Are the days of hardware synths and speaking from boot numbered?

[Arthur Pirika]

On 12/12/2012 07:23, Gregory Nowak wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 12, 2012 at 06:55:00AM +1000, Arthur Pirika wrote:
>> I think the subject pretty much speaks for itself.         With
>> serial synths, and especially serial ports getting harder to find,
>> with the only serials synths still being made new are the venerable
>> doubletalks, should work be ramped up on getting software speech,
>> somehow at kernel level? I know there was a project working on this,
>> but not much has been done on it for a while.
> This seems to come up once a while, and usually ends up in a
> unresolved tug of war between those who say desktops with serial ports
> are still cheap and plentiful, and those like yourself who say the
> days of serial ports are numbered. I personally am not in the market
> for a new desktop, so haven't bothered investigating either claim.
>
>> I honestly don't care for a desktop too much either, but good to know that serial ports haven't died out on desktops yet. I'm quite happy with my toshiba core-i5.
Related to this, I assume it's still possible to build speakup into the 
kernel, although most distributions package speakup as modules, thereby 
allowing messages from the moment of powerup?
> Yes, you can still build speakup into the kernel, and yes, as far as I
> know, most if not all distros which include speakup package it as
> modules. You can still get speech essentially from power up if you
> have speakup compiled as modules, which load from your initrd
> image. So, I don't see a good reason for building speakup into the
> kernel, unless you don't want to/can't use an initrd for some reason.
>
> Greg
>
>
I keep forgetting about the initrd option, even though i keep seeing it 
in installation guides. I'll keep it in mind.
>> thanks,
>> Arthur
>>
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