>>> Can anyone point me in the right direction to make XFree86 beep to the
>>> external speakers instead of (or in addition to) to system speaker?
> 
> Christian Biere <christianbiere@gmx.de> suggested:
> 
>> One solution is to connect the PC speaker output of the mainboard to the
>> soundcard instead of the internal beeper. Most soundcards have two pins
>> for PC speaker input. You can then use
>> 	mixerctl -w inputs.speaker=<value
>> to adjust the volume or at least, turn the sound on/off.
> 
> The physical connection must be what is missing; the mixerctl values
> seem to already be correct:
> 
>    # mixerctl -a | grep speaker
>    inputs.speaker=255
>    inputs.speaker.mute=off
> 
> When I'm back at work on Monday, I'll open the case and see if I can't
> find the right connection to make.  Thanks for the pointer.

Nope, can't find a thing.  The box is a Dell Precision 340 workstation,
with an additional SoundBlaster Live soundcard.  I managed to get a
diagram of that soundcard, and the only likely place to send an input
would be the AUX_IN 4-pin connector.  If there are "two pins for PC
speaker input", they are not documented, and I cannot find them (which
doesn't mean they're not there -- I'm no hardware geek).

Also, I cannot get enough information about the Dell's small "front panel
connector board", from whence originates the signal for the tower's front
panel speaker, to figure out if there is an additional signal available
for connecting to a soundcard (though based on what you write, I guess
there might be just one such signal, which I'd have to disconnect from
the system speaker).

I can't help but think there should be a way to do this in software.
A colleague of mine on a "Digital Domain" computer running Linux can
make KDE do this for her -- but running KDE is not an attractive
proposition to me!

Oh, well.  I think I'll live with the faint beep for now.  Thanks to
all who replied.


Anne.
-- 
Ms. Anne Bennett, Senior Sysadmin, ENCS, Concordia University, Montreal H3G 1M8
anne@encs.concordia.ca                                          +1 514 848-2285