ancient speech synthesizers

ancient speech synthesizers

[Tyler Spivey]

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Hash: SHA1

Just out of curiosity, what have any of you used for ancient synths? I'm
not talking the well-known ones such as accent/artic, I'm talking
something like Votrax anything, Covox, or any ones that are strange.
It'd be cool to get one of those, but they're probably all gone to
history. What brought this up? Some weird speech package called Enable
that supported some of those which appears to be from the 80's.

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RE: ancient speech synthesizers

[Reinhard Stebner]

I reasonly got read of my Votrax.  It still operated, it used a old screen
reader called freedom.  Of course you guys remember the echos right?

-----Original Message-----
From: speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca [mailto:speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca]
On Behalf Of Tyler Spivey
Sent: Monday, October 09, 2006 10:35 PM
To: speakup@braille.uwo.ca
Subject: ancient speech synthesizers

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Just out of curiosity, what have any of you used for ancient synths? I'm
not talking the well-known ones such as accent/artic, I'm talking
something like Votrax anything, Covox, or any ones that are strange.
It'd be cool to get one of those, but they're probably all gone to
history. What brought this up? Some weird speech package called Enable
that supported some of those which appears to be from the 80's.

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Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (FreeBSD)

iD8DBQFFKxTpTsjaYASMWKQRApO9AJ408Q8fHQEXuKxbMOxpyk7Y6dGmWQCfUUlf
TMYOSh5yp/aPf0TI81zyhO8=
=HRkr
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Speakup mailing list
Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

RE: ancient speech synthesizers

[Willem van der Walt]

I still have my Echo GP and a Prose 4000, an isa card which had very good 
speech for its time.
The very first synthesizer I used, came with the Texis Instruments it99 
home computer.
The worst sounding synth I ever layed my ears on, was the speech coming 
from the specially adapted IBM 3279 terminal. I never worked with that 
though.
Regards, Willem


On Mon, 9 Oct 2006, Reinhard Stebner wrote:

> I reasonly got read of my Votrax.  It still operated, it used a old screen
> reader called freedom.  Of course you guys remember the echos right?
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca [mailto:speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca]
> On Behalf Of Tyler Spivey
> Sent: Monday, October 09, 2006 10:35 PM
> To: speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> Subject: ancient speech synthesizers
> 
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> Just out of curiosity, what have any of you used for ancient synths? I'm
> not talking the well-known ones such as accent/artic, I'm talking
> something like Votrax anything, Covox, or any ones that are strange.
> It'd be cool to get one of those, but they're probably all gone to
> history. What brought this up? Some weird speech package called Enable
> that supported some of those which appears to be from the 80's.
> 
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (FreeBSD)
> 
> iD8DBQFFKxTpTsjaYASMWKQRApO9AJ408Q8fHQEXuKxbMOxpyk7Y6dGmWQCfUUlf
> TMYOSh5yp/aPf0TI81zyhO8=
> =HRkr
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 

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Re: ancient speech synthesizers

[Glenn at home]

I still wish I could use my trusty SonixTTS.
That was on an ISA slot.
I could boot up into windows in safe mode and have speech!
Glenn
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tyler Spivey" <tspivey@pcdesk.net>
To: <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Monday, October 09, 2006 10:35 PM
Subject: ancient speech synthesizers


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Just out of curiosity, what have any of you used for ancient synths? I'm
not talking the well-known ones such as accent/artic, I'm talking
something like Votrax anything, Covox, or any ones that are strange.
It'd be cool to get one of those, but they're probably all gone to
history. What brought this up? Some weird speech package called Enable
that supported some of those which appears to be from the 80's.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (FreeBSD)

iD8DBQFFKxTpTsjaYASMWKQRApO9AJ408Q8fHQEXuKxbMOxpyk7Y6dGmWQCfUUlf
TMYOSh5yp/aPf0TI81zyhO8=
=HRkr
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

_______________________________________________
Speakup mailing list
Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

Re: ancient speech synthesizers

[Gregory Nowak]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Mon, Oct 09, 2006 at 11:21:33PM -0500, Glenn at home wrote:
> I still wish I could use my trusty SonixTTS.
> That was on an ISA slot.
> I could boot up into windows in safe mode and have speech!
> Glenn

I can still do that with my doubletalk pc under win98. That does come
in very handy when windblows goes bye-bye, and it can't be fixed in
any other way besides reinstalling. In theory, that should be doable
with any screenreader-supported synth, as long as that synth doesn't
require any drivers, (an accent pc comes to mind for one that does
require drivers).

Greg




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ot: wav to mp3 linux tool?

[Karen Lewellen]

Hi all,
Any simple Linux tool for converting .wav files to .mp3 files?
Thanks,
Karen

Re: ot: wav to mp3 linux tool?

[Samuel Thibault]

Karen Lewellen, le Tue 10 Oct 2006 12:20:07 -0400, a écrit :
> Any simple Linux tool for converting .wav files to .mp3 files?

MP3 is patented, so you'll have a hard time looking for a legal and
"libre" software producing them.  That said, you can google for "lame"
(which has a quite good codec btw).

Samuel

Re: ot: wav to mp3 linux tool?

[John Heim]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Samuel Thibault" <samuel.thibault@ens-lyon.org>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2006 11:26 AM
Subject: Re: ot: wav to mp3 linux tool?


Karen Lewellen, le Tue 10 Oct 2006 12:20:07 -0400, a écrit :
> Any simple Linux tool for converting .wav files to .mp3 files?

MP3 is patented, so you'll have a hard time looking for a legal and
"libre" software producing them.  That said, you can google for "lame"
(which has a quite good codec btw).


I was just listening to the wikipedia page on mp3 a couple of days ago and 
it said that lame is legal because the patent holder (Thompson Consumer 
Electronics -- I think) has said it won't enforce it's patent on open source 
projects. Plus, I doubt it would be illegal to use software that infringed 
on someone's patent. The end-user wouldn't be expected to know about that.

Ogg is a better format anyway.

Another thing the wikipedia page said that was interesting is that mp3 is 
obsolete as a technology but it has a certain momentum. But IMO, in a few 
years, we won't be seeing so many mp3 files around.

Re: ot: wav to mp3 linux tool?

[Michael Whapples]

If the original question was more about wav to compressed audio, I would say 
use ogg (vorbis), as it is open source. If the question is worded correctly, 
and mp3 is wanted, then lame does the job.

From
Michael Whapples
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John Heim" <jheim@math.wisc.edu>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Wednesday, October 11, 2006 4:30 PM
Subject: Re: ot: wav to mp3 linux tool?



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Samuel Thibault" <samuel.thibault@ens-lyon.org>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2006 11:26 AM
Subject: Re: ot: wav to mp3 linux tool?


Karen Lewellen, le Tue 10 Oct 2006 12:20:07 -0400, a écrit :
> Any simple Linux tool for converting .wav files to .mp3 files?

MP3 is patented, so you'll have a hard time looking for a legal and
"libre" software producing them.  That said, you can google for "lame"
(which has a quite good codec btw).


I was just listening to the wikipedia page on mp3 a couple of days ago and
it said that lame is legal because the patent holder (Thompson Consumer
Electronics -- I think) has said it won't enforce it's patent on open source
projects. Plus, I doubt it would be illegal to use software that infringed
on someone's patent. The end-user wouldn't be expected to know about that.

Ogg is a better format anyway.

Another thing the wikipedia page said that was interesting is that mp3 is
obsolete as a technology but it has a certain momentum. But IMO, in a few
years, we won't be seeing so many mp3 files around.

Re: ot: wav to mp3 linux tool?

[Karen Lewellen]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: TEXT/PLAIN, Size: 2021 bytes --]

The question and the subject were worded correctly.
I required an mp3 file.
Karen

On Wed, 11 Oct 2006, Michael Whapples wrote:

> If the original question was more about wav to compressed audio, I would say
> use ogg (vorbis), as it is open source. If the question is worded correctly,
> and mp3 is wanted, then lame does the job.
>
> From
> Michael Whapples
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "John Heim" <jheim@math.wisc.edu>
> To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
> Sent: Wednesday, October 11, 2006 4:30 PM
> Subject: Re: ot: wav to mp3 linux tool?
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Samuel Thibault" <samuel.thibault@ens-lyon.org>
> To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
> Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2006 11:26 AM
> Subject: Re: ot: wav to mp3 linux tool?
>
>
> Karen Lewellen, le Tue 10 Oct 2006 12:20:07 -0400, a écrit :
>> Any simple Linux tool for converting .wav files to .mp3 files?
>
> MP3 is patented, so you'll have a hard time looking for a legal and
> "libre" software producing them.  That said, you can google for "lame"
> (which has a quite good codec btw).
>
>
> I was just listening to the wikipedia page on mp3 a couple of days ago and
> it said that lame is legal because the patent holder (Thompson Consumer
> Electronics -- I think) has said it won't enforce it's patent on open source
> projects. Plus, I doubt it would be illegal to use software that infringed
> on someone's patent. The end-user wouldn't be expected to know about that.
>
> Ogg is a better format anyway.
>
> Another thing the wikipedia page said that was interesting is that mp3 is
> obsolete as a technology but it has a certain momentum. But IMO, in a few
> years, we won't be seeing so many mp3 files around.
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>

Re: ot: wav to mp3 linux tool?

[Karen Lewellen]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: TEXT/PLAIN, Size: 2016 bytes --]

Thanks for all of the terrific suggestions for this.
I must agree with the statement below.
Technically mp3 is a lesser quality sound compression structure, the 
assumption is that the market cannot tell the difference, given computer 
sound in general is not so great.
Still as better quality formats come out that still allow you to send 
sound in a  smaller package I think this will fade.
I am an aif fan myself,  but I am more of a real disc on a real stereo 
person most of all, grin.
Still my broadcast markets want mp3, so I am thankful for the help here.
Karen

On Wed, 11 Oct 2006, John Heim wrote:

>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Samuel Thibault" <samuel.thibault@ens-lyon.org>
> To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
> Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2006 11:26 AM
> Subject: Re: ot: wav to mp3 linux tool?
>
>
> Karen Lewellen, le Tue 10 Oct 2006 12:20:07 -0400, a écrit :
>> Any simple Linux tool for converting .wav files to .mp3 files?
>
> MP3 is patented, so you'll have a hard time looking for a legal and
> "libre" software producing them.  That said, you can google for "lame"
> (which has a quite good codec btw).
>
>
> I was just listening to the wikipedia page on mp3 a couple of days ago and
> it said that lame is legal because the patent holder (Thompson Consumer
> Electronics -- I think) has said it won't enforce it's patent on open source
> projects. Plus, I doubt it would be illegal to use software that infringed
> on someone's patent. The end-user wouldn't be expected to know about that.
>
> Ogg is a better format anyway.
>
> Another thing the wikipedia page said that was interesting is that mp3 is
> obsolete as a technology but it has a certain momentum. But IMO, in a few
> years, we won't be seeing so many mp3 files around.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>

Re: ot: wav to mp3 linux tool?

[Hart Larry]

Well, Karen, I think lame will handle that.  Also, I think Chuck Hallenbeck's 
wedet program also may help.  Good luck
Hart

RE: wav to mp3 linux tool?

[Steve Dawes]

There is a nice little perl script called mp32ogg.pl that I use that is easy
to use.
I don't remember where I got it from exactly, but a google of mp32ogg will
find it for you.

Steve

Re: ot: wav to mp3 linux tool?

