Trying to get a Dell Enspiron Laptop to Talk

[Martin McCormick]

	I am going to download the talking CD images mentioned
earlier this year on this list and have another go at a laptop I
have that is really touchy about getting a talking Linux
installation.

	This was my wife's laptop until she got a Mac a couple
of years ago and it did run Windows XP as well as any system
runs Windows. It has 256 megs of RAM and a 1-gig processor so it
is no slouch but it is about 6 years old now.

	As luck would have it, the last edition of oralux which
was out of date 2 years ago came up crowing and what passed for
the HD installation process did install oralux with speakup
although most of the bit about enabling speech turned out to be
incomplete and one needed to kind of kick things along a bit to
get it all to work but I did succeed.

	It is, however, not up gradable and many things dealing
with peripherals just don't quite work right no matter what one
does.

	I did try the ubuntu live CD with orca and it did find
the sound card because you can hear the bongo drums but the 256
megs of RAM are not sufficient to make it all go when booting
from the live CD so I am hoping that a thinner live CD will be
the answer.

	In my job, I sometimes need to connect a RS-232 port to
a device that is either partly dead or off-line due to network
issues. A RS-232 dongle connected to the oralux laptop caused
that spelling contingency bug to rear its ugly head although one
could sure receive the data but it is only slightly more fun
than water boarding. A PCMCIA serial port didn't seem to be
recognized by kermit so  I am hoping that at least some of these
problems will go away if the new ISO will work.

	Do any of these issues sound familiar to others on the
list?

	Stay tuned for more thrills and spills.

Martin McCormick WB5AGZ  Stillwater, OK 
Systems Engineer
OSU Information Technology Department Telecommunications Services Group