you write above:

I hope you don't take this the wrong way Peter but I'm having a little
> trouble reconciling your desire to "know what goes on under the hood" with
> your reluctance to have a go at modifying the existing wav file code in
> order to produce the fade in and the fade out sections.

These two things are highly connected in my mind. Let's say I write:

Dim AnotherUsefulConstant as Integer

and then type:

anotherusefulconstant = 4

in a line of code I will actually see:

AnotherUsefulConstant = 4

pop up right there on the screen. I get a get thrill to see that and I
can just sit there feeling delighted that it works like that. That is
how I feel about that simple thing and I'll bet you do not feel that
same excitement that I feel over such a trivial thing. I could sit
there and think just look at that working that way for five minutes
doing nothing else than feeling happy about what VB6 does in this
case.
I will of course go ahead and attempt to code in the two ramps. I
might be able to crack it next week but it could take me a whole lot
longer than that. I copy and paste what you write into my iBook drafts
folder in Mac Mail and can easily print it out from there. Unless I
see another way I will adopt your approach.

Regards,

Peter.

[Peter Nolan]

On Jan 13, 11:06 am, "DaveO" <***@dial.pipex.com> wrote:
> "Peter Nolan" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:ff462f86-bd0b-42bf-b52d-
>
> >in Qbasic for example I as a intuitive physicist want to know about
> >every process that happens inside the machine from the sending of the
> >return character into the computer's deepest place and so on.
>
> The first computer I built, and by "built" I mean hand soldered from a
> design published in Wireless World, none of this sissy Sinclair junk, was
> based on a Z80 with a calculator chip as a sort of maths coprocessor. On
> that I was able to program directly in machine code (assembler is for
> wimps!) and I knew exactly what was happening. However in 30 years or so
> since then CPUs have got a tiny bit more complex., the instruction set is
> far more complex and the architecture of the chip is too complicated for
> anybody to fully understand, each member of the design team will fully
> understand their part and have a broad understanding of other parts but no
> individual person will understand exactly how every part of the chip
> functions. As a physicist you should recognise emergent complexity when you
> see it so any attempt to follow the course of an electron through the chip
> is doomed to fail before you start. There is no shame in treating the CPU as
> a "black box" where input A gives output B.
>
> >If I run into problems in the lab doing physics I just dive in with
> >gusto to solve every problem I have ever encountered and that also
> >includes making little programs work to do a job.
>
> So what's the problem? Ramping a variable for the first and last n steps of
> a loop is pretty trivial however I've no idea if it will actually work to
> fade in and out the WAV, the easiest way to find out would be to try it out.
> Never be intimidated by error messages, it's really hard to do any real
> damage in software, generally the worst that can happen is the PC will need
> to be re-booted, not exactly a catastrophe. Also you can learn a lot more
> when things fail. You know that a negative result is not necessarily a bad
> thing, if the LHC fails to locate the Higgs boson it's not the end of the
> world, much the opposite for it will open up a new phase of  physics as the
> theoreticians try to work out what confers mass and the experimentalists see
> if they are right, it would be quite exciting.
>
> DaveO


Hello DaveO,

Check out this great web site:

http://www.particleadventure.org/

Regards,

Peter.

[Henning]

>

Shouldn't the rest of this threed be moved to some chat forum?

/Henning

[Peter Nolan]

On Jan 19, 7:25 pm, "Henning" <***@coldmail.com> wrote:
> Shouldn't the rest of this threed be moved to some chat forum?
>
> /Henning

Hello Henning,

This thread has now concluded I guess. I enjoyed talking to techies
like you.

Regards,

Peter.