[Willem van der Walt]

I use lame for that.


On Tue, 10 Oct 2006, Karen Lewellen wrote:

> Hi all,
> Any simple Linux tool for converting .wav files to .mp3 files?
> Thanks,
> Karen
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 

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Re: wav to mp3 linux tool?

[Chris Norman]

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=linux+wav2mp3

Chris Norman
<!-- cnorman@rnibncw.ac.uk -->
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Karen Lewellen" <klewellen@shellworld.net>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2006 5:20 PM
Subject: ot: wav to mp3 linux tool?


> Hi all,
> Any simple Linux tool for converting .wav files to .mp3 files?
> Thanks,
> Karen
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>

Re: ancient speech synthesizers

[Tyler Littlefield]

hmmm? how do you do that? is that pci?
~~TheCreator~~
website:
http://tysplace.shaned.net
msn:
compgeek134@hotmail.com
aim:
st8amnd2005
skype:
st8amnd127
moo coder/wizard and administrator

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gregory Nowak" <greg@romuald.net.eu.org>
To: "Glenn at home" <GlennErvin@cableone.net>; "Speakup is a screen review 
system for Linux." <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2006 12:13 AM
Subject: Re: ancient speech synthesizers


> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> On Mon, Oct 09, 2006 at 11:21:33PM -0500, Glenn at home wrote:
>> I still wish I could use my trusty SonixTTS.
>> That was on an ISA slot.
>> I could boot up into windows in safe mode and have speech!
>> Glenn
>
> I can still do that with my doubletalk pc under win98. That does come
> in very handy when windblows goes bye-bye, and it can't be fixed in
> any other way besides reinstalling. In theory, that should be doable
> with any screenreader-supported synth, as long as that synth doesn't
> require any drivers, (an accent pc comes to mind for one that does
> require drivers).
>
> Greg
>
>
>
>
> - -- 
> web site: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org
> gpg public key: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org/pubkey.asc
> skype: gregn1
> (authorization required, add me to your contacts list first)
>
> - --
> Free domains: http://www.eu.org/ or mail dns-manager@EU.org
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux)
>
> iD8DBQFFKzoG7s9z/XlyUyARAm/yAJ9sT5ERxAtcRIHobzgcD/NLken6IACgnltH
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> =7/0Y
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup 

Re: ancient speech synthesizers

[Gregory Nowak]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

No, both the doubletalk pc and the accent pc are isa synths, though
like I said, this won't work with the accent since it requires a
driver in config.sys.

Greg


On Tue, Oct 10, 2006 at 06:43:11PM -0600, Tyler Littlefield wrote:
> hmmm? how do you do that? is that pci?
> ~~TheCreator~~
> website:
> http://tysplace.shaned.net
> msn:
> compgeek134@hotmail.com
> aim:
> st8amnd2005
> skype:
> st8amnd127
> moo coder/wizard and administrator
> 

- -- 
web site: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org
gpg public key: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org/pubkey.asc
skype: gregn1
(authorization required, add me to your contacts list first)

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Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux)

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Re: ancient speech synthesizers

[Glenn at home]

So you are using an older motherboard.
I guess there is still one made that has an ISA slot, but it is probably 
low-end, even though it is new.
I don't remember the brand.
Glenn
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gregory Nowak" <greg@romuald.net.eu.org>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2006 7:58 PM
Subject: Re: ancient speech synthesizers


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

No, both the doubletalk pc and the accent pc are isa synths, though
like I said, this won't work with the accent since it requires a
driver in config.sys.

Greg


On Tue, Oct 10, 2006 at 06:43:11PM -0600, Tyler Littlefield wrote:
> hmmm? how do you do that? is that pci?
> ~~TheCreator~~
> website:
> http://tysplace.shaned.net
> msn:
> compgeek134@hotmail.com
> aim:
> st8amnd2005
> skype:
> st8amnd127
> moo coder/wizard and administrator
>

- -- 
web site: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org
gpg public key: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org/pubkey.asc
skype: gregn1
(authorization required, add me to your contacts list first)

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symiHcLtYOswIOtFgyuIW3U=
=BPcm
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Re: ancient speech synthesizers

[Gregory Nowak]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Yes, This particular board is a Abit vh6t, and it's about 4 years old
now.

A friend of mine told me that new boards with an isa slot are still
possible to get, and he didn't say anything about them being lo end
either. He did however tell me that they're very expensive. I'm not in
the market for a new mb now, so I can't confirm this, since I haven't
looked at motherboards at all lately.

Greg


On Tue, Oct 10, 2006 at 08:37:54PM -0500, Glenn at home wrote:
> So you are using an older motherboard.
> I guess there is still one made that has an ISA slot, but it is probably 
> low-end, even though it is new.
> I don't remember the brand.
> Glenn

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Re: ancient speech synthesizers

[John Heim]

If you're running linux in character mode, you can use an older machine 
especially if you have a hardware synth.

A friend of mine gave me a  ISA doubletalk a couple of months ago.  It's 
really nice for me because I run linux on a P3/450. But he just gave it to 
me because he had no use for it.




----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Glenn at home" <GlennErvin@cableone.net>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2006 8:37 PM
Subject: Re: ancient speech synthesizers


> So you are using an older motherboard.
> I guess there is still one made that has an ISA slot, but it is probably
> low-end, even though it is new.
> I don't remember the brand.
> Glenn
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Gregory Nowak" <greg@romuald.net.eu.org>
> To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." 
> <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
> Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2006 7:58 PM
> Subject: Re: ancient speech synthesizers
>
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> No, both the doubletalk pc and the accent pc are isa synths, though
> like I said, this won't work with the accent since it requires a
> driver in config.sys.
>
> Greg
>
>
> On Tue, Oct 10, 2006 at 06:43:11PM -0600, Tyler Littlefield wrote:
>> hmmm? how do you do that? is that pci?
>> ~~TheCreator~~
>> website:
>> http://tysplace.shaned.net
>> msn:
>> compgeek134@hotmail.com
>> aim:
>> st8amnd2005
>> skype:
>> st8amnd127
>> moo coder/wizard and administrator
>>
>
> - -- 
> web site: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org
> gpg public key: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org/pubkey.asc
> skype: gregn1
> (authorization required, add me to your contacts list first)
>
> - --
> Free domains: http://www.eu.org/ or mail dns-manager@EU.org
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux)
>
> iD8DBQFFLEGa7s9z/XlyUyARAs6pAJ9EauH0AgRqPiOjBcGiYTK/99SVlQCcDrd5
> symiHcLtYOswIOtFgyuIW3U=
> =BPcm
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
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> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>
> 

Re: ancient speech synthesizers

[propaine]

Has anybody used a Speaqualizer on a Linux machine?  I lack the knowhow to
do it, but it seems like a good idea to develop a modernized version of that
gismo for use with Linux--say, for one thing, usable via a USB port.  I know
the Speaqualizer was something like eight hundred bucks, but I wonder if
such a device could be enormously cheaper now.  Since I'm supposing for the
moment that its main purpose would be to make an unmodified Linux version
usable long enough to install it and usable with Speakup, or to give
primitive speech output long enough to use Emacspeak, I doubt anybody'd want
to pay a lot for it.

My ignorance on this subject is vast.  Still, I thought it worth raising the
matter regarding the general topic of ancient speech synthesizers.

Propaine
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John Heim" <jheim@math.wisc.edu>
To: "Glenn at home" <GlennErvin@cableone.net>; "Speakup is a screen review
system for Linux." <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Wednesday, October 11, 2006 11:19 AM
Subject: Re: ancient speech synthesizers


> If you're running linux in character mode, you can use an older machine
> especially if you have a hardware synth.
>
> A friend of mine gave me a  ISA doubletalk a couple of months ago.  It's
> really nice for me because I run linux on a P3/450. But he just gave it to
> me because he had no use for it.
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Glenn at home" <GlennErvin@cableone.net>
> To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux."
<speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
> Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2006 8:37 PM
> Subject: Re: ancient speech synthesizers
>
>
> > So you are using an older motherboard.
> > I guess there is still one made that has an ISA slot, but it is probably
> > low-end, even though it is new.
> > I don't remember the brand.
> > Glenn
> > ----- Original Message ----- 
> > From: "Gregory Nowak" <greg@romuald.net.eu.org>
> > To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux."
> > <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
> > Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2006 7:58 PM
> > Subject: Re: ancient speech synthesizers
> >
> >
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA1
> >
> > No, both the doubletalk pc and the accent pc are isa synths, though
> > like I said, this won't work with the accent since it requires a
> > driver in config.sys.
> >
> > Greg
> >
> >
> > On Tue, Oct 10, 2006 at 06:43:11PM -0600, Tyler Littlefield wrote:
> >> hmmm? how do you do that? is that pci?
> >> ~~TheCreator~~
> >> website:
> >> http://tysplace.shaned.net
> >> msn:
> >> compgeek134@hotmail.com
> >> aim:
> >> st8amnd2005
> >> skype:
> >> st8amnd127
> >> moo coder/wizard and administrator
> >>
> >
> > - -- 
> > web site: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org
> > gpg public key: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org/pubkey.asc
> > skype: gregn1
> > (authorization required, add me to your contacts list first)
> >
> > - --
> > Free domains: http://www.eu.org/ or mail dns-manager@EU.org
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> > Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux)
> >
> > iD8DBQFFLEGa7s9z/XlyUyARAs6pAJ9EauH0AgRqPiOjBcGiYTK/99SVlQCcDrd5
> > symiHcLtYOswIOtFgyuIW3U=
> > =BPcm
> > -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Speakup mailing list
> > Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Speakup mailing list
> > Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> >
> >
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>
>
> -- 
> No virus found in this incoming message.
> Checked by AVG Free Edition.
> Version: 7.1.408 / Virus Database: 268.13.2 - Release Date: 10/10/2006
>
>

Re: ancient speech synthesizers

[Marcel Oats]

That was the completely hardware synth from NFB wasn't it?  I had 
someone demo it to us once, and immediately thought of having 
something like that now, to help me change settings in the damn 
bios.  That'd be a valid reason for something like that for 
myself.  I'd imagine that it would still be expensive however.  It's 
nice to think about the possibilities.  The other think we could 
think about, are why companies such as Asus have not made a piece of windows
software that is able to read the bios parameter block on their 
boards, and allow the user to change them, in a nice accessible 
interface.  So long as the programme running on the Pc was in text 
mode, the Speaqualizer
would work.

