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IDEA: Specialized anti-idle and 'modem booster'

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app103:
I need a utility to act as a specialized 'keep alive' for my old 233mhz, 64mb ram, WinME pc that has a 33.6k dialup connection.

I have a combo soundcard/modem that requires continous sound in order to work properly, otherwise my internet connection becomes unstable because if a sound plays on the pc, it locks up just long enough to kick me offline.

Additionally, the ISP will disconnect me automatically after a lenghth of time without any http internet activity.

I have tried other keep alive utilities and none have worked. The most effective way to kill both birds with one stone has been to run Winamp with a looped playlist, 24 hours a day, and a lyrics plugin that downloads a web page with lyrics when the song changes.

As long as I do this, I can keep sound flowing through the soundcard/modem and beat the ISP's idle timer at the same time, staying connected for up to 7 days straight.

But this is an extreme waste of my pc's resources to run something as bloated as a media player with a built in browser, all the time. Additionally, after awhile, the changing of the songs from one to another will cause a freeze up of my pc that lasts just long enough to cause me to be disconnected, defeating the purpose of the whole reason I am running Winamp.

And if I am working on this pc at night, I have to keep the speakers turned off so people can sleep, meaning I can't hear any other sounds like various alerts.

So basically, this is the small utility I need:

1. has to accept a url to a file as command line parameter.
2. produce a continous tone at frequency of 25hz (something my cheap speakers can't produce, so it will be 'silent noise') You can NOT loop a wav file for this, it will not work to produce the results I am after. The application must generate the sound itself.
3. test for an internet connection every 10 minutes, and if connected download the file specified in the url given as command line parameter, overwriting the old one that may exist from a previous download. (I plan on downloading a small txt file from my website for this)
4. sit in my tray and not get in my way
5. work on 9x
6. be light as a feather and use as little resources as possible to accomplish the job. (this means no .NET!)

Now, if you want to attempt this, I'll help you a little bit by providing this link to some info on how to produce the tone needed: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/audio-video/SoundGenerator.aspx

I would attempt this myself but I only code in Delphi and that isn't a Delphi project...and I don't understand it enough to be able to do it in Delphi.

If you can manage to create this little tool, every person that still has a really old pc on dialup with an Aztech Sound4 combo card will love you for it.  :-*

f0dder:
Holy moley, the messed up box from hell! :)

Sounds like a doable task, I don't currently have time for doing it (personal stuff), but doable. With some luck I could perhaps find time for it next week/weekend.

Do you basically always keep the dialup dialed-in, or do you sometimes disconnect? (In other words, should the app blindly try to access an URL, or should it query the telephony API for connected status?).

rjbull:
I don't understand the sound bit, but could you do the http:// part by launching any old download manager, and setting its scheduler to download a non-existent page or file from a Web site that does exist, repeating as often as needed?

For a keep-awake utility, I used Caffeine by Zhorn Software, much better known as the maker of Stickies.

app103:
Do you basically always keep the dialup dialed-in, or do you sometimes disconnect? (In other words, should the app blindly try to access an URL, or should it query the telephony API for connected status?).
-f0dder (March 12, 2008, 09:03 AM)
--- End quote ---

No, it has to check connected status first, before attempting to download the file. But the sound should be continous whether I am online or not.

I don't understand the sound bit, but could you do the http:// part by launching any old download manager, and setting its scheduler to download a non-existent page or file from a Web site that does exist, repeating as often as needed?
-rjbull (March 12, 2008, 09:37 AM)
--- End quote ---

In theory that could work, but in practice it doesn't. This morning the site the lyrics plugin uses was down and because winamp's minibrowser couldn't load the page the ISP's nag popped up and I was kicked offline because I wasn't in front of the monitor to answer it.

I have to actually download something over http for this to work. I plan on downloading a small text file from my website and I will play with it to find what is the smallest file size that works.

This is a pc with very limited resources. I really don't want to run anything that is overloaded with features I won't be needing for this purpose. I'd like to have something left to actually run some programs I want to use.


For a keep-awake utility, I used Caffeine by Zhorn Software, much better known as the maker of Stickies.
-rjbull (March 12, 2008, 09:37 AM)
--- End quote ---

You might have misunderstood what I meant by locking up. It's not that kind of lock up. What I am referring to is when everything freezes up for a few seconds and you can't use your pc...nothing will work till it unfreezes. Maybe it has been so long since you have experienced similar problems...think back to about 10 years ago...your Win95 days, maybe? (that's how old this pc is)

This happens every time a sound plays on my pc, like the alert sound when I get a new voicemail, playing my voicemail messages, instant message sounds, some dialogs, the hourly chime in my clock program, etc. It freezes, unfreezes and plays the sound and life goes on...of course it was locked up just long enough to cause a disconnection from internet.  :(

The only way to stop this freezing from occurring is to have some kind of sound going through the sound card at all times. I have tried just about everything over the last 8 years and this is what works. Now I just need a tool to do the job...both jobs....without using all my pc's very limited ram & cpu power.

Daleus:
What about one of the little proggies suggested in the thread about the search for a Pink Noise generator?

https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=12603.0

The great thing is that the noise level would be fairly low and have the added benefit of being relaxing to anyone who *did* hear it.  Of course this doesn't solve the problem of having to do a download occasionally to keep the connection alive.

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