From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from babel.hpcc.noaa.gov ([140.90.74.62]) by speech.braille.uwo.ca with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 17BJKJ-0003Z8-00 for ; Fri, 24 May 2002 13:58:07 -0400 Received: from localhost (jwantz@localhost) by babel.hpcc.noaa.gov (8.11.6/8.11.2) with ESMTP id g4OHw8U22867 for ; Fri, 24 May 2002 13:58:08 -0400 Date: Fri, 24 May 2002 13:58:08 -0400 (EDT) From: jwantz@hpcc2.hpcc.noaa.gov To: speakup@braille.uwo.ca Subject: Re: OLD DAYS In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: speakup-admin@braille.uwo.ca Errors-To: speakup-admin@braille.uwo.ca X-BeenThere: speakup@braille.uwo.ca X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.9 Precedence: bulk Reply-To: speakup@braille.uwo.ca List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Id: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux. List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: Hi Again, This is NOT correct. There were 3 screen reading programs written for the c-64! I don't even remember the name of the first program I used,, but it worked off of a cartridge that you plugged into the cartridge slot and produced a software synthesized voice. That one didn't work very well--it only ran a few programs. Then there was Eric Bohlmann's product, that had a screen reader that you had to load in with a load command from a disk. Once it was loaded, you would remove the disk and proceed normally. It came with a keypad and a synthesizer. Then you would insert whatever disks you wanted and load the programs. I would guess that it worked with about 60% of the commercial software available. Then Eric made a cartridge version that worked on about 80% of the commercially available software which was really amazing for that time. He also had written a terminal program that used a whopping 40K. Also, I wrote my first C code on a very optimizing K&R C compiler. The only problem was that it took about 15 minutes and 5 disk removals to compile a simple program. The reason I got a PC was so that I could compile C programs faster and the fact that all of the C books at that time were either using UNIX examples or DOS examples. Jim Wantz WB0TFK On Thu, 23 May 2002, Toby Fisher wrote: > On Wed, 22 May 2002, Alex Snow wrote: > > > Yeah lots of it was in rom, but not enough to boot without a disk with > > software on it. Thats why there wasn't any screen reader for those > > machines, just talking programs. > > That's right, there was a speech synth that you plugged into a socket at > the back, I still have one at my parents' place. You could write your own > programs to talk under the C64, but to make them speak, you had to put > slashes everywhere, and other stuff to get the pauses right and stuff, > very weird. > > Cheers. > >