Re: Another newbie

[Jack Daniels <Labitup@home.com>]

Thanks Janina, I have saved the info, but think I will read up more on
Linux patching and kernal compiling, and hope learn enough to feel
confident to compile my first kernal, and  add Speakup so it can be
selected and booted from the hard disk.  I was looking for a quick and easy
way to get Speakup talking, and then read more later.

I guess I will need to put in the effort up front, and learn about this
topic and work it out. It was suggested that I first try compiling a kernal
to make sure everything works correctly, then try it with Speakup after
that.   

BTW, what happens if Speakup doesn't find a synthesizer connected when it
tries to load?  I may not have the DEC Express connected each and every time.

Thanks for your reply.

Jack
At 11:01 AM 11/24/01 -0500, you wrote:
>On Sat, 24 Nov 2001, Jack Daniels wrote:
>
>> >> I have a very small PC installed with
>> >> Redhat 7.1, kernal 2.4.2-12 running on a P133 with no CDROM.
>> >> What I want to be able to do is to insert a floppy with Speakup and any
>> >> necessary boot files and have Linux  come up talking.  Is this possible?
>
>It seems to me you could get this working with the standard installation 
>floppy that one would create using boot.img. There are such on the speakup 
>website and they already have speakup built into them. You need two files 
>from the speakup site to test this: the appropriate boot.img and 
>rawrite.exe.
>
>1.)	rawrite.exe is a DOS executable for creating floppy disks from 
>image files like boot.img. Shutdown your Windows to MS-DOS before using 
>rawrite for best, most reliable results;
>
>2.) Get boot.img via anonymous ftp from:
>	www.linux-speakup.org/pub/speakup/disks/redhat/7.2
>
>Regretably, the rawrite.exe isn't there, and perhaps that's an oversight. 
>Bill, are you listening? If you decide to try my suggestion, perhaps 
>someone can point you to a download location closer to home, but you can 
>certainly get it from redhat.com. It'll be in a dos_utils directory. There 
>should be no problem using 7.2 disks on your 7.1 system, by the way;
>
>3.)	You need to be careful about your speech synthesizer while using 
>rawrite. Generally, it's a good idea to kill speech while rawrite is 
>creating your floppy. So, as you hit enter on the last rawrite prompt, 
>which is the third prompt it gives you, be ready to kill your speech 
>immediately;
>
>54.)	If nothing went wrong in the rawrite floppy you'll have a bootable 
>floppy that you can try on your linux system. As you boot, monitor the 
>floppy disk for activity. If your system beeps as it begins to load the 
>OS, that will help. There will be a brief amount of floppy disk activity 
>at this point and then the disk stops. You're at a boot> prompt which 
>doesn't talk (though it could, see below); At this point type:
>
>	linux -s speakup_synth=dectlk speakup_ser=1
>
>I believe that even with the mismatch in installation versions this should 
>still come up talking. If it does, you can certainly look around natively, 
>and you can begin to contemplate getting a native kernel with speakup onto 
>your system. But, that's a topic for another day.
>
>Certainly, there will be a good number of things that won't work because 
>of the kernel mismatches. But, you should have enough to get started with.
>
>PS: The boot> prompt can be made to speak to any serial device with an 
>appropriate lin in the sysconfig file on the floppy:
>
>serial=1,9600N8
>	
>would be the appropriate lin in this instance, and you could certainly 
>insert this line using a DOS text editor. It goes just above the first 
>"label" statement.
>
>
>
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