Beginner Questions

[Lorne Webber]

Hello:
   What a mess. First of all I should apologize for confusing everybody,
including myself, and I think you'll understand why I'm confused after
reading this.
Luke, your completely correct, Thomas did clearly state that the tripleTalk
USB is not supported.
What happened is I'm set up to receive the digest version of this list, and
it was just my luck that Thomas's email was not included on the digest
version I received on the morning of Friday the 27, it was the very first
message in a new digest version which I received Friday evening.
unfortunately I did not get that version until after I had sent my latest
post to the list.
Now, as far as why I chose the TripleTalk USB after all, it was actually
Kirk Reiser who suggested it.
I'll quote from his email to me:
"If you are going to purchase a hardware synth then I would recommend either
the DoubleTalk LT or the TrippleTalk USB synth.  They both use exactly the
same chipset and it is a fairly inexpensive synth as they go and it can go
very fast if you build up to it."
Now, i had been over to the main Speak Up page at:
https://linux-speakup.org/speakup.html
where it does not have the TripleTalk USB listed on the list of synthesizers
that are supported by speakup.
yet, further down the page, the TripleTalk USB is listed in the list of
synthesizers which are in development or waiting for other changes to
speakup
So, since Kirk had recommended it, I had assumed that they had gotten the
TripleTalk USB up and working, and that just the main speakup page or the
FAQ page hadn't been updated.
I pointed this out to Him a few days ago, but I have not received a reply
from him yet.
Still one might wonder why the TripleTalk USB rather than the DoubleTalk PC,
when that one is for sure supported, no doubt about it.
its because of the laptop I'm planning on putting this all on, it does not
have a serial port. It has room for one, and its got plenty of USB and
PCMCIA, infrared, parallel, ect, just no serial. the folks at Toshiba really
must have had their heads screwed on the wrong way when they came out with
this model, but so did I for not checking for that oh so little, but oh so
important detail when I purchased it.
So...
We decided to go for the TripleTalk USB, because it was the only one out of
the two that Kirk recommended that I would be able to use.
I had also asked Kirk about the possibility of using the DoubleTalk PC and
hooking it up to the USB port using a USB to serial converter, but that was
the same email where I was checking about the validity of the TripleTalk
USB, and he hasn't gotten back to me yet.
The reason I didn't hold off even longer to order the synth, was first
because I thought there was no trouble with it, and two, because I'm
starting my courses that I'm needing speak up and Linux for soon, and I want
this in place as soon as possible.
So I'll ask you folks; has anyone ever done that with a hardware synth like
DoubleTalk PC with speakup, ... does speakup even support it.
David also wrote me saying speakup does not support USB hardware synths,
only serial ones, is that right, what about the DecTalk USB?
(sorry for checking back and forth like this, I just want to make sure about
it.)
So, if that's true, and I can only use serial synths, any suggestions for
me? am I destined for software synths?
Another thought I had possibly was to check with the manufacture or
different shops around here to see if anyone would wire in a serial port on
to the motherboard, but I'm not too sure about that one.
I really want that boot up to shutdown speech that a hardware synth gives
me, as well as all the other benefits, and everyone is advising me to go
hardware rather than software, so any suggestions?
Its pretty clear now that TripleTalk USB is not the way to go, so I will
definitely put a halt on that.
Thanks to everyone for putting up with this long winded explanation, I will
switch my list options so I don't receive any more digests at least until we
get this figured out, and so no more miscommunications happen.
Thanks a ton once again.
Keep up the great work, Us newbie's definitely need the support.
Lorne
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Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2004 18:04:16 -0500 (CDT)
From: Luke Davis <
ldavis at shellworld.net>

Subject: re: Beginner Questions
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux."
<
speakup at braille.uwo.ca>

Message-ID: <
Pine.BSF.4.61.0408271802120.37700 at freire2.furyyjbeyq.arg>

Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
You said you ordered a trippletalk, but did not Thomas clearly state, that
the tripple talk USB is not supported?  I believe his exact words were
"the trippletalk, in all its versions, is not supported".
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