Marcel
At 07:59 Ay M 12/10/2006, you wrote:
>Has anybody used a Speaqualizer on a Linux machine?  I lack the knowhow to
>do it, but it seems like a good idea to develop a modernized version of that
>gismo for use with Linux--say, for one thing, usable via a USB port.  I know
>the Speaqualizer was something like eight hundred bucks, but I wonder if
>such a device could be enormously cheaper now.  Since I'm supposing for the
>moment that its main purpose would be to make an unmodified Linux version
>usable long enough to install it and usable with Speakup, or to give
>primitive speech output long enough to use Emacspeak, I doubt anybody'd want
>to pay a lot for it.
>
>My ignorance on this subject is vast.  Still, I thought it worth raising the
>matter regarding the general topic of ancient speech synthesizers.
>
>Propaine
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "John Heim" <jheim@math.wisc.edu>
>To: "Glenn at home" <GlennErvin@cableone.net>; "Speakup is a screen review
>system for Linux." <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
>Sent: Wednesday, October 11, 2006 11:19 AM
>Subject: Re: ancient speech synthesizers
>
>
> > If you're running linux in character mode, you can use an older machine
> > especially if you have a hardware synth.
> >
> > A friend of mine gave me a  ISA doubletalk a couple of months ago.  It's
> > really nice for me because I run linux on a P3/450. But he just gave it to
> > me because he had no use for it.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Glenn at home" <GlennErvin@cableone.net>
> > To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux."
><speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
> > Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2006 8:37 PM
> > Subject: Re: ancient speech synthesizers
> >
> >
> > > So you are using an older motherboard.
> > > I guess there is still one made that has an ISA slot, but it is probably
> > > low-end, even though it is new.
> > > I don't remember the brand.
> > > Glenn
> > > ----- Original Message -----
> > > From: "Gregory Nowak" <greg@romuald.net.eu.org>
> > > To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux."
> > > <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
> > > Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2006 7:58 PM
> > > Subject: Re: ancient speech synthesizers
> > >
> > >
> > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > > Hash: SHA1
> > >
> > > No, both the doubletalk pc and the accent pc are isa synths, though
> > > like I said, this won't work with the accent since it requires a
> > > driver in config.sys.
> > >
> > > Greg
> > >
> > >
> > > On Tue, Oct 10, 2006 at 06:43:11PM -0600, Tyler Littlefield wrote:
> > >> hmmm? how do you do that? is that pci?
> > >> ~~TheCreator~~
> > >> website:
> > >> http://tysplace.shaned.net
> > >> msn:
> > >> compgeek134@hotmail.com
> > >> aim:
> > >> st8amnd2005
> > >> skype:
> > >> st8amnd127
> > >> moo coder/wizard and administrator
> > >>
> > >
> > > - --
> > > web site: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org
> > > gpg public key: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org/pubkey.asc
> > > skype: gregn1
> > > (authorization required, add me to your contacts list first)
> > >
> > > - --
> > > Free domains: http://www.eu.org/ or mail dns-manager@EU.org
> > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> > > Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux)
> > >
> > > iD8DBQFFLEGa7s9z/XlyUyARAs6pAJ9EauH0AgRqPiOjBcGiYTK/99SVlQCcDrd5
> > > symiHcLtYOswIOtFgyuIW3U=
> > > =BPcm
> > > -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Speakup mailing list
> > > Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> > > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Speakup mailing list
> > > Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> > > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Speakup mailing list
> > Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> >
> >
> > --
> > No virus found in this incoming message.
> > Checked by AVG Free Edition.
> > Version: 7.1.408 / Virus Database: 268.13.2 - Release Date: 10/10/2006
> >
> >
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Speakup mailing list
>Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
>http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

Re: ancient speech synthesizers

[Gregory Nowak]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Thu, Oct 12, 2006 at 07:21:04PM +1300, Marcel Oats wrote:
> The other think we could 
> think about, are why companies such as Asus have not made a piece of windows
> software that is able to read the bios parameter block on their 
> boards, and allow the user to change them, in a nice accessible 
> interface.

Why limit it to Asus, why not ask the same thing of all companies
producing motherboards and bios code? Actually, I think that if AMI
and Award were to include it in the base bios, the mb companies
probably wouldn't pull it out.

\as for the why, I'm willing to bet that it's because they don't care,
because they think the RND would be too expensive, and probably
because these companies think the market for something like this is
too small. Granted, something like this wouldn't probably cost too
much to develop. While we're discussing things to think about, if such
a utility were developed, it would be nice to find it on the CD that
comes with the mb, instead of having to pay for yet another program,
because you have a disability, and most other people don't. Oh one
more thing, let's not limit it to windows, arguably, I think such a
utility would be easier to program as a gnu/linux text-based
application, though since I haven't done hardware driver programming
under gnu/linux, I could be wrong in my estimate of the difficulty level. 

Greg



- -- 
web site: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org
gpg public key: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org/pubkey.asc
skype: gregn1
(authorization required, add me to your contacts list first)

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Free domains: http://www.eu.org/ or mail dns-manager@EU.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFFLeuP7s9z/XlyUyARAjVAAKCASW/PEucGdZpscORSn3OW9mTMiQCgtvJs
IUjw10Vyr+pgVaPUAbQculk=
=hfcK
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Re[2]: ancient speech synthesizers

[Farhan]

HI, i'm not sure if this applies to the current conversation here, but an interesting note.
Toshiba makes a bios utility for windows you can read everything with in the bios, change the boot order and all that. I'm not sure how you could actually program one of those for LInux, but maybe you could contact Toshiba and talk to thems.
On 10/12/2006 at 4:41 Gregory Nowak said
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Thu, Oct 12, 2006 at 07:21:04PM +1300, Marcel Oats wrote:
> The other think we could 
> think about, are why companies such as Asus have not made a piece of windows
> software that is able to read the bios parameter block on their 
> boards, and allow the user to change them, in a nice accessible 
> interface.

Why limit it to Asus, why not ask the same thing of all companies
producing motherboards and bios code? Actually, I think that if AMI
and Award were to include it in the base bios, the mb companies
probably wouldn't pull it out.

\as for the why, I'm willing to bet that it's because they don't care,
because they think the RND would be too expensive, and probably
because these companies think the market for something like this is
too small. Granted, something like this wouldn't probably cost too
much to develop. While we're discussing things to think about, if such
a utility were developed, it would be nice to find it on the CD that
comes with the mb, instead of having to pay for yet another program,
because you have a disability, and most other people don't. Oh one
more thing, let's not limit it to windows, arguably, I think such a
utility would be easier to program as a gnu/linux text-based
application, though since I haven't done hardware driver programming
under gnu/linux, I could be wrong in my estimate of the difficulty level. 

Greg



- -- 
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Free domains: http://www.eu.org/ or mail dns-manager@EU.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFFLeuP7s9z/XlyUyARAjVAAKCASW/PEucGdZpscORSn3OW9mTMiQCgtvJs
IUjw10Vyr+pgVaPUAbQculk=
=hfcK
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: ancient speech synthesizers

[Michael Whapples]

I seem to have a memory of some manufacturers stating in sales information 
that their MBs come with software to change bios settings from windows. I 
think it might have been Gigabyte. Doing some checking now, I can find a 
Gigabyte board that allows altering boot order without accessing BIOS 
directly (the board I am mentioning here can be found at www.dabs.com with 
quicklink 43rtws). Also the BIOS can be accessed from windows, and has been 
for a long time, my asus p4pe MB came with software that could save BIOS to 
a file, or flash BIOS from a file, from in windows, so an app wouldn't even 
need to work directly on the BIOS hardware if the file format was known 
(you would hope the manufacturer would know that).

From
Michael Whapples

Farhan writes:

> HI, i'm not sure if this applies to the current conversation here, but an interesting note.
> Toshiba makes a bios utility for windows you can read everything with in the bios, change the boot order and all that. I'm not sure how you could actually program one of those for LInux, but maybe you could contact Toshiba and talk to thems.
> On 10/12/2006 at 4:41 Gregory Nowak said
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> On Thu, Oct 12, 2006 at 07:21:04PM +1300, Marcel Oats wrote:
>> The other think we could 
>> think about, are why companies such as Asus have not made a piece of windows
>> software that is able to read the bios parameter block on their 
>> boards, and allow the user to change them, in a nice accessible 
>> interface.
> 
> Why limit it to Asus, why not ask the same thing of all companies
> producing motherboards and bios code? Actually, I think that if AMI
> and Award were to include it in the base bios, the mb companies
> probably wouldn't pull it out.
> 
> \as for the why, I'm willing to bet that it's because they don't care,
> because they think the RND would be too expensive, and probably
> because these companies think the market for something like this is
> too small. Granted, something like this wouldn't probably cost too
> much to develop. While we're discussing things to think about, if such
> a utility were developed, it would be nice to find it on the CD that
> comes with the mb, instead of having to pay for yet another program,
> because you have a disability, and most other people don't. Oh one
> more thing, let's not limit it to windows, arguably, I think such a
> utility would be easier to program as a gnu/linux text-based
> application, though since I haven't done hardware driver programming
> under gnu/linux, I could be wrong in my estimate of the difficulty level. 
> 
> Greg
> 
> 
> 
> - -- 
> web site: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org
> gpg public key: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org/pubkey.asc
> skype: gregn1
> (authorization required, add me to your contacts list first)
> 
> - --
> Free domains: http://www.eu.org/ or mail dns-manager@EU.org
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux)
> 
> iD8DBQFFLeuP7s9z/XlyUyARAjVAAKCASW/PEucGdZpscORSn3OW9mTMiQCgtvJs
> IUjw10Vyr+pgVaPUAbQculk=
> =hfcK
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> 
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> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 
> 
> 
> 

Re: ancient speech synthesizers

[Marcel Oats]

Most Mbs now have the BPB (bios parameter block) stored outside the 
actual file that makes the bios.  Normally, the bios file that you 
can save, should be around 512 kb in size.  If we're going to get 
into a discussion on accessing bios technology, we might want to take 
it off-list, but I believe you would still be faced with the issue of 
different mb manufacturers using different formats.  Indeed, Asus 
(the maker of the board on all systems here accept for the server) 
use a completely different bpb format to Gigabyte.

Ideally, as mentioned earlier, it'd be a case of manufactures writing 
a utility, or perhaps a third party writing the skeleton, and the 
manufacturers writing templates to fit into the infrastructure.

Marcel
At 11:21 Ay M 13/10/2006, you wrote:
>I seem to have a memory of some manufacturers stating in sales information
>that their MBs come with software to change bios settings from windows. I
>think it might have been Gigabyte. Doing some checking now, I can find a
>Gigabyte board that allows altering boot order without accessing BIOS
>directly (the board I am mentioning here can be found at www.dabs.com with
>quicklink 43rtws). Also the BIOS can be accessed from windows, and has been
>for a long time, my asus p4pe MB came with software that could save BIOS to
>a file, or flash BIOS from a file, from in windows, so an app wouldn't even
>need to work directly on the BIOS hardware if the file format was known
>(you would hope the manufacturer would know that).
>
>From
>Michael Whapples
>
>Farhan writes:
>
> > HI, i'm not sure if this applies to the current conversation 
> here, but an interesting note.
> > Toshiba makes a bios utility for windows you can read everything 
> with in the bios, change the boot order and all that. I'm not sure 
> how you could actually program one of those for LInux, but maybe 
> you could contact Toshiba and talk to thems.
> > On 10/12/2006 at 4:41 Gregory Nowak said
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA1
> >
> > On Thu, Oct 12, 2006 at 07:21:04PM +1300, Marcel Oats wrote:
> >> The other think we could
> >> think about, are why companies such as Asus have not made a 
> piece of windows
> >> software that is able to read the bios parameter block on their
> >> boards, and allow the user to change them, in a nice accessible
> >> interface.
> >
> > Why limit it to Asus, why not ask the same thing of all companies
> > producing motherboards and bios code? Actually, I think that if AMI
> > and Award were to include it in the base bios, the mb companies
> > probably wouldn't pull it out.
> >
> > \as for the why, I'm willing to bet that it's because they don't care,
> > because they think the RND would be too expensive, and probably
> > because these companies think the market for something like this is
> > too small. Granted, something like this wouldn't probably cost too
> > much to develop. While we're discussing things to think about, if such
> > a utility were developed, it would be nice to find it on the CD that
> > comes with the mb, instead of having to pay for yet another program,
> > because you have a disability, and most other people don't. Oh one
> > more thing, let's not limit it to windows, arguably, I think such a
> > utility would be easier to program as a gnu/linux text-based
> > application, though since I haven't done hardware driver programming
> > under gnu/linux, I could be wrong in my estimate of the difficulty level.
> >
> > Greg
> >
> >
> >
> > - --
> > web site: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org
> > gpg public key: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org/pubkey.asc
> > skype: gregn1
> > (authorization required, add me to your contacts list first)
> >
> > - --
> > Free domains: http://www.eu.org/ or mail dns-manager@EU.org
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> > Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux)
> >
> > iD8DBQFFLeuP7s9z/XlyUyARAjVAAKCASW/PEucGdZpscORSn3OW9mTMiQCgtvJs
> > IUjw10Vyr+pgVaPUAbQculk=
> > =hfcK
> > -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Speakup mailing list
> > Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>_______________________________________________
>Speakup mailing list
>Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
>http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

