Users of AppleShare PC have asked about the alarm beeps that sound at various
times during the printing process.
The beeps that a customer may hear most frequently are those found within the
AppleShare DA program environment. These usually signify that the application
doesn't understand something -- often an illegal key stroke.
The alarms that sound during a DOS application are a single beep and two
trills:
- The single beep represents end of print job, and will occur regardless of
whether the print job printed correctly or not.
- The first of the trills is an alert from AppleShare to check the DA for
messages that have been received from the server or some AppleTalk
application; this trill will repeat until the user executes the DA.
- Another type of trill will occur when the DA application is Hot Keyed, but
cannot "pop up". This is because the application is not friendly to resident
applications, and a DOS busy flag is set. The flag is then tested by the DA,
and a trill is sounded when the flag is set. This tells the user that the DA
has acknowledged the hot key, but could not "pop up" at that time.
The executing application keeps the stack and registers in such a way that a
"pop up" application could erase necessary information.
Many PC applications trap the keyboard input, which input is also passed to
other keyboard handlers as well, such as the Hot Key. If an application does
not pass off the keyboard data, no alert will sound, and the DA will just not
be available. The AppleShare application will still sound within these
applications when an AppleTalk alert is received by the workstation.
AppleShare will also beep and display network timeout or errors when
connecting. These most often occur when connecting to a net with many zones.
Upgrading ROMS and software and reinstalling software seems to be the answer in
most of these cases.