1BEEPMIDI :: BEEP.SYS MIDI DRIVER 2(c) Andrew Greenwood, 2007. 3 4http://www.silverblade.co.uk 5 6Released as open-source software. You may copy, re-distribute and modify 7this software, provided this copyright notice remains intact. 8 9WHAT'S THIS ? 10 BeepMidi is a MME MIDI driver for NT-compatible operating systems, 11 which uses BEEP.SYS (the kernel-mode PC speaker driver) to play 12 MIDI data. It installs as a standard MIDI output device and can even 13 be selected as your default MIDI output device. The fundamental 14 code for interacting with BEEP.SYS was taken from ReactOS' kernel32 15 module. 16 17WHY WAS THIS WRITTEN ? 18 Primarily for educational reasons - in the process, I've learned more 19 about the driver side of the MME API and how to interact with kernel 20 device drivers. It aids as a good starting point from which to 21 move on to bigger and better things :) 22 23HOW TO INSTALL : 24 Copy the file to C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\BEEPMIDI.DLL 25 26 Go into HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ 27 Drivers32 in RegEdit and look for the "midi" entries on the right hand 28 side. Find the highest numbered one (eg: midi1) and create a new STRING 29 value. Give it another midi name, but one above the current highest 30 entry present (eg: midi2.) 31 32 You'll now see a "PC Speaker" entry in Sound & Audio Devices. 33 34TWEAKING: 35 See the comments toward the top of beepmidi.c for tweakable driver 36 parameters. These can only be adjusted in the source code at present. 37 38FEATURES : 39 * Supports note-on and note-off messages on channels 1-9 and 11-16 40 (channel 10 is rhythm, which is not supported.) 41 * Fake polyphony (actually just arpeggiates playing notes!) 42 * Threaded design for continuous playback (optional.) 43 44ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT : 45 * Pitch bend is not supported 46 * Velocity could determine timeslice 47 * Should wait for timeslice to complete before adding/removing notes 48 * Would be nice to allow configuration of polyphony etc. via Control Panel 49 50BUGS : 51 * Crashes when used with Windows Media Player (mplayer2 is fine though) 52