Analog Terminal Bell

Older Teletype machines, Model 15 and earlier, have two or three bells. The big bell is triggered by the BELL character. The bell is almost 3 inches across and produces a really nice &quot;bong&quot; sound that lasts more than a second. That bell was intended to get the attention of people in the room for important incoming messages. News services would send messages with one to ten bells. UPI used 3, 4, 5 and 10 bells.<p>What it sounded like: The Teletype March: [1] Good pictures of the big bell.<p>The small bell is triggered at column 73 or so. Just a quiet &quot;ding&quot;.<p>On a Model 14 printer, which prints on a narrow tape, the third bell rings continuously when the blank tape supply has run out.<p>All that is what&#x27;s being emulated by the &quot;bell&quot; sound on computers.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;b2QPy-igBLA?t=218" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;b2QPy-igBLA?t=218</a>

Here is a link to the product video: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=uG8VpN6Z_YA" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=uG8VpN6Z_YA</a><p>I sent a patch to iTerm2 for support: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;gnachman&#x2F;iTerm2&#x2F;pull&#x2F;428" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;gnachman&#x2F;iTerm2&#x2F;pull&#x2F;428</a>

Terminal bells trained me to be very cautious about what files I jam into stdout, or its equivalent.<p>There&#x27;s nothing worse than accidentally cating a binary file and filling the computer room with a string of un-cancellable bells with all eyes on you. It was like a noob detector.

I ran across an old and very nice portable Smith Corona typewriter the other day and of course I opened it up and gave it the required typewriter inspection: holding down tab until the carriage rings the bell. What a delight.<p>This project is really great, but I cant help but want to remix it to hide the guts within the bell! I also kinda want to hook it up to a pinball knocker and put it under my coworkers&#x27; desks.<p>Anyone else have the unending list of cool projects to build that you can never seem to start?

One of the comments on the youtube video says &quot;I need an analog carriage return&quot;.<p>Now <i>that</i> would be cool. Having a physical bell ding every time you hit enter, like an old typewriter!<p>Edit: I&#x27;m aware that typewriters ding before you get to the end, but that would be much harder to implement than just doing it when you hit enter, which would be a close representation. :P

Terminal bell is something that in my opinion was once great but now overused to the point I turn it off. I remember the time I could just sound a bell on an end of a long running process and that would be it. Today I use a visual&#x2F;audio notification on the ends of my scripts.<p><pre><code> osascript -e &#x27;display notification &quot;Completed!&quot;&#x27; osascript -e &#x27;say &quot;Done&quot;&#x27;</code></pre>

I have two bells _exactly_ like that one. One of them has a distinctive tone (and a sizeable dent) because it used to sit on a colleague&#x27;s desk and people &quot;rang him up&quot; as they came up to him until one day he just lost it and threw it across the room (almost into the garbage bin - it hit on edge and dented).<p>Good thing we&#x27;re working remote, because I would not be able to be near one of those things during an intensive terminal session.

The terminal bell is completely abused, and as irritating as heck.<p>I turn it off as soon as I can upon installation of any distribution.

I love the cheesy informercial [1]<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=uG8VpN6Z_YA" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=uG8VpN6Z_YA</a>

Manual typewriters were noisy little beasts. &quot;Tack tack tack tackity tack&quot; (keys). Thunk... thunk (shift). &quot;Chunka chunka (backspace). Ding (bell). Ziiiiiiip (return). All of these and more are lovingly preserved in US-ASCII:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;every.sdf.org&#x2F;.webshare&#x2F;us-ascii.txt" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;every.sdf.org&#x2F;.webshare&#x2F;us-ascii.txt</a>

Sales are spiking for this product in Brooklyn zip codes 11231, 11201, 11217, 11215, along with typewriters and handlebar mustache wax.

On Debian the default is to use the pcspkr beeper for terminal bells... and first thing I do on a new system is remove the pcspkr module.

I love the idea of physically disconnecting the bell, when you want to `turn off` notifications.

&gt; Here are the components needed: &gt; Mini USB B Connector ($1.72) &gt; 10k resistor ($0.10) &gt; 1k resistor ($0.10) &gt; 47nf capacitor ($0.22) &gt; 1N4004 diode ($0.12) &gt; TIP 122 or 102 ($0.70) &gt; Solenoid ($4.95) &gt; MCP2221a ($2.27) &gt; JST connector ($0.17) &gt; 14 Pin Socket ($0.18) &gt; Bell ($7.99)<p>A much easier way to do this would be an tiny Arduino-compatible board and a servo. I actually made an analog lunch bell at a startup this way that we struck when the food delivery arrived. It might be a few bucks more in components but you wouldn&#x27;t have to deal with making and populating a PCB so you&#x27;d save on that.

That video was amazing! I bet you could crowdfund it into a product :)

omg, I just had a horror vision of a university lab full of vim newbies using this.

That title brought back memories of some really old MUDs that would let you chat escape codes (mostly meant to make colorful chats in ANSI color), and you could chat the bell escape code to make everyone&#x27;s PC beep. But it also kind of froze the computer for a second, so you could send a bunch of them and freeze everyone (including yourself).

Since it&#x27;s a control character I don&#x27;t think a &#x27;custom build of iterm2&#x27; should be necessary?

The IBM Displaywriter had a margin bell. It was an odd experience to be using a digital computer that acts like a mechanical typewriter.

Pro-tip:<p><pre><code> # echo install pcspkr &#x2F;bin&#x2F;true &gt; &#x2F;etc&#x2F;modprobe.d&#x2F;blacklist-pcspkr.conf</code></pre>

This should also ring every time a user edits a sent message on Slack... May be a slack app to interface with bell.

Would be cool to do an analog (ultrasonic) DTMF detection circuit and then build a WAV file that triggers it.

Aaron! Should have guessed it was him haha

<p><pre><code> printf(&quot;\a&quot;);</code></pre>

This thing would be ringing every couple of seconds in my world.