Re: the Papenmeir device that was supposed to be coming out

[Henry Yen <blinux-mail@AegisInfoSys.com>]

On Wed, Nov 14, 2001 at 01:59:04AM -0500, Bill Gaughan wrote:
> 
> Someone please tell me why all these braille display devices cheap out on
> operating systems?
> 
> First we had VersaBraille, a great device, but, it had VBOS, and what we
> really needed was DOS in a braille box. Then we have the Blazie devices,
> which give us only 640 to 2048 of ram. From what I am reading the
> Popenmier will have a mini-version of linux comperable to Windows CE in
> the windows world? These devices whether they be braille or speech devices
> should be using worldly operating systems, not blindy-only proprietary
> OS's, and they should be able to run off the shelf software. For example,
> BrailleLite should have a pentium chip capable of running DOS at least so
> we could run WordPerfect 6.0 on it. I just can't stand it. Blindy always
> has to learn a new operating system for each piece of hardware he buys.
> Sightlings don't have to do this, except the differences between Macintosh
> and PC's.

a couple of data points...  pentium chips are rather poor in terms of
efficient energy consumption.  ARM chips, for example, are somewhat better
at it.  given this situation, if you want to run windows/dos, you need
a x86 (i.e. pentium) chip.  if you want to be able to run efficiently in
low-power and/or portable modes, you typically turn to something else.
for the former, you can run windows or linux with the dos emulator.
for the latter, there don't seem to be any practical solutions available to
run dos applications.  at some point in the future, cpu speeds, even for
low-power chips like the ARM, may be fast enough to comfortably run
dos applications under an x86 emulator under linux on an ARM, but i doubt
it would happen soon.


-- 
Henry Yen                                       Aegis Information Systems, Inc.
Senior Systems Programmer                       Hicksville, New York