Another newbie

[Thomas Ward]

Hi, my comments are below inside your message.I have tried to answer all
your questions as clearly as I can. I hope this helps.
See below.


----- Original Message -----
From: "Jack Daniels" <Labitup at home.com>
To: <speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Thursday, November 22, 2001 11:30 AM
Subject: Another newbie


> Hi, I am new to Speakup, and I have been following the list for just a
> short while now.  I want to learn whether the following is possible, and
> how to best accomplish it.

That's great. I'll see what we can do for you.
>

> First, some info about my Linux box.  I have a very small PC installed
with
> Redhat 7.1, kernal 2.4.2-12 running on a P133 with no CDROM.
> A friend set it up for me and I am currently using a serial connection
from
> My Win98 PC.
>
> What I want to be able to do is to insert a floppy with Speakup and any
> necessary boot files and have Linux  come up talking.  Is this possible?
> If so, what do I need to get/do?

Yes, it is possible, but someone would have to compile you a talking boot
disk image  of Speakup, for your kernel and send it too you.
Another suggestion is to get Emacspeak rpm, put it on a floppy, and install
it to your box. At least you would  have speech natively on your Linux box
until you were able to build a Speakup kernel for your machine.

> I want to use a DEC Express on COM2, keeping the serial connection on
COM1.
>

This is totally possible. Speakup [probes for your synths ports, and almost
always finds the synth on ttys0 and ttys1. which are com1 and com2 under
dos.



> If this is possible, and I thought it was from reading the list for just a
> short time, what files do I need?
> How do I use them?
> Any info out there detailing this process?
>

Unfortunately, I don't know of any specific documents that exactly gives you
a step by step howto on what to do, but most of us are old hands, or at
least know something about what we are doing.
Read the kernel howto, and the readme documentation in your kernel source
directory.
You basically, will need a clean kernel source tree, and the speakup source.
Also make sure you have kernel headers installed, compilers installed, and
are able to build kernels.

> I am sure there is info I have left out, so please ask any questions, and
I
> will answer them to the best of my ability.  Rememberr, I am new, never
> built a kernal, the more detailed your response, the better.

Ok, is it possible that you can get a cd rom drive for your computer? Bill
has Red Hat 7.2 cd's that come with Speakup built in. All you do is install
the cd's, restart, and wam you have speech.
I've been where you are now. Looking at a stock distribution, and wondering
how to get it to talk. Here is how I learned to do it if it is a stock
distribution and not a Speakup modified distribution.

I downloaded Emacspeak current version, and loaded my Dectalk Express. Then,
I accessed the shell by doing alt+x, and typed shell.
Once I had a talking shell, I then installed the Speakup source from floppy,
and put in the Linux cd, and installed the kernel source. Then, built a
talking kernel.
Since you don't have a cd rom drive you may have to substitute by first
configuring wvdial, and then while in Emacs with Emacspeak do an alt+x and
type term.
This puts Emacs in a terminal  mode, and you can run wvdial & to get your
internet connection.
Then, you can run the Linux ftp program to ftp files from the ftp.kernel.org
site to your box.

So here is the summary. While it is possible to do what you want it does
require some compiling, configuring,  and large learning curves. However,
once you do it a couple of times it won't seam so huge.
However, if you want a quick and simple solution see if you can get Bill's
modified Red Hat 7.2 disks from the Speakup ftp site, and install that. That
way you get speech out of the box, and can consentrate on learning the os
without plunging head-long into advanced compiling, configuring, and all
that.



>
> Thank you in advance for helping another newbie get up and talking with
> Speakup!
>
> Jack
>
>
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