Error and correction beeps

[Patricia M Godfrey pmgodfrey@xxxxxxxx]

This gets weirder and weirder. I think we can scratch ATX and power
management schemes. Or at least they are not solely responsible. It seems
that MOST "modern" systems, including a few pretty ancient ones, CANNOT
emit beeps from a DOS prompt (or, apparently, a DOS app running in such a
box) within 32-bit Windows. To test, open a DOS prompt and type
Echo ^G (producing the last by either holding down CTRL and typing G or
holding down ALT and typing 7 on the number pad). Then hit Enter/Return.
If you hear a beep, you are very fortunate. I tried this on various
systems hereabouts: 2 ATXes (a Digital Venturis P200 and a Shuttle Mobo
PIII) and 2 ATs (a Compaq P 200 MMX and a no-name AMD K5 100 MHz), plus
an IBM PII that has a proprietary Mobo with an expansion chassis and a
half-and-half power scheme: it doesn't turn off of itself, but has to be
turned on from the power button, not just the surge. Only the Compaq
beeped. Furthermore, my K6-2 suddenly stopped beeping after a NIC was
added (but this system is very scrambled--Device Manager shows chunks of
RAM with "in use by unknown device"--and is due for a reinstall).
	The presence or absence of sound cards seems to make no difference. I
suspect the cause is the complex interaction of PnP opsys, BIOS, and the
PCI spec. That last, by the bye, was a real surprise when I read up on
it. It seems that under the PCI spec there are four sharable interrupts.
Any device that uses just one interrupt gets assigned to the first (A#);
any that use more than one (as sound cards or voice modems often do) get
assigned to one of the others. But then all of these devices are "mapped"
to the traditional IRQs by Windows. The thing that makes me think the
BIOS may be involved is that the AT that wouldn't beep and the new ATX
that won't are both AMI; this PC, which used to beep, is Award, and the
Compaq that does has a Compaq BIOS. What a mess!
Patricia