Re: ancient speech synthesizers

[Richard Villa]

Back in the days of dos, there use to be a utility for Phoenix bios that you 
could use to make changes.  It worked well with the various screen readers 
of the time.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Marcel Oats" <moats@orcon.net.nz>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Thursday, October 12, 2006 11:17 PM
Subject: Re: ancient speech synthesizers


> Most Mbs now have the BPB (bios parameter block) stored outside the
> actual file that makes the bios.  Normally, the bios file that you
> can save, should be around 512 kb in size.  If we're going to get
> into a discussion on accessing bios technology, we might want to take
> it off-list, but I believe you would still be faced with the issue of
> different mb manufacturers using different formats.  Indeed, Asus
> (the maker of the board on all systems here accept for the server)
> use a completely different bpb format to Gigabyte.
>
> Ideally, as mentioned earlier, it'd be a case of manufactures writing
> a utility, or perhaps a third party writing the skeleton, and the
> manufacturers writing templates to fit into the infrastructure.
>
> Marcel
> At 11:21 Ay M 13/10/2006, you wrote:
>>I seem to have a memory of some manufacturers stating in sales information
>>that their MBs come with software to change bios settings from windows. I
>>think it might have been Gigabyte. Doing some checking now, I can find a
>>Gigabyte board that allows altering boot order without accessing BIOS
>>directly (the board I am mentioning here can be found at www.dabs.com with
>>quicklink 43rtws). Also the BIOS can be accessed from windows, and has 
>>been
>>for a long time, my asus p4pe MB came with software that could save BIOS 
>>to
>>a file, or flash BIOS from a file, from in windows, so an app wouldn't 
>>even
>>need to work directly on the BIOS hardware if the file format was known
>>(you would hope the manufacturer would know that).
>>
>>From
>>Michael Whapples
>>
>>Farhan writes:
>>
>> > HI, i'm not sure if this applies to the current conversation
>> here, but an interesting note.
>> > Toshiba makes a bios utility for windows you can read everything
>> with in the bios, change the boot order and all that. I'm not sure
>> how you could actually program one of those for LInux, but maybe
>> you could contact Toshiba and talk to thems.
>> > On 10/12/2006 at 4:41 Gregory Nowak said
>> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> > Hash: SHA1
>> >
>> > On Thu, Oct 12, 2006 at 07:21:04PM +1300, Marcel Oats wrote:
>> >> The other think we could
>> >> think about, are why companies such as Asus have not made a
>> piece of windows
>> >> software that is able to read the bios parameter block on their
>> >> boards, and allow the user to change them, in a nice accessible
>> >> interface.
>> >
>> > Why limit it to Asus, why not ask the same thing of all companies
>> > producing motherboards and bios code? Actually, I think that if AMI
>> > and Award were to include it in the base bios, the mb companies
>> > probably wouldn't pull it out.
>> >
>> > \as for the why, I'm willing to bet that it's because they don't care,
>> > because they think the RND would be too expensive, and probably
>> > because these companies think the market for something like this is
>> > too small. Granted, something like this wouldn't probably cost too
>> > much to develop. While we're discussing things to think about, if such
>> > a utility were developed, it would be nice to find it on the CD that
>> > comes with the mb, instead of having to pay for yet another program,
>> > because you have a disability, and most other people don't. Oh one
>> > more thing, let's not limit it to windows, arguably, I think such a
>> > utility would be easier to program as a gnu/linux text-based
>> > application, though since I haven't done hardware driver programming
>> > under gnu/linux, I could be wrong in my estimate of the difficulty 
>> > level.
>> >
>> > Greg
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > - --
>> > web site: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org
>> > gpg public key: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org/pubkey.asc
>> > skype: gregn1
>> > (authorization required, add me to your contacts list first)
>> >
>> > - --
>> > Free domains: http://www.eu.org/ or mail dns-manager@EU.org
>> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
>> > Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux)
>> >
>> > iD8DBQFFLeuP7s9z/XlyUyARAjVAAKCASW/PEucGdZpscORSn3OW9mTMiQCgtvJs
>> > IUjw10Vyr+pgVaPUAbQculk=
>> > =hfcK
>> > -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > Speakup mailing list
>> > Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
>> > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>Speakup mailing list
>>Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
>>http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup 

Re: ancient speech synthesizers

[Michael Whapples]

My point was, MB manufacturers (at least some) are very close to what is 
wanted. Another great feature that my MB (asus p4pe) has is speech messages  
for status messages, e.g. when my computer starts, you hear (through 
the onboard sound card) something like, "Self test successful, now booting from operating 
system", unless there is a problem (like when my hard disk failed) "No IDE 
disk detected". So I think everything required to make an accessible BIOS is 
there, it just needs implementing, and who better than the manufacturer.

From
Michael Whapples

Marcel Oats writes:

> Most Mbs now have the BPB (bios parameter block) stored outside the 
> actual file that makes the bios.  Normally, the bios file that you 
> can save, should be around 512 kb in size.  If we're going to get 
> into a discussion on accessing bios technology, we might want to take 
> it off-list, but I believe you would still be faced with the issue of 
> different mb manufacturers using different formats.  Indeed, Asus 
> (the maker of the board on all systems here accept for the server) 
> use a completely different bpb format to Gigabyte.
> 
> Ideally, as mentioned earlier, it'd be a case of manufactures writing 
> a utility, or perhaps a third party writing the skeleton, and the 
> manufacturers writing templates to fit into the infrastructure.
> 
> Marcel
> At 11:21 Ay M 13/10/2006, you wrote:
>>I seem to have a memory of some manufacturers stating in sales information
>>that their MBs come with software to change bios settings from windows. I
>>think it might have been Gigabyte. Doing some checking now, I can find a
>>Gigabyte board that allows altering boot order without accessing BIOS
>>directly (the board I am mentioning here can be found at www.dabs.com with
>>quicklink 43rtws). Also the BIOS can be accessed from windows, and has been
>>for a long time, my asus p4pe MB came with software that could save BIOS to
>>a file, or flash BIOS from a file, from in windows, so an app wouldn't even
>>need to work directly on the BIOS hardware if the file format was known
>>(you would hope the manufacturer would know that).
>>
>>From
>>Michael Whapples
>>
>>Farhan writes:
>>
>> > HI, i'm not sure if this applies to the current conversation 
>> here, but an interesting note.
>> > Toshiba makes a bios utility for windows you can read everything 
>> with in the bios, change the boot order and all that. I'm not sure 
>> how you could actually program one of those for LInux, but maybe 
>> you could contact Toshiba and talk to thems.
>> > On 10/12/2006 at 4:41 Gregory Nowak said
>> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> > Hash: SHA1
>> >
>> > On Thu, Oct 12, 2006 at 07:21:04PM +1300, Marcel Oats wrote:
>> >> The other think we could
>> >> think about, are why companies such as Asus have not made a 
>> piece of windows
>> >> software that is able to read the bios parameter block on their
>> >> boards, and allow the user to change them, in a nice accessible
>> >> interface.
>> >
>> > Why limit it to Asus, why not ask the same thing of all companies
>> > producing motherboards and bios code? Actually, I think that if AMI
>> > and Award were to include it in the base bios, the mb companies
>> > probably wouldn't pull it out.
>> >
>> > \as for the why, I'm willing to bet that it's because they don't care,
>> > because they think the RND would be too expensive, and probably
>> > because these companies think the market for something like this is
>> > too small. Granted, something like this wouldn't probably cost too
>> > much to develop. While we're discussing things to think about, if such
>> > a utility were developed, it would be nice to find it on the CD that
>> > comes with the mb, instead of having to pay for yet another program,
>> > because you have a disability, and most other people don't. Oh one
>> > more thing, let's not limit it to windows, arguably, I think such a
>> > utility would be easier to program as a gnu/linux text-based
>> > application, though since I haven't done hardware driver programming
>> > under gnu/linux, I could be wrong in my estimate of the difficulty level.
>> >
>> > Greg
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > - --
>> > web site: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org
>> > gpg public key: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org/pubkey.asc
>> > skype: gregn1
>> > (authorization required, add me to your contacts list first)
>> >
>> > - --
>> > Free domains: http://www.eu.org/ or mail dns-manager@EU.org
>> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
>> > Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux)
>> >
>> > iD8DBQFFLeuP7s9z/XlyUyARAjVAAKCASW/PEucGdZpscORSn3OW9mTMiQCgtvJs
>> > IUjw10Vyr+pgVaPUAbQculk=
>> > =hfcK
>> > -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > Speakup mailing list
>> > Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
>> > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>Speakup mailing list
>>Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
>>http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 
> 
> 
> 

Re[2]: ancient speech synthesizers

[Marcel Oats]

Yes, they have it in their laptops, usually, not sure about the later 
ones though.

Marcel
At 10:43 PM 12/10/2006, you wrote:
>HI, i'm not sure if this applies to the current conversation here, 
>but an interesting note.
>Toshiba makes a bios utility for windows you can read everything 
>with in the bios, change the boot order and all that. I'm not sure 
>how you could actually program one of those for LInux, but maybe you 
>could contact Toshiba and talk to thems.
>On 10/12/2006 at 4:41 Gregory Nowak said
>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>Hash: SHA1
>
>On Thu, Oct 12, 2006 at 07:21:04PM +1300, Marcel Oats wrote:
> > The other think we could
> > think about, are why companies such as Asus have not made a piece 
> of windows
> > software that is able to read the bios parameter block on their
> > boards, and allow the user to change them, in a nice accessible
> > interface.
>
>Why limit it to Asus, why not ask the same thing of all companies
>producing motherboards and bios code? Actually, I think that if AMI
>and Award were to include it in the base bios, the mb companies
>probably wouldn't pull it out.
>
>\as for the why, I'm willing to bet that it's because they don't care,
>because they think the RND would be too expensive, and probably
>because these companies think the market for something like this is
>too small. Granted, something like this wouldn't probably cost too
>much to develop. While we're discussing things to think about, if such
>a utility were developed, it would be nice to find it on the CD that
>comes with the mb, instead of having to pay for yet another program,
>because you have a disability, and most other people don't. Oh one
>more thing, let's not limit it to windows, arguably, I think such a
>utility would be easier to program as a gnu/linux text-based
>application, though since I haven't done hardware driver programming
>under gnu/linux, I could be wrong in my estimate of the difficulty level.
>
>Greg
>
>
>
>- --
>web site: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org
>gpg public key: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org/pubkey.asc
>skype: gregn1
>(authorization required, add me to your contacts list first)
>
>- --
>Free domains: http://www.eu.org/ or mail dns-manager@EU.org
>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
>Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux)
>
>iD8DBQFFLeuP7s9z/XlyUyARAjVAAKCASW/PEucGdZpscORSn3OW9mTMiQCgtvJs
>IUjw10Vyr+pgVaPUAbQculk=
>=hfcK
>-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>
>_______________________________________________
>Speakup mailing list
>Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
>http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Speakup mailing list
>Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
>http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

