Dectalk isa model

[Adam Myrow]

On Wed, 26 May 2004, Gene Collins wrote:

> Hi Adam and all.  You shouldn't have to load the windows stuff first.
> Have you tried the dec_pc.tgz file in the linux-speakup.org goodies
> directory?

Yes, that's my point.  It isn't working correctly with my particular card.
It always fails on a cold boot, and only works if I've previously loaded
the drivers in Windows.  I'm using the exact same files in both instances.
Unfortunately, I won't be able to do too much more testing with this
driver as I am getting a new computer which has no ISA slots, of course.
I suppose I could try and keep this one around for testing, but I'm a
little tight on space in my apartment.  In fact, since the only
synthesizers I own currently are ISA, I'll have to live with software
speech with the new computer.  I've already gotten Speakup to work with
Flite, so it's no big deal.  The web site indicates that there is a
possibility of the Trippletalk USB being supported in the future.  So,
maybe I'll eventually get one of those.  In the mean time, I'd sure like
to figure out what's causing Speakup to botch words with apostrophes with
the Dectalk drivers.  Since this apparently happens with the Dectalk
Express as well, I suspect that it's some common code somewhere.  I know
that if I send text directly to the synthesizer using
/proc/speakup/synth_direct, the words are spoken properly.  It's really
weird.

One question about the Dectalk PC driver.  Is it by chance using something
called priority IO?  I'm thinking about how I can make sounds stutter and
my clock lose time by pressing the keypad enter to flush speech and
wondering why it only happens with that driver.  I remember reading
something about a priority IO instruction that should not be used on
computers with processor speeds of 133 MHZ or faster.