Jim,
I was just working down the same path (except got the info from news2news.com, not solution sample), but everytime I run it, the value printed to screen is 1. I've been trying to figure out what I'm passing incorrectly.
jfh

DECLARE INTEGER mciSendString ;
   IN WinMM.DLL ;
   STRING cMCIString,;
   STRING @cRetString,;
   INTEGER nRetLength,;
   INTEGER hInstance

DECLARE INTEGER mciGetErrorString ;
   IN WINMM.DLL ;
   INTEGER nErrorno, ;
   STRING @cBuffer, ;
   INTEGER nBufSize

CLEAR
=doMCI("OPEN c:\windows\media\chord.wav alias MyMedia WAIT")
=doMCI("SET MyMedia time format milliseconds")
nMediaLength = VAL(doMCI("STATUS MyMedia Length"))
?nMediaLength
=doMCI("CLOSE MyMedia")

FUNCTION doMCI
LPARAMETERS cMCIcmd
cRetString = space(80)
nRetValue = mciSendString(cMCIcmd,@cRetString,len(cRetString),0)
IF nRetValue > 0
	nError = nRetValue
	cErrorString = SPACE(256)
	CeRR = mciGetErrorString(nError,@cErrorString,len(cErrorString))
	RETURN CeRR
ENDIF

RETURN TRIM(STRTRAN(cRetString,chr(0),""))