Re: Re[2]: ancient speech synthesizers

[Angelo Sonnesso]

The IBM PC used to have a way to access the BIOS using debug under MSDOS.
You just typed in the memory address and the BIOS program came up and Using 
ASAP I was able to make any changes I needed.
It was reading the same interface that my sighted friends were using.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Marcel Oats" <moats@orcon.net.nz>
To: "Farhan" <i.am.Farhan@gmail.com>; "Speakup is a screen review system for 
Linux." <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Thursday, October 12, 2006 11:58 PM
Subject: Re[2]: ancient speech synthesizers


> Yes, they have it in their laptops, usually, not sure about the later
> ones though.
>
> Marcel
> At 10:43 PM 12/10/2006, you wrote:
>>HI, i'm not sure if this applies to the current conversation here,
>>but an interesting note.
>>Toshiba makes a bios utility for windows you can read everything
>>with in the bios, change the boot order and all that. I'm not sure
>>how you could actually program one of those for LInux, but maybe you
>>could contact Toshiba and talk to thems.
>>On 10/12/2006 at 4:41 Gregory Nowak said
>>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>>Hash: SHA1
>>
>>On Thu, Oct 12, 2006 at 07:21:04PM +1300, Marcel Oats wrote:
>> > The other think we could
>> > think about, are why companies such as Asus have not made a piece
>> of windows
>> > software that is able to read the bios parameter block on their
>> > boards, and allow the user to change them, in a nice accessible
>> > interface.
>>
>>Why limit it to Asus, why not ask the same thing of all companies
>>producing motherboards and bios code? Actually, I think that if AMI
>>and Award were to include it in the base bios, the mb companies
>>probably wouldn't pull it out.
>>
>>\as for the why, I'm willing to bet that it's because they don't care,
>>because they think the RND would be too expensive, and probably
>>because these companies think the market for something like this is
>>too small. Granted, something like this wouldn't probably cost too
>>much to develop. While we're discussing things to think about, if such
>>a utility were developed, it would be nice to find it on the CD that
>>comes with the mb, instead of having to pay for yet another program,
>>because you have a disability, and most other people don't. Oh one
>>more thing, let's not limit it to windows, arguably, I think such a
>>utility would be easier to program as a gnu/linux text-based
>>application, though since I haven't done hardware driver programming
>>under gnu/linux, I could be wrong in my estimate of the difficulty level.
>>
>>Greg
>>
>>
>>
>>- --
>>web site: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org
>>gpg public key: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org/pubkey.asc
>>skype: gregn1
>>(authorization required, add me to your contacts list first)
>>
>>- --
>>Free domains: http://www.eu.org/ or mail dns-manager@EU.org
>>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
>>Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux)
>>
>>iD8DBQFFLeuP7s9z/XlyUyARAjVAAKCASW/PEucGdZpscORSn3OW9mTMiQCgtvJs
>>IUjw10Vyr+pgVaPUAbQculk=
>>=hfcK
>>-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>Speakup mailing list
>>Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
>>http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>>
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>Speakup mailing list
>>Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
>>http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup 

Re: Re[2]: ancient speech synthesizers

[Gregory Nowak]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

By IBM PC do you mean a machine made by IBM, or a machine compatible
with that architecture? If you are referring to a compatible machine,
then this should still be doable I think either with a DOS/win9x boot
disk, or it should even be doable with gdb under GNU/Linux. Do you
remember what the memory address was?

Also, I just remembered that there were some 486 machines, and even
some early 586 machines that let you get into bios via a hotkey
sequence from within DOS. I remember using one such machine with
provox7, and while the accessibility wasn't great, because the numpad
review functionality went away as soon as you used that hotkey
combination to get into bios, it still did do the job, since every
single key press read the full screen from what I recall, which
incidentally, was in columns as well.

Greg


On Fri, Oct 13, 2006 at 07:07:33AM -0400, Angelo Sonnesso wrote:
> The IBM PC used to have a way to access the BIOS using debug under MSDOS.
> You just typed in the memory address and the BIOS program came up and Using 
> ASAP I was able to make any changes I needed.
> It was reading the same interface that my sighted friends were using.
> 

- -- 
web site: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org
gpg public key: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org/pubkey.asc
skype: gregn1
(authorization required, add me to your contacts list first)

- --
Free domains: http://www.eu.org/ or mail dns-manager@EU.org
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Re: Re[2]: ancient speech synthesizers

[Chuck Hallenbeck]

There was also a dos utility called "cmos-ram" as I recall, which copied 
the cmos to an editable text file, and copied it back again. So if you 
knew the format of the file, you could make changes easily.


On Fri, Oct 13, 2006 at 09:42:25AM -0700, Gregory Nowak wrote:
> By IBM PC do you mean a machine made by IBM, or a machine compatible
> with that architecture? If you are referring to a compatible machine,
> then this should still be doable I think either with a DOS/win9x boot
> disk, or it should even be doable with gdb under GNU/Linux. Do you
> remember what the memory address was?
> 
> Also, I just remembered that there were some 486 machines, and even
> some early 586 machines that let you get into bios via a hotkey
> sequence from within DOS. I remember using one such machine with
> provox7, and while the accessibility wasn't great, because the numpad
> review functionality went away as soon as you used that hotkey
> combination to get into bios, it still did do the job, since every
> single key press read the full screen from what I recall, which
> incidentally, was in columns as well.
> 
> Greg
> 
> 
> On Fri, Oct 13, 2006 at 07:07:33AM -0400, Angelo Sonnesso wrote:
> > The IBM PC used to have a way to access the BIOS using debug under MSDOS.
> > You just typed in the memory address and the BIOS program came up and Using 
> > ASAP I was able to make any changes I needed.
> > It was reading the same interface that my sighted friends were using.
> > 
> 
> -- 
> web site: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org
> gpg public key: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org/pubkey.asc
> skype: gregn1
> (authorization required, add me to your contacts list first)
> 
> --
> Free domains: http://www.eu.org/ or mail dns-manager@EU.org
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 
The Moon is Waning Gibbous (53% of Full)
Only 10 kinds of people: those who do binary, and those who do not.
But you can get a few downloads from http://www.mhcable.com/~chuckh

Re: Re[2]: ancient speech synthesizers

[Marcel Oats]

I still use cmos_ram on my toy, but that may not work anymore.
Not sure about this.

At 07:55 Ay M 14/10/2006, you wrote:
>There was also a dos utility called "cmos-ram" as I recall, which copied
>the cmos to an editable text file, and copied it back again. So if you
>knew the format of the file, you could make changes easily.
>
>
>On Fri, Oct 13, 2006 at 09:42:25AM -0700, Gregory Nowak wrote:
> > By IBM PC do you mean a machine made by IBM, or a machine compatible
> > with that architecture? If you are referring to a compatible machine,
> > then this should still be doable I think either with a DOS/win9x boot
> > disk, or it should even be doable with gdb under GNU/Linux. Do you
> > remember what the memory address was?
> >
> > Also, I just remembered that there were some 486 machines, and even
> > some early 586 machines that let you get into bios via a hotkey
> > sequence from within DOS. I remember using one such machine with
> > provox7, and while the accessibility wasn't great, because the numpad
> > review functionality went away as soon as you used that hotkey
> > combination to get into bios, it still did do the job, since every
> > single key press read the full screen from what I recall, which
> > incidentally, was in columns as well.
> >
> > Greg
> >
> >
> > On Fri, Oct 13, 2006 at 07:07:33AM -0400, Angelo Sonnesso wrote:
> > > The IBM PC used to have a way to access the BIOS using debug under MSDOS.
> > > You just typed in the memory address and the BIOS program came 
> up and Using
> > > ASAP I was able to make any changes I needed.
> > > It was reading the same interface that my sighted friends were using.
> > >
> >
> > --
> > web site: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org
> > gpg public key: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org/pubkey.asc
> > skype: gregn1
> > (authorization required, add me to your contacts list first)
> >
> > --
> > Free domains: http://www.eu.org/ or mail dns-manager@EU.org
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Speakup mailing list
> > Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>
>--
>The Moon is Waning Gibbous (53% of Full)
>Only 10 kinds of people: those who do binary, and those who do not.
>But you can get a few downloads from http://www.mhcable.com/~chuckh
>
>_______________________________________________
>Speakup mailing list
>Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
>http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

Re: Re[2]: ancient speech synthesizers

[Kirk Reiser]

We have the equivalent now in linux in the form of the device nvram.
You can read from it to a file or write to it from a file.

  Kirk

-- 

Kirk Reiser				The Computer Braille Facility
e-mail: kirk@braille.uwo.ca		University of Western Ontario
phone: (519) 661-3061

Re: Re[2]: ancient speech synthesizers

[Shaun Oliver]

how does one read from nvram to a file etc?
I'm sure there's something in the docs about it but I'm feeling a little 
lazy today.
lol. it's hot after all. 37C here folks.

Re: Re[2]: ancient speech synthesizers

[Steve Holmes]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: RIPEMD160

Yeah, I've run into that option when compiling the kernel for years.  I
just wonder how one could get the formats necessary so you could write
an intelegent program to properly interpret the data.  In principle, It
should be easy enough; just run the ap from a linux shell.

On Fri, Oct 13, 2006 at 08:56:15PM -0400, Kirk Reiser wrote:
> We have the equivalent now in linux in the form of the device nvram.
> You can read from it to a file or write to it from a file.
> 
>   Kirk
> 
> -- 
> 
> Kirk Reiser				The Computer Braille Facility
> e-mail: kirk@braille.uwo.ca		University of Western Ontario
> phone: (519) 661-3061
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 
> 

- -- 
HolmesGrown Solutions
The best solutions for the best price!
http://holmesgrown.ld.net/
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Re: ancient speech synthesizers

[Kirk Reiser]

Well, if anyone is interested in working on an accessible bios Intel
has release their open source bios called the extensible firmware
interface.  Here is an URL http://developer.intel.com/technology/efi/
so eventually if some one or group takes this on it will be an
accessible replacement for AMI, Award and the like.  That's a long way
off though because I don't know of anybody actively working on it yet.

  Kirk

-- 

Kirk Reiser				The Computer Braille Facility
e-mail: kirk@braille.uwo.ca		University of Western Ontario
phone: (519) 661-3061

Re: ancient speech synthesizers

[Marcel Oats]

You can get into the EFI shell on the server running Win2003.  Will 
check out the URL.
Marcel
At 11:53 PM 12/10/2006, you wrote:
>Well, if anyone is interested in working on an accessible bios Intel
>has release their open source bios called the extensible firmware
>interface.  Here is an URL http://developer.intel.com/technology/efi/
>so eventually if some one or group takes this on it will be an
>accessible replacement for AMI, Award and the like.  That's a long way
>off though because I don't know of anybody actively working on it yet.
>
>   Kirk

Major Bonehead move:

[Stephen Dawes]

After so many years of using Linux, I have finally done it, a Major Bonehead
move. I wrote a script, and when I tested it, it went wild on me. When it
ran it deleted the contents of /bin and I don't know what else. Any ideas,
short of a re-install of the OS, on how to recover from this Major Bonehead
move?

