Hi Thomas.
I still mess around with DOS as a hobbies and have the hardware synths and
software for it, however I've just had to locate a new laptop as the one i
was using died after some 17 years long hard service, not unfortunately
under my tender ministrations. I've now managed to find an HP Omnibook
machine however whether it'll be too powerful is still something I'm
dithering over since whether I can still get the DOS drivers for the various
components is a consideration.
all the best, Ibrahim.
-----Original Message-----
From: Thomas Ward
Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2012 4:04 PM
To: Gamers Discussion list
Subject: Re: [Audyssey] question regarding emon games
Hi Shaun,
Well, it wasn't that the Dectalk etc requires more than one set of
drivers to initialize them, but the drivers were separate from the Dos
screen reader itself. You got a floppy disc with your unit which you
installed to your Dos PC and then to initialize the synth you ran a
batch file like
c:\dtexp\dtexp.bat
to initialize the Dectalk Express. The Dectalk PC and various other
hardware synths had a similar procedure for initializing the synth
before using it with your screen reader. Once that was done you could
do something like
c:\Jaws\jaws
to run Jaws for Dos to begin speaking.
In any case that is all pretty academic now. Very few people actually
own hardware synths and most of the screen readers for Dos are closed
source and aren't suitable for an open source project like Dos Box. So
I think if we want speech in Dos Box someone is going to have to
reinvent the wheel by figuring out how to create a TSR type shell that
runs on top of the Dos shell and speaks everything via synth like
ESpeak. Either that or somehow integrate the speech directly into Dos
Box itself rather than as a separate application that can be bolted on
as needed. :D
On 10/17/12, shaun everiss <sm.ever...@gmail.com> wrote:
Hmmm.
I am not sure.
I have been able through public and other means to access manuals on
disks, the net and other computers I was able to get access to over the
years.
The dos readers were mostly tsr shells that simply ran over the
command prompt but allowed it to run.
The screen itself was read directly via device con which was a direct
screen port, probably there was or were irqs and ports for various
devices.
or memmory addressing.
It would only read text modes supported by the video card and culd
read lines and symbols and other stuff.
info was directly input via a direct link to the keyboard device.
For most there were no drivers though there were configurations
simular to scripts at least in mastertouch which were like our say
application settings in control panel would be now.
Ofcause the reader could only do 1 thing at once but dos could only
do one thing at once.
I should imagine there was some buffer in memmory, though vertual
buffers were configured at startup as well as file handles and stack
addresses.
Sertainly I don't think things were ever created on the fly.
Most synths well actually the keynote gold were supported directly
with a driver the reader ran itself.
any intercepts would be started and stopped when reader launched and
were part of the startup program.
I have read that some synths like the dectalk all versions the
keynote pc card and a few others like accent and maybe artic needed 1
or more device drivers to init them.
Ofcause we can't exactly do that in windows.
I used to use a keynote on windows and it worked fine.
However I tried dectalk with hal and the system failed.
I reformatted about 10 times or so.
each time the system other got the wrong language, or its video card
chain broke.
My theory was but never proven that it tried to directly access a
memmory address or port.
Due to security reasons just after win95 was released, ms blocked
direct access to hardware to prevent memmory address stealing like
happened in windows 3.11.
It does mean though that you can't traditionally read the screen
without mangling something.
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