This page contains information about:

• Drivers for the pc speaker
• The installation of those drivers
• How to play mp3 with a 486SX without audio card.

After two days of trying to get best sound effects with the internal pc speaker of my Compaq Contura Aero 4/25 laptop computer, I want to share the results.

First of all: With small computers like my laptop the use of multimedia is very limited. It is of course possible to hear your favourite pop song with a 486 CPU, no audio card and only the PC Speaker - but it takes time and the quality is poor. Best way to hear a song while working with this kind of computer is to buy a 10$ walkman - it's faster and quality is much better.

But of course there maybe other reasons for installing speaker drivers and sound utilities than just to hear some pop songs. The ability of windows 95 to link system events with variable sound files maybe f. i. very helpful for disabled people.

Note: This page is made on July, 2nd 2001 and reflects the situation at this time. I am not a native english speaker, so forgive me any errors in language. I am not an expert in sound applications. I'm just trying to get my computer to work the way I want it to.

Of course, installing software and drivers can harm your computer system. Everything worked fine with mine, but of course I can't take the responsibility for others.

All software here can be distributed freely as it is described in its documentation. I am not responsible for this software. Please inform me, if something changes or you find a better solution.
Uli Hansen

speak.exe

Sound Driver for PC Speaker

Freeware
1992
Windows 3.1. Windows 95
Size: 22 KB
Source: Microsoft Driver Library

Found at:
ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/
softlib/mslfiles/speak.exe
Original Readme

My opinion:

This driver provides the best sound quality.

Disadvantage: It disables all other processes on your computer. That means: The mouse, keyboard, modem and everything else freezes as long as the sound is played. You are even not allowed to stop the playing.

speakr zip

Internal speaker wave driver

Freeware
1992
Windows 3.0, Windows 3.1, Windows 95
Size: 8 KB
Source: Unknown ((c) 1992 John Ridges)

Found at:
http://www.worldofjon.com/
downloads/index.html
and:
http://www.kiarchive.ru/
pub/windows/drivers/


Original Readme

My opinion:

Sound quality is nearly like the microsoft driver.

Because all other processes stay enabled, on my laptop there is some ticking noise in the background and the sound looses quality when moving the mouse.

But you have all the time full control over the player (f.i. sound recorder) so you can stop, rewind etc.
My first choice.

spkqq333.zip

Internal Speaker Driver SpkQQ

Shareware 10$, 1 Week free test
Ver. 3.33e (1995) English Version
Windows 3.1. Windows 95
Size: 251 KB
Source: Hiroki Nakayama,
http://www.wg7.com/spkqq

Found at:
http://www.bekkoame.ne.jp/
~h_ozawa/soft/share2.html

Original Readme

My opinion:

On my computer I didn't manage to get more than poor sound quality. Maybe others do better.

The interrupts stay enabled - even then it was hard to manage my player software. There are many possibilities to customize the driver.

spkqq341.lzh

Internal Speaker Driver SpkQQ

Shareware 10$, 1 Week free test
Ver. 3.41 (1999) Japanese Version
Tested only with Windows 95
Size: 201 KB
Source: Hiroki Nakayama,
http://www.wg7.com/spkqq

Found at:
http://www.wg7.com/spkqq

Original Readme (Japanese)

Readme, translated by World Lingo Machine translation.

My opinion:

This version is all in Japanese!!!. The "bablefish-translation" of the Source-Webside said it supports now Windows 95 and 98.

Indeed all processes stay enabled, you have full control over the player and you can try to work (very slow) with other applications while the sound is playing.

The sound quality in my case stayed still poor, with a lot of background noise. Customization for non-japanese-natives is not that hard, because most settings are the same as in the english version.

This version is - what I understood with the funny bablefish translation - supposed to work together with another program called Winpcm - you can get it at the above listed source-link. Together with this there maybe many more multimedia possibilities with the pc speaker. But as long as there is no english version, I don't try.

midextdr.exe

Microsoft Midext MIDI driver for PC speaker

Freeware
1995
Size: 26 KB
Source: Unknown, (c) Daniel Dan

Found at:
http://www.uni-karlsruhe.de/
~ukgh/aero/sharewar.htm

No Readme.
Description from where I found it:

"Driver for the built in PC-speaker to play MIDI files.

Supported file-formats: only MIDI in connection with Microsofts media-player, nothing else.

Supported Operating Systems: Windows, Windows95. Only one channel of the MIDI-Sound is played."

My opinion:

I was terribly wrong by thinking with this driver I could hear some chopin valses on my laptop...

The speaker beeps the midi files, so the piano sounds like a mobile phone.

On the other hand, it doesn't take much diskspace and some websites come with midi-music, you want to get an impression of.

Also you may need this driver if you want to configure the ringing sounds of your mobile-phone with an older laptop - these sounds are mostly in midi-format.

Unzip the wished driver to a directory of your choice.

Then choose control from the startmenu, then hardware.

Windows wants now to detect new hardware automatically. Don't let it do that. Select "No" for the automatic hardware detect.

Instead choose manually "Audio/Video/Game" from the listed hardware types.

Choose "disk" and browse to the directory with the driver files. The hardware-wizard will get all the information it needs from the oemsetup.inf file in this directory.

After all files are copied, restart Win95.

You can configure the drivers, if you select "multimedia" from control, then "extended" and if you then open the audio device. Doubleclick on the device and choose "Properties" to configure the volume etc.

With Spkqq:

Use the "spksetup.exe"-program. It will do some changes to your system.ini/win.ini and copy drivers to the system directory.

mp32wav.exe

MP3 2 WAV Ver. 1.0

Freeware
1998
Size: 516 KB
Source: Rasmus J.P. Allenheim
http://www.biosys.net/rjpa

Found at:
http://www.biosys.net/rjpa

Original Readme

mn27.zip

MIDInight Express

Freeware
Size: 3,82 MB
Source: Polyhedric Software,
http://www.polyhedric.com/
software/mn/

Found at:
http://www.polyhedric.com/
software/mn/

Original Readme

Converts MIDI-Files to wav-files (MIDI2WAV)

How-To

To hear MP3 or MIDI-Files with a 486-SX without Audio Card:

• Convert the MP3-File with mp32wav or the MIDI File with Midinight Express into wav-format

Now the wav-file is pretty big - 35 MB is minimum for a 3 min.-song. To get it smaller, you can use the Microsoft soundrecorder that comes with Windows.

• Open the wav file with the Microsoft soundrecorder.
• Choose "Save As" from the file menu
• Choose Format "Change" (bottom left).
• Choose a smaller Format f.i.: PCM, 8000 Hz, 8 Bit, Mono, 8kB/s.
• Choose "OK"
• Choose "Save".

The 35 MB-file now is saved with 1,5 MB.

You can play it now with the windows sound recorder on the laptop. The windows media player is (so my experience) not able to play wav-files without audio card.

Good luck!