Major Bonehead
Steve.

Re: Major Bonehead move:

[Littlefield, Tyler]

I'd say you're kind of stuck unless you have rm aliased to drop stuff in 
~/.trash, which is common. You could also do some forensics stuff, but 
if you're messing with the hd you've probably killed that option.
On 8/29/2012 11:53 AM, Stephen Dawes wrote:
> After so many years of using Linux, I have finally done it, a Major Bonehead
> move. I wrote a script, and when I tested it, it went wild on me. When it
> ran it deleted the contents of /bin and I don't know what else. Any ideas,
> short of a re-install of the OS, on how to recover from this Major Bonehead
> move?
>
> Major Bonehead
> Steve.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup


-- 
Take care,
Ty
http://tds-solutions.net
The aspen project: a barebones light-weight mud engine:
http://code.google.com/p/aspenmud
He that will not reason is a bigot; he that cannot reason is a fool; he that dares not reason is a slave.

Re: Major Bonehead move:

[Devon Stewart]

I' e done stuff like this in the past. If the machine is still running you should be fine. My example will be with Debian, since that's what I run at home. As root, type:

aptitude reinstall ?installed

which should go through all packages and reinstall them. You'll probably find other solutions are out there for other distros.

Good luck!

-Devon

On Aug 29, 2012, at 11:44, "Littlefield, Tyler" <tyler@tysdomain.com> wrote:

> I'd say you're kind of stuck unless you have rm aliased to drop stuff in ~/.trash, which is common. You could also do some forensics stuff, but if you're messing with the hd you've probably killed that option.
> On 8/29/2012 11:53 AM, Stephen Dawes wrote:
>> After so many years of using Linux, I have finally done it, a Major Bonehead
>> move. I wrote a script, and when I tested it, it went wild on me. When it
>> ran it deleted the contents of /bin and I don't know what else. Any ideas,
>> short of a re-install of the OS, on how to recover from this Major Bonehead
>> move?
>> 
>> Major Bonehead
>> Steve.
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> Speakup mailing list
>> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
>> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 
> 
> -- 
> Take care,
> Ty
> http://tds-solutions.net
> The aspen project: a barebones light-weight mud engine:
> http://code.google.com/p/aspenmud
> He that will not reason is a bigot; he that cannot reason is a fool; he that dares not reason is a slave.
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

Re: Major Bonehead move:

[covici]

A backup?

Stephen Dawes <sdawes@telus.net> wrote:

> After so many years of using Linux, I have finally done it, a Major Bonehead
> move. I wrote a script, and when I tested it, it went wild on me. When it
> ran it deleted the contents of /bin and I don't know what else. Any ideas,
> short of a re-install of the OS, on how to recover from this Major Bonehead
> move?
> 
> Major Bonehead
> Steve.
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 
Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
How do
you spend it?

         John Covici
         covici@ccs.covici.com

Re: Major Bonehead move:

[acollins]

Hi Steve.  You could try getting a copy of Midnight Commander, which has
an undelete function.  I  don't know how well it works though.  If you
have more than one machine running Linux, you can try copying the
contents of bin from another machine.  That might work,if your libraries
aren't toast.

Gene

>After so many years of using Linux, I have finally done it, a Major Bonehead
>move. I wrote a script, and when I tested it, it went wild on me. When it
>ran it deleted the contents of /bin and I don't know what else. Any ideas,
>short of a re-install of the OS, on how to recover from this Major Bonehead
>move?
>
>Major Bonehead
>Steve.
>
>_______________________________________________
>Speakup mailing list
>Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
>http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

Re: Major Bonehead move:

[Jason White]

Stephen Dawes <speakup@braille.uwo.ca> wrote:
>After so many years of using Linux, I have finally done it, a Major Bonehead
>move. I wrote a script, and when I tested it, it went wild on me. When it
>ran it deleted the contents of /bin and I don't know what else. Any ideas,
>short of a re-install of the OS, on how to recover from this Major Bonehead
>move?

If you can still use the package manager, or get it installed, I suppose you
could reinstall packages as needed.

You could boot from a "live CD" or USB device, mount the file system, and use
the package manager from the "live" distribution to install packages.

Actually finding all the packages that have missing files should be possible -
Debian has debsums, for example, which will check the installed files against
a check sum database. You would then have to write a script to re-install all
those packages.

It might be easier just to take a list of the installed packages and then
re-install the entire system, but using the list of packages to automate the
installation.

This can be done in Debian - not sure about other distributions that aren't
based on Dpkg.

Re: Major Bonehead move:

[Kyle]

Depending on the distribution you are using, you should be able to run its package management software from the install media and specify the top-level directory of the affected drive as the root of the package installation. You should be able to bootstrap a system, only reinstalling the packages you had rather than doing a complete reinstal. Failing this, just go ahead and reinstall the entire system, backing up /home and /etc first, and then copy /home and /etc back to the newly installed system. This way, you shouldn't lose any files or configurations.; you will only need to reinstall any extra packages that are not part of the base install. Hope this helps.
~Kyle

Re: Major Bonehead move:

[Tony Baechler]

First, why are you running a script as root?  A normal user account can't 
delete /bin unless your permissions are screwed up.  Second, as others have 
suggested, your best bet is probably to reinstall any broken packages. 
Finally, if /home and /etc are toast, try something like testdisk or a live 
rescue CD, but don't expect to recover a lot.  If you really need to run a 
script as root which could do serious damage, run it in a chroot next time. 
  I have a second drive just for backups to prevent cases like this, so try 
copying /home to another drive.  Don't feel too badly though.  I've read 
stories of quite a number of people who ran "rm -rf *" and thought they were 
in their home directory but were actually in the root.

On 8/29/2012 10:53 AM, Stephen Dawes wrote:
> After so many years of using Linux, I have finally done it, a Major Bonehead
> move. I wrote a script, and when I tested it, it went wild on me. When it
> ran it deleted the contents of /bin and I don't know what else. Any ideas,
> short of a re-install of the OS, on how to recover from this Major Bonehead
> move?

RE: Major Bonehead move:

[Dawes, Stephen]

Silence is deafening!
I last wrote about my major bonehead move last Wednesday. I have been without email since then. I have just got my system back up and running and email configured. Thanks for all your suggestions and friendly barbs. I deserved them all. Needless to say, the only solution was to rebuild my server from scratch.

Lessons learned:
1. Back up my system.
   I must say that this is the classic case of the mechanic's car, shoemaker's children, the IT Professional's computer.

2 Back up my system.
Not just the computer that I have just rebuilt, but all computers in the house.

3.  Did I mention, back up my system.

Well hopefully this is the last post from yours truly, Major Bonehead.

Stephen Dawes
-----Original Message-----
From: Speakup [mailto:speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca] On Behalf Of Stephen Dawes
Sent: Wednesday, August 29, 2012 11:54 AM
To: 'Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.'
Subject: Major Bonehead move:

After so many years of using Linux, I have finally done it, a Major Bonehead
move. I wrote a script, and when I tested it, it went wild on me. When it
ran it deleted the contents of /bin and I don't know what else. Any ideas,
short of a re-install of the OS, on how to recover from this Major Bonehead
move?

Major Bonehead
Steve.

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Re: ancient speech synthesizers

[Glenn at home]

Many motherboards have a chip for a back-up BIOS.
I wish we could write some code for speech that we could force to reside 
there, thus giving up our back-up BIOS, but allowing us to have some speech 
output, maybe to the PC speaker, or piped through a port.
Glenn

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gregory Nowak" <greg@romuald.net.eu.org>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Thursday, October 12, 2006 2:15 AM
Subject: Re: ancient speech synthesizers


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Thu, Oct 12, 2006 at 07:21:04PM +1300, Marcel Oats wrote:
> The other think we could
> think about, are why companies such as Asus have not made a piece of 
> windows
> software that is able to read the bios parameter block on their
> boards, and allow the user to change them, in a nice accessible
> interface.

Why limit it to Asus, why not ask the same thing of all companies
producing motherboards and bios code? Actually, I think that if AMI
and Award were to include it in the base bios, the mb companies
probably wouldn't pull it out.

\as for the why, I'm willing to bet that it's because they don't care,
because they think the RND would be too expensive, and probably
because these companies think the market for something like this is
too small. Granted, something like this wouldn't probably cost too
much to develop. While we're discussing things to think about, if such
a utility were developed, it would be nice to find it on the CD that
comes with the mb, instead of having to pay for yet another program,
because you have a disability, and most other people don't. Oh one
more thing, let's not limit it to windows, arguably, I think such a
utility would be easier to program as a gnu/linux text-based
application, though since I haven't done hardware driver programming
under gnu/linux, I could be wrong in my estimate of the difficulty level.

Greg



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http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup 

Re: ancient speech synthesizers

[Glenn at home]

I wish someone would develop and sell an ISA slot to fit into a PCI slot, so 
we could run the ISA devices, like my trusty internal synth.
But I suspect that he is running a PCI DoubleTalk.
Hey Greg, wanna sell that gem?

Glenn

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tyler Littlefield" <compgeek13@gmail.com>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2006 7:43 PM
Subject: Re: ancient speech synthesizers


hmmm? how do you do that? is that pci?
~~TheCreator~~
website:
http://tysplace.shaned.net
msn:
compgeek134@hotmail.com
aim:
st8amnd2005
skype:
st8amnd127
moo coder/wizard and administrator

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gregory Nowak" <greg@romuald.net.eu.org>
To: "Glenn at home" <GlennErvin@cableone.net>; "Speakup is a screen review
system for Linux." <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2006 12:13 AM
Subject: Re: ancient speech synthesizers


> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> On Mon, Oct 09, 2006 at 11:21:33PM -0500, Glenn at home wrote:
>> I still wish I could use my trusty SonixTTS.
>> That was on an ISA slot.
>> I could boot up into windows in safe mode and have speech!
>> Glenn
>
> I can still do that with my doubletalk pc under win98. That does come
> in very handy when windblows goes bye-bye, and it can't be fixed in
> any other way besides reinstalling. In theory, that should be doable
> with any screenreader-supported synth, as long as that synth doesn't
> require any drivers, (an accent pc comes to mind for one that does
> require drivers).
>
> Greg
>
>
>
>
> - -- 
> web site: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org
> gpg public key: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org/pubkey.asc
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>
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>
> iD8DBQFFKzoG7s9z/XlyUyARAm/yAJ9sT5ERxAtcRIHobzgcD/NLken6IACgnltH
> 3UkbjitM4RA/UU988PdLFy0=
> =7/0Y
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>
> _______________________________________________
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> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup



_______________________________________________
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Re: ancient speech synthesizers

[Gregory Nowak]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Tue, Oct 10, 2006 at 08:36:22PM -0500, Glenn at home wrote:
> I wish someone would develop and sell an ISA slot to fit into a PCI slot, so 
> we could run the ISA devices, like my trusty internal synth.

Even if that were done, these synths aren't being produced
anymore. Case in point, if you go to the RC systems web site,
www.rcsys.com you won't find the doubletalk pc anymore like you used
to, you'll just find the lt model, and that's a serial synth.

> But I suspect that he is running a PCI DoubleTalk.

