Debian question

[Scott Howell]

Actually that is a fine idea, but I know what the messages are in  
this case. My wife is handy in these cases and generally costs  
less..big grin. Well not true cause over the long-term, its more  
costly to have a wife, but nevertheless she much nicer than the  
card..grin.
Actually in my case Speakup for whatever reason is having some issue  
with probing the serial port and even if I try loading software  
speech once the box is booted by removing the synth, I can't get  
Speakup to talk, it just seems to hang while loading the module.  
Speakup is not a module itself, but is built into the kernel. This is  
my problem. Pretty crazy ay?

tnx

On Oct 19, 2005, at 10:18 AM, John G. Heim wrote:

> This probably won't really help you much because it's expensive and  
> it's not really a solution but I just thought I'd mention that  
> there is a tool that is really helpful in debugging boot problems.  
> It's a PC Weasel.
>
> You put this card in your machine replacing the video card. The  
> operating system recognizes it as a video card except that instead  
> of video output it has a serial port. So you can connect a null- 
> modem cable to it and another machine running a terminal emulator  
> and get the boot messages.  I use it a lot when I have a machine  
> that won't boot or when I'm trying to make a bootable CD. It costs  
> like $300 though.
>
> It really works well with speakup because it doesn't interfere with  
> speakup in any way. The operating system isn't aware that there is  
> anything different about the VGA card other than that it is an  
> unrecognized type of card. So it treats it like a generic VGA  
> card.  If you have some kind of problem, you can plug in the null- 
> modem cable and get whatever is on the screen, whether it be boot  
> messages or a login prompt or whatever.
>
>
> PS: I think I have a problem  similar to yours. I  installed the  
> speakup modified 2.6.12 kernel on a machine that had a unmodified  
> 2.6.8 kernel. It won't boot unless my external doubletalk  LE is  
> connected and turned on. And when it does boot, I get no speech.  
> There is nothing wrong with my synth. And speakup appears to know  
> it's there since if it's turned off, it won't boot at all. It's  
> exam week so I haven't had time to check out what's really  
> happening yet.  I was running debian sarge so I am not sure that  
> you'll have any luck if you go back to sarge.
>
> Oh, one thing I'd suggest... Make sure your disk partitions aren't  
> full. Check especially / and /boot.
>
>
>
> At 05:08 PM 10/18/2005, Scott wrote:
>
>> Folks, I have a question regarding a Debian install.
>> First seeing as I have little hope of correcting the problems with my
>> current Sid install as I can't get speech from Speakup, I am
>> considering reinstalling Sarge.
>> What I was wondering is how possible would it be to simply install
>> over the current Sid installation. My thinking is that I can keep a
>> number of apps that were previously working with Sarge before
>> upgrading to Sid and most if not everything would be replaced when I
>> install Sarge. I know this is probably an insane approach, but I of
>> course would rather figure out why Speakup hangs while probing for
>> the DoubleTalk external. I do not have another synth to connect so I
>> have to use this one. It was working fine before I upgraded to the
>> latest version of Sid and even replacing Lilo with Grub did not
>> correct the problem. It also seems to matter little what kernel I'm
>> running as I even grabbed a 2.6.13 and brewed a new kernel.
>> Sure am lost on this one, but before I do get into this install, I
>> thought I'd ask a few questions and maybe avoid loads of setting up
>> again.
>> I know wishfull thinking.
>>
>> Scott
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Speakup mailing list
>> Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
>> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>>
>>
>
> --
> John G. Heim
> jheim at math.wisc.edu
> 3-4189
>
>
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> Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>