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

[mattias]

like speakupmodified.org
only hardware are supported or??
covici at ccs.covici.com skrev 2012-12-12 09:10:
> Two things here, you can usually get access to a serial port on most
> even desktop motherboards -- they just don't bring out the port to the
> back, but the header is there on the mb.  You can get a cable and
> bracket to bring out the serial port to the rear of the machine in most
> cases.
>
> Also, if you are willing to compile your own kernel, you can have
> hardware speech by a one line patch to speakup, even in recent kernels.
>
> Tony Baechler <tony at baechler.net> wrote:
>
>> Let me throw in my two cents here.  I just had a brand new server
>> built in August from scratch.  One of my primary requirements was a
>> serial port. Yes, I had no problem finding one.  The trick seems to be
>> to look for a server motherboard.  I doubt if most assembly line
>> desktops will come with them anymore because they aren't usually
>> necessary, but from poking around on various sites while researching,
>> there are still plenty of uses for serial ports in servers.  So, to
>> answer part of your question, I don't think onboard serial ports are
>> going away in the immediate future.  They will continue to be harder
>> to find, but there are still plenty of old devices out there in the
>> enterprise that need them.
>>
>> To answer your second question, Debian Squeeze and the Squeeze live CD
>> still support hardware speech.  They use kernel 2.6.32 and I was able
>> to do a fresh install with my Trippletalk.  I had to spend many hours
>> using the live CD to try to recover my files from a damaged hard
>> drive.  I mostly did this with ssh, but I was still able to load the
>> Speakup modules from the CD and I had speech at the console.  For the
>> curious, just burn and boot the live CD as normal.  Press Enter when
>> it spins down and wait for it to boot.  You won't get any beep or
>> other feedback.  After about 30 seconds, run "sudo bash" to get to a
>> shell.  Load the Speakup modules as normal.
>>
>> To get to the subject of your message, it ultimately comes down to the
>> kernel developers.  There are still some USB synthesizers out there,
>> although software speech is now the popular trend.  I see very little
>> practical need for hardware speech in the near future, but I wish it
>> was still available in Wheezy.  I upgraded to Wheezy and kernel 3.2
>> and lost my hardware speech.  I kept the 2.6.32 kernel to fall back on
>> if necessary, but that isn't a perfect solution and doesn't help with
>> the 3.2 initrd.  I don't see a practical way to get software speech in
>> an initrd just due to the overhead of sound drivers and ESpeak.
>> Wheezy does have software speech built into the installer and I can
>> verify that it works.  I guess the ultimate advantage in ditching
>> hardware speech is that there are a lot more desktops with speakers
>> and supported sound devices than there are with serial ports, so
>> anyone can plug in a USB stick and have a talking Linux with minimal
>> hassle.  In the end, that's probably more important, as much as I
>> really don't like giving up my good old hardware synthesizers.  It
>> seems that most Windows users use software speech now as well.
>>
>> In conclusion, if you're really determined to have hardware speech on
>> a new box, it can be done with time and effort.  Then again, you can
>> run DOS on most boxes too if you really want.  It's just a matter of
>> time before the kernels change and you'll be stuck with software
>> speech one way or the other.  Eventually, Squeeze won't be supported
>> and you won't have the upgrade path available to Wheezy as you do now.
>> For now, you can install Squeeze, upgrade to Wheezy and make sure to
>> not install the 3.2 kernel.
>>
>> On 12/11/2012 12:55 PM, 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.
>>> 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?
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