Like I've said before, this is an isa synth. There is no such thing as
a pci doubletalk, unless you mean the new trippletalk, which still
isn't a doubletalk. In theory, if the trippletalk pci synth doesn't
require drivers, it should also work in safe mode, but since I don't
have one to test with, I don't know for sure.

> Hey Greg, wanna sell that gem?

Uhhm, nope.

Greg


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Re: ancient speech synthesizers

[Glenn at home]

I do have a SCSI box that is full of a ISA slots, and I was going to use it 
for my Sonix card, but I never did find the right adapter for the SCSI cable 
coming out of it.
It is a metal box about 6 by 12 inches maybe, and it has a SCSI ribbon cable 
coming out and I was going to plug it into a SCSI card on my computer, if I 
could find the right adapter.
It was my last ditch effort to hear:
Artic Speech Is Ready
Now it is just sitting in my old hardware cupboard.
Glenn

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gregory Nowak" <greg@romuald.net.eu.org>
To: "Glenn at home" <GlennErvin@cableone.net>; "Speakup is a screen review 
system for Linux." <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2006 8:51 PM
Subject: Re: ancient speech synthesizers


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Tue, Oct 10, 2006 at 08:36:22PM -0500, Glenn at home wrote:
> I wish someone would develop and sell an ISA slot to fit into a PCI slot, 
> so
> we could run the ISA devices, like my trusty internal synth.

Even if that were done, these synths aren't being produced
anymore. Case in point, if you go to the RC systems web site,
www.rcsys.com you won't find the doubletalk pc anymore like you used
to, you'll just find the lt model, and that's a serial synth.

> But I suspect that he is running a PCI DoubleTalk.

Like I've said before, this is an isa synth. There is no such thing as
a pci doubletalk, unless you mean the new trippletalk, which still
isn't a doubletalk. In theory, if the trippletalk pci synth doesn't
require drivers, it should also work in safe mode, but since I don't
have one to test with, I don't know for sure.

> Hey Greg, wanna sell that gem?

Uhhm, nope.

Greg


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=dMn8
-----END PGP SIGNATURE----- 

Re: ancient speech synthesizers

[Marcel Oats]

I guess someone could make a USB to PCI adapter?
At 02:36 PM 11/10/2006, you wrote:
>I wish someone would develop and sell an ISA slot to fit into a PCI slot, so
>we could run the ISA devices, like my trusty internal synth.
>But I suspect that he is running a PCI DoubleTalk.
>Hey Greg, wanna sell that gem?
>
>Glenn
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Tyler Littlefield" <compgeek13@gmail.com>
>To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
>Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2006 7:43 PM
>Subject: Re: ancient speech synthesizers
>
>
>hmmm? how do you do that? is that pci?
>~~TheCreator~~
>website:
>http://tysplace.shaned.net
>msn:
>compgeek134@hotmail.com
>aim:
>st8amnd2005
>skype:
>st8amnd127
>moo coder/wizard and administrator
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Gregory Nowak" <greg@romuald.net.eu.org>
>To: "Glenn at home" <GlennErvin@cableone.net>; "Speakup is a screen review
>system for Linux." <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
>Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2006 12:13 AM
>Subject: Re: ancient speech synthesizers
>
>
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA1
> >
> > On Mon, Oct 09, 2006 at 11:21:33PM -0500, Glenn at home wrote:
> >> I still wish I could use my trusty SonixTTS.
> >> That was on an ISA slot.
> >> I could boot up into windows in safe mode and have speech!
> >> Glenn
> >
> > I can still do that with my doubletalk pc under win98. That does come
> > in very handy when windblows goes bye-bye, and it can't be fixed in
> > any other way besides reinstalling. In theory, that should be doable
> > with any screenreader-supported synth, as long as that synth doesn't
> > require any drivers, (an accent pc comes to mind for one that does
> > require drivers).
> >
> > Greg
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > - --
> > web site: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org
> > gpg public key: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org/pubkey.asc
> > skype: gregn1
> > (authorization required, add me to your contacts list first)
> >
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> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> > Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux)
> >
> > iD8DBQFFKzoG7s9z/XlyUyARAm/yAJ9sT5ERxAtcRIHobzgcD/NLken6IACgnltH
> > 3UkbjitM4RA/UU988PdLFy0=
> > =7/0Y
> > -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Speakup mailing list
> > Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
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>
>
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>http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

Re: ancient speech synthesizers

[Gregory Nowak]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

I'm not sure I understand, how would that help? Did you perhaps mean
to write isa instead of pci? If so, then that would make sense. The
post you were replying to suggested a pci to isa adapter, though I'll
admit a usb to isa adapter, if it was possible to make such a beast,
would be better then a pci to isa adapter. All modern pcs today
have one, if not more pci slots, so a usb to pci adapter doesn't make
much sense there either, unless someone runs out of pci slots, and the
idea is to be able to connect more pci devices via the usb bus, which
can support ... what ... up to 128 devices I believe?

As I've also said before, even a usb to isa adapter would have
limited usefulness, given that the isa synths aren't being produced
anymore.

Greg


On Wed, Oct 11, 2006 at 10:44:14PM +1300, Marcel Oats wrote:
> I guess someone could make a USB to PCI adapter?

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Re: ancient speech synthesizers

[Marcel Oats]

Naa you're right, I did mean to say USB to ISA, but I had lots of 
things happening, and it was late.
I think you could make one, though you'd need drivers.
At 07:37 Ay M 12/10/2006, you wrote:
>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>Hash: SHA1
>
>I'm not sure I understand, how would that help? Did you perhaps mean
>to write isa instead of pci? If so, then that would make sense. The
>post you were replying to suggested a pci to isa adapter, though I'll
>admit a usb to isa adapter, if it was possible to make such a beast,
>would be better then a pci to isa adapter. All modern pcs today
>have one, if not more pci slots, so a usb to pci adapter doesn't make
>much sense there either, unless someone runs out of pci slots, and the
>idea is to be able to connect more pci devices via the usb bus, which
>can support ... what ... up to 128 devices I believe?
>
>As I've also said before, even a usb to isa adapter would have
>limited usefulness, given that the isa synths aren't being produced
>anymore.
>
>Greg
>
>
>On Wed, Oct 11, 2006 at 10:44:14PM +1300, Marcel Oats wrote:
> > I guess someone could make a USB to PCI adapter?
>
>- --
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>
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>bnApYdR87fou8qTA9tCuMpg=
>=6rNN
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>
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Re: ancient speech synthesizers

[Gregory Nowak]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Thu, Oct 12, 2006 at 07:14:05PM +1300, Marcel Oats wrote:
> I think you could make one, though you'd need drivers.

Well, that would kill the idea of using a synth under safe mode in
win9x, though it still could be useful probably in normal mode windblows as well
as in gnu/linux.

Greg




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Re: ancient speech synthesizers

[Marcel Oats]

Windblows? could you use it?
Marcel
At 07:58 PM 12/10/2006, you wrote:
>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>Hash: SHA1
>
>On Thu, Oct 12, 2006 at 07:14:05PM +1300, Marcel Oats wrote:
> > I think you could make one, though you'd need drivers.
>
>Well, that would kill the idea of using a synth under safe mode in
>win9x, though it still could be useful probably in normal mode 
>windblows as well
>as in gnu/linux.
>
>Greg
>
>
>
>
>- --
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>
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>
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>=fHMv
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>
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Re: ancient speech synthesizers

[Chris Norman]

ISA.

Chris Norman
<!-- cnorman@rnibncw.ac.uk -->
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tyler Littlefield" <compgeek13@gmail.com>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Wednesday, October 11, 2006 1:43 AM
Subject: Re: ancient speech synthesizers


> hmmm? how do you do that? is that pci?
> ~~TheCreator~~
> website:
> http://tysplace.shaned.net
> msn:
> compgeek134@hotmail.com
> aim:
> st8amnd2005
> skype:
> st8amnd127
> moo coder/wizard and administrator
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Gregory Nowak" <greg@romuald.net.eu.org>
> To: "Glenn at home" <GlennErvin@cableone.net>; "Speakup is a screen review
> system for Linux." <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
> Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2006 12:13 AM
> Subject: Re: ancient speech synthesizers
>
>
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> Hash: SHA1
>>
>> On Mon, Oct 09, 2006 at 11:21:33PM -0500, Glenn at home wrote:
>>> I still wish I could use my trusty SonixTTS.
>>> That was on an ISA slot.
>>> I could boot up into windows in safe mode and have speech!
>>> Glenn
>>
>> I can still do that with my doubletalk pc under win98. That does come
>> in very handy when windblows goes bye-bye, and it can't be fixed in
>> any other way besides reinstalling. In theory, that should be doable
>> with any screenreader-supported synth, as long as that synth doesn't
>> require any drivers, (an accent pc comes to mind for one that does
>> require drivers).
>>
>> Greg
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> - -- 
>> web site: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org
>> gpg public key: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org/pubkey.asc
>> skype: gregn1
>> (authorization required, add me to your contacts list first)
>>
>> - --
>> Free domains: http://www.eu.org/ or mail dns-manager@EU.org
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>> 3UkbjitM4RA/UU988PdLFy0=
>> =7/0Y
>> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Speakup mailing list
>> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
>> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup 

Re: ancient speech synthesizers

[Joseph C. Lininger]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: RIPEMD160

For the record, I don't find that tooooo strange. I think it would be
fassinating to hear the speach of some of these. Hey, would people maybe
be interested in having an archive of various speach synthesizers
reading the same passage so they can be analyzed and stuff? Both old and
new synths of course.

Tyler Spivey wrote:
> Just out of curiosity, what have any of you used for ancient synths? I'm
> not talking the well-known ones such as accent/artic, I'm talking
> something like Votrax anything, Covox, or any ones that are strange.
> It'd be cool to get one of those, but they're probably all gone to
> history. What brought this up? Some weird speech package called Enable
> that supported some of those which appears to be from the 80's.
> 

_______________________________________________
Speakup mailing list
Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
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Re: ancient speech synthesizers

[Richard Villa]

I still have a working Votrex.  Well, it was working the last time I had it 
plugged in to a system about 15 years ago.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Joseph C. Lininger" <jbahm@pcdesk.net>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2006 3:20 AM
Subject: Re: ancient speech synthesizers


> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: RIPEMD160
>
> For the record, I don't find that tooooo strange. I think it would be
> fassinating to hear the speach of some of these. Hey, would people maybe
> be interested in having an archive of various speach synthesizers
> reading the same passage so they can be analyzed and stuff? Both old and
> new synths of course.
>
> Tyler Spivey wrote:
>> Just out of curiosity, what have any of you used for ancient synths? I'm
>> not talking the well-known ones such as accent/artic, I'm talking
>> something like Votrax anything, Covox, or any ones that are strange.
>> It'd be cool to get one of those, but they're probably all gone to
>> history. What brought this up? Some weird speech package called Enable
>> that supported some of those which appears to be from the 80's.
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.0 (MingW32)
>
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> S4jlvwy9Q0KsS3bjXzyWPUw=
> =Vn+w
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup 

Re: ancient speech synthesizers

[Chuck Hallenbeck]

Tyler,

My own ancient DOS screen reader, provox, was written in about 1984, 
before there was an artic technologies, and supported the Votrax 
external monster, the Echo GP, and a cute little box called the Intex 
Talker. The Intex Talker had both a serial and a parallel interface like 
the Litetalk, but you could use them both at once. I used it for a while 
with the serial line on one machine and the parallel line on another. 
Talk about confusion! 

