How can I eject a disc?

[MrAndrews]

I have Turing v. 4.1.1, and I was wondering how to open the disc drive. I was going to use this in to put at the end of a trivia type program something like:

put "You Won!"
put "As your prize, you will now receive a new Cup Holder!"
(This is where you would open the disc drive)



I know that to shut down the computer you use:

var ret : int
system ("shutdown -s -c message-here", ret)

so i was thinking that to do something like open the disc drive you would need something similiar, but so far ive gotten nowhere
anyway, if anyone can help, thatd be great

ps. im new to this website, so im sorry if i put this in the wrong place or submitted it incorrectly somehow

[Nick]

MrAndrews @ Mon May 26, 2008 10:25 pm wrote:

var ret : int
system ("shutdown -s -c message-here", ret)

never used System before but it seems to use DOS prompt... look for a DOS command

[Tony]

nick @ Mon May 26, 2008 11:23 pm wrote:

look for a DOS command

unless he's running Windows 98 (or *gasp* earlier), DOS is hardly relevant.

[MrAndrews]

Personally, I havnt really used System before either . . . i got that line of code from a program a friend sent me. As for the OS, my friend wrote and tested the program on XP, and i am running Vista and it still shut my computer down

[btiffin]

If Turing allows dll linking;

Convert this C# to something similar in Turing syntax (something I know little about)

Csharp:

//This is necessary to enable Win32 API calls to eject or close the CD tray    [DllImport("winmm.dll", EntryPoint = "mciSendStringA")]    public static extern void mciSendStringA(string lpstrCommand, string lpstrReturnString, Int32 uReturnLength, Int32 hwndCallback);    string rt = "";    private void EjectCD()    {      mciSendStringA("set CDAudio door open", rt, 127, 0);    }    private void CloseCD()    {      mciSendStringA("set CDAudio door closed", rt, 127, 0);    }

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms712587%28VS.85%29.aspx for more info

Cheers

[Nick]

well DOS, command prompt, I don't know the difference, the only console I use is for ubuntu

[btiffin]

P.S. Be careful if you experiment with mciSendString. It can do a lot, and no doubt bone things up if not shown the proper care and respect.

Cheers

[MrAndrews]

Thanks for the help so far . . .
Unfortunately, i have no idea how to use C# and even less of an idea how to translate something like that into Turing. as far as i know, the system (" "ret) function that i used does the exact same thing as Sys.Exec (" ") which i have seen in other parts of compsci. They both use the Windows Command Line, however i am not sure if there is a command available through that that actually opens the cd door.

anyway, if anyone has any ideas on this, some more help would be great

[[Gandalf]]

btiffin @ 2008-05-27, 2:11 pm wrote:

P.S. Be careful if you experiment with mciSendString. It can do a lot, and no doubt bone things up if not shown the proper care and respect.

No reason to worry... Turing doesn't allow DLL linking, though I am sure with a little creativity just as much harm can be done...

MrAndrews, I don't know how, but I don't doubt that there is a way over the command line. Just keep looking, google it.

[Stove]

You could try making a visual basic script (make a text file and change the extension to .vbs, not real visual basic btw) with something like:

VisualBASIC:

Set wmp = CreateObject("WMPlayer.OCX.7" ) Set cds = wmp.cdromCollection if cds.Count >= 1 then         For i = 0 to cds.Count - 1         cds.Item(i).Eject         Next ' cdrom End If

And then just execute the file with system(). The only problem is that wscript.exe or whatever program runs the script, never actually closes... You could probably run "taskkill /f /im wscript.exe" with system() afterwards to clean it up. Its kind of an "icky" approach, but I tried it in Turing and it seems to work.

Turing:

var blah : int system ("test.vbs", blah) delay (8000) system ("taskkill /f /im wscript.exe", blah)

One last thing, it takes forever for the script to actually load and run, so you'll have to wait a bit before you kill wscript.exe. That being said, it'd probably be a good idea to run the script on a separate thread so you don't have to block your main program while it runs. It took about 8 seconds on my laptop to run, but that time will probably vary. Anyways, hope that helps.

[btiffin]

If you haven't googled a good executable yet, try this ECMAScript (ECMAScript is just me using anal speak for javascript)

Make a file ej.js

ECMAScript:

Drive = "E:\\" sysapp = new ActiveXObject("Shell.Application") fakeright = sysapp.NameSpace(Drive).Self fakeright.InvokeVerb("E&ject")

What ever the drive letter for the CD is (you, may need to wrap this is an error trapper and try D:, E:, F:, G: etc) I'll leave any error handling for you to figure out ... not hard ... ok a hint, ECMAScript has try/catch. If you pick a drive letter that doesn't exist, script runner will pop up an error dialog.

Then try your system() Turing function on ej.js

Cheers

Edit; Sorry, just noticed the VB solution. This wasn't meant as a one upper, apologies for that Stove.

[jeffgreco13]

I've done this before. It's been a while since I worked with it but have a look:

Quote:

Set oWMP = CreateObject("WMPlayer.OCX.7" )
Set colCDROMs = oWMP.cdromCollection

if colCDROMs.Count >= 1 then
For i = 0 to colCDROMs.Count - 1
colCDROMs.Item(i).Eject
Next ' cdrom
End If

This is VBScript and it does work! You open up notepad and paste that in. Save as cdOpen.vbs

MAKE SURE ITS EXTENSION IS > .vbs

Then use this:

Quote:

var ret : int
system ("put the path to the file here", ret)

that should work... for what ur looking for.

There's also ways to have turing open a filestream and create that file for you if you're to make a standalone exe.

PM me for details on that.

[petree08]

does anyone have a compiled (.exe) disktray opener?
the following should work if the exe is named DiskOpen.exe

code:

if not Sys.Exec ("DiskOpen.exe") then     put "doesn't work" end if

i suck at c and was wondering if anyone would post a compiled disk tray opener

edit : sorry i didn't read the above post properly , pretty much the same thing

[Stove]

@ MrAndrews

Definitely use btiffin's script for opening the cd drive, as it completely avoids the whole taskkill and clean up bit that executing a visual basic script needs.

@ btiffin

No need to apologize, the more solutions the better.

[MrAndrews]

Thanks for all the help everyone. I havnt been on in a while to read this (exams etc.) but now I have a bit more time

I know nothing about javascript, so decided to try the solution given by jeffgreco13 first, which worked fine. I didn't add any taskkill feature to the program and when i went into the taskmanager, i couldnt find the VBScript. Maybe i'm not looking in the right place? Anyway this works for what I am trying to do.