Apple's System 6.X allows earlier Macs to have the Sound Manager features that Mac II users have had for some time. The most obvious use of the Sound Manager is to be able to select custom beep sounds in the Control Panel. To do this, Apple made use of a piece of memory (called XPRAM, for eXtended Parameter RAM) that remembers the beep setting you make in the Control Panel. Unfortunately, this memory is not present in machines older than the Mac Plus. This gives 512KE users unable to use this feature, even if they have had memory and/or SCSI port upgrades.
The 512KE XPRAM INIT (catchy name, eh?) will make your 512KE think that it has this XPRAM by storing this information somewhere else instead. A small bit of data is appended to the System file and is read from and written to instead of the XPRAM.
To use, you must first install System 6.X into your computer. Put it on the floppies you boot from or on your hard disk. Make sure that the file "Sound" is in the System Folder. Put the 512KE XPRAM INIT in the System Folder, too. Reboot the Mac. Open the Control Panel and click on the "Sound" icon. Select the beep sound you want and you're in business.
You can add more sounds to your System file by using any of numerous sounds that have appeared on services like GEnie or CompuServe. Programs like Sound Mover can add or remove these sounds in the System file.
Revision History:
June, 1988: Version 1.0 release for System 6.0
September, 1988: Version 1.0.1 release for System 6.0.1/6.0.2
Permission is given to use 512KE XPRAM INIT free of charge and to distribute it as long as this documentation is distributed at the same time and that if you charge for the program that you do not charge more than the cost of distributing it.