We next supported the Votrax Vocoder IB (Internal Board) which was the 
predecessor of the first Artic internal board, and had much better 
speech quality than the latter. We also supported the Artic boards, but 
Artic got pissed at us because we were not buying their software along 
with their boards, so that was that. 

But my favorite ancient device was the original Votrax board made for 
hobby computers in the late 1970's. It had a ponderous and intimidating 
electronic voice reminiscent of science fiction movies of the day, such 
as the Forbin Project. I paid $3,000 for my first computer in 1977, 
which came with 2,048 bytes of memory, expanded to 26K with three 8K 
memory boards, and a Votrax VS/1 synthesizer. After it arrived, I found 
out there was no software to support the speech! None. Nothing whatever. 
So I had to write it.  Within a year I had myself a talking terminal on 
our campus time sharing system.

There was also a board called the Synthetalker, which I had in an old 
Zenith Z-100 system, a dual boot system which ran CP/M and a DOS which 
Zenith called Z-DOS, a superior product to the "new kid on the street", 
MS-DOS, and the rest, as you know, is history.

Chuck


On Mon, Oct 09, 2006 at 08:35:14PM -0700, Tyler Spivey wrote:
> Just out of curiosity, what have any of you used for ancient synths? I'm
> not talking the well-known ones such as accent/artic, I'm talking
> something like Votrax anything, Covox, or any ones that are strange.
> It'd be cool to get one of those, but they're probably all gone to
> history. What brought this up? Some weird speech package called Enable
> that supported some of those which appears to be from the 80's.
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 
The Moon is Waning Gibbous (85% of Full)
Only 10 kinds of people: those who do binary, and those who do not.
But you can get a few downloads from http://www.mhcable.com/~chuckh

Re: ancient speech synthesizers

[Kirk Reiser]

Wow Chuck, you were wealthy!  My first voice synth was produced for
the Radio Shack model one computer in '78 or '9 I think.  I may
actually still have that old thing laying around somewhere but I'm not
sure.  A stock broker up in New York somewhere made the first screen
review software for it.  His name was Peter something but I don't
remember anymore about him than that.

Before that model one I used the old Commodore Pet with the chicklet
keyboard.  I wrote a simple routine to read the screen memory and ship
it out the IEEE-488 port to drive a speaker as an oscillator to
produce Morse code.  I used that computer to do my Physics fields
assignment and ended up selling the program to the physics department
as well.  That system is not a memory which brings back fond
recollections.  The worst voice synth is a hundred times faster than
Morse.  It worked however.  I even ran some experiments at the time
hooking up solenoids eight to be specific to the IEEE-488 output bus
to try to use that for data.  Way to fast and gave up before to long
because I could translate Morse faster than I could convert binary.

In those days you loaded programs and data off cassette tape so you'd
  start a program loading and go poor a cup of coffee and get a
  snack.  It was faster than typing them however with my KIM-1.

  Kirk

-- 

Kirk Reiser				The Computer Braille Facility
e-mail: kirk@braille.uwo.ca		University of Western Ontario
phone: (519) 661-3061

Re: ancient speech synthesizers

[Chuck Hallenbeck]

Hi Kirk,

Those were the days, weren't they? That fist system of mine was by 
Digital Group out of Denver, with an S-100 bus, and it was the system 
used for the column in Byte magazine called "Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar." 
But Digital Group went belly up, and Byte magazine would not allow any 
references to the system after that.

Story of my life! I wasn't wealthy, I just got screwed a lot.

My first speech software was table driven, not text-to-speech. I had a 
table of the 256 Ascii characters, with a phoneme string giving the name 
of each character. The plan was to just put the thing on line and let it 
spell stuff for me. But when I connected to the campus computer for the 
first time, it sent me so many rubout characters as part of the login 
sequence, and it took my stupid terminal so long to say "rubout" a 
million times, that I had timed out before I could log in. That taught 
me the importance of killing speech and reviewing the screen.

Later I expanded the table to include multi character strings and the 
phonemes necessary to pronounce those strings, so it became a mix of 
spelling and whole word output. Pronunciation was perfect, but lots of 
stuff had to be spelled. I kept enhancing the table to cut down on the 
spelling, but it was a futile chase.

Curious, when I showed the system to people, they would type a test 
phrase to see if my computer "knew" the words. And their phrases always 
contained the words fuck and shit. So I had to put fuck and shit into 
my pronunciation table. But what I did was associate a different phoneme 
string for those words, so when someone typed "go fuck yourself" my 
computer said impressively, "go intercourse yourself",. and similarly, 
"you are full of excrement" instead of what was actually typed.

More fun than a barrel of monkeys. But then the TTS algorithms came 
along and I was left in the dust yet again.

Chuck

-- 
The Moon is Waning Gibbous (85% of Full)
Only 10 kinds of people: those who do binary, and those who do not.
But you can get a few downloads from http://www.mhcable.com/~chuckh

Re: ancient speech synthesizers

[Marcel Oats]

I know I'm slightly off topic perhaps, but I use to programme in 
basic on an Atari 400, then later the 800 XL (seriously!) making all 
these neat music programmes cos it had an amazing four voices that 
produced square waves!
Anyway, we got hold of Sam didn't we: "I am Sam, the software 
automatic mouth", was a TTS produced by Prodworks in an earlier form 
was it? You'd put the text or phonetics you'd want to have spoken 
into a string variable called sam$, then do an
x=usr(8192) for phonetics, or 8199 for text.
I had a lot of fun with that, and even tried writing a decent word 
processor with speech, but gave up.

Also, I had the hardware box that connected to the tape recorder 
port, called Pc Alien.  That was fun to play with, especially with 
its "random sentence generator."

Ah those were the days?
Marcel
At 11:50 PM 10/10/2006, you wrote:
>Wow Chuck, you were wealthy!  My first voice synth was produced for
>the Radio Shack model one computer in '78 or '9 I think.  I may
>actually still have that old thing laying around somewhere but I'm not
>sure.  A stock broker up in New York somewhere made the first screen
>review software for it.  His name was Peter something but I don't
>remember anymore about him than that.
>
>Before that model one I used the old Commodore Pet with the chicklet
>keyboard.  I wrote a simple routine to read the screen memory and ship
>it out the IEEE-488 port to drive a speaker as an oscillator to
>produce Morse code.  I used that computer to do my Physics fields
>assignment and ended up selling the program to the physics department
>as well.  That system is not a memory which brings back fond
>recollections.  The worst voice synth is a hundred times faster than
>Morse.  It worked however.  I even ran some experiments at the time
>hooking up solenoids eight to be specific to the IEEE-488 output bus
>to try to use that for data.  Way to fast and gave up before to long
>because I could translate Morse faster than I could convert binary.
>
>In those days you loaded programs and data off cassette tape so you'd
>   start a program loading and go poor a cup of coffee and get a
>   snack.  It was faster than typing them however with my KIM-1.
>
>   Kirk
>
>--
>
>Kirk Reiser                             The Computer Braille Facility
>e-mail: kirk@braille.uwo.ca             University of Western Ontario
>phone: (519) 661-3061
>
>_______________________________________________
>Speakup mailing list
>Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
>http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

Re: ancient speech synthesizers

[W. Nick Dotson]

Well, the Accent uses the same Artic, at one point called "SSI"" 263 speech chip, which Artic used on the 200, 215, series and later in their Transport 
TransType and Ergo/Braille Desk products.  By the way, that same Artic 263 chip is in the Braille'n Speak and other Blazie products.  The 263 chip was a 
lineal  descendant of the Votrax line of synthesizers, because most of the Artic crew left Votrax (Federal Screw Works) as a team.  Blazie and NFB didn't 
want to buy the chip when rights of ownership reverted back to Artic, after SSI had sold enough of the chips, which was part of the deal for manufacture of 
the Artic designed unit.  Artic really made it sing with their speech algorithms "vest" and "advest" which were part of their screen reading packages, 
although they could've and should've been incorporated into ROM.  Artic's whole problem was that Tim Gargliano (spelling?) their programmer was paranoid 
and burned out because people would buy their boards and swipe their Sonix code, in the days before they started serializing their boards with software.  
Tim wanted the whole ball of wax and didn't want anyone like Ron Claton Hutchinson (remember him) selling his screen reader and using any of the Artic 
Team's work.  Even back then, we had that school of thought, "It's only good if a blind man wrote the code" silliness, and Artic had the courage to say 
"nuts!".  Those phonemic synthesizers were wonderful in a lot of ways today's neophytes just don't have a clue about...

Nick

On Mon, 9 Oct 2006 20:35:14 -0700, Tyler Spivey wrote:

 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
 Hash: SHA1

 Just out of curiosity, what have any of you used for ancient synths? I'm
 not talking the well-known ones such as accent/artic, I'm talking
 something like Votrax anything, Covox, or any ones that are strange.
 It'd be cool to get one of those, but they're probably all gone to
 history. What brought this up? Some weird speech package called Enable
 that supported some of those which appears to be from the 80's.

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 Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (FreeBSD)

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 _______________________________________________
 Speakup mailing list
 Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
 http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

Re: ancient speech synthesizers

[Steve Holmes]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: RIPEMD160

It also goes to show you that greed was around good andd strong even
back then too.  We would be so much better off if hardware manufacturers
would open their specs up to all and let whoever right software for
them.  After all, they are selling the hardware for a price.  Like I
always say, the more people that can write stuff like drivers and
software for a device, the more units that can be sold.  See, even Apple
is fucking us over again.  They redesigned the ipod now so Rockbox won't
work on the new ipods anymore.

On Tue, Oct 10, 2006 at 08:26:35AM -0500, W. Nick Dotson wrote:
> Well, the Accent uses the same Artic, at one point called "SSI"" 263 speech chip, which Artic used on the 200, 215, series and later in their Transport 
> TransType and Ergo/Braille Desk products.  By the way, that same Artic 263 chip is in the Braille'n Speak and other Blazie products.  The 263 chip was a 
> lineal  descendant of the Votrax line of synthesizers, because most of the Artic crew left Votrax (Federal Screw Works) as a team.  Blazie and NFB didn't 
> want to buy the chip when rights of ownership reverted back to Artic, after SSI had sold enough of the chips, which was part of the deal for manufacture of 
> the Artic designed unit.  Artic really made it sing with their speech algorithms "vest" and "advest" which were part of their screen reading packages, 
> although they could've and should've been incorporated into ROM.  Artic's whole problem was that Tim Gargliano (spelling?) their programmer was paranoid 
> and burned out because people would buy their boards and swipe their Sonix code, in the days before they started serializing their boards with software.  
> Tim wanted the whole ball of wax and didn't want anyone like Ron Claton Hutchinson (remember him) selling his screen reader and using any of the Artic 
> Team's work.  Even back then, we had that school of thought, "It's only good if a blind man wrote the code" silliness, and Artic had the courage to say 
> "nuts!".  Those phonemic synthesizers were wonderful in a lot of ways today's neophytes just don't have a clue about...
> 
> Nick

- -- 
HolmesGrown Solutions
The best solutions for the best price!
http://ld.net/?holmesgrown
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Re: ancient speech synthesizers

[Tyler Spivey]

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Where would I go about getting an old votrax/echo synth? I know if I
want an accent or something I might be able to get one from the trading
lists now that I can afford something, (dectalks are driving me mad!)
but I have no idea where I could find the really old stuff. It would be
interesting to have an army of dectalks, votrax, echo, and whatever else
is capible of talking all being used for different info.

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