Building PC without any sight (wasRE: still more on bug)

[Albert Sten-Clanton]

First, I believe 

<pcsforeveryone.com>

Also sells machines with serial ports. 

If it does not, or if it would just save me some big bucks, I may want to
assemble a machine, as John did.  John, how much sighted help did you need
with that, if any?  My limited experience with trying to assemble a computer
indicated that some stuff can be known only by way of color coding, but I'd
like to have been wrong about that.  (I have no sight.)

Thanks!

Al

-----Original Message-----
From: speakup-bounces at braille.uwo.ca [mailto:speakup-bounces at braille.uwo.ca]
On Behalf Of John Heim
Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2012 5:50 PM
To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.
Subject: Re: still more on bug

<speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2012 2:00 PM
Subject: Re: still more on bug


> John Heim wrote
> | Well, admittedly, we have a problem down the road regarding serial 
> | hardware synths. But it will be years before serial ports go away 
> | entirely. Every Dell server class machine still comes with at least 
> | one serial port. I don't know about other server manufacturers but I 
> | would guess they're the same. In fact, even dell small footprint 
> | desktops still have serial ports. So I think it will be some time 
> | before server class machines don't come with serial ports. And even 
> | after serial ports become obsolete, speakup won't be obsolete, it 
> | will just have to start supporting USB synths.
>
> You say just like it's easy to fix speakup to do what you want it to do. 
> It's not that easy in fat to fix the code, hell i'd fix it if i could 
> my husband would fix it if he could probably, but it's not that easy.
>

First of all, I didn't say it was going to be easy. But have you tried?  Are
you an experienced C coder?  Are you saying you tried and found it couldn't
be done?

> I've got a couple serial synths laying around but the fact is that 
> i've not had a computer with a serial port since 2007 so yep, guess 
> they're out of date. Last time i tried ordering a computer i couldn't 
> get del or hp to add them even though i wanted them.

I am typing this on a Dell Optiplex 760 with a serial port.  We have about
100 760s all with serial ports. We have another 40 small footprint 760s in
our student labs all with serial ports.  We have about a dozen newer Dell
desktops and they all have serial ports. I don't know how you managed to
order a Dell w/o a serial port but its not that hard to get one with it.

And those are just desktops. Of course, every one of our servers has a
serial port.  We have 3 mail servers, 2 DNS servers, 3 web servers, and 6
machines in our VMware cluster. All have serial ports.
I just built myself a machine for home with parts ordered from newegg. The
mobo didn't have an external serial port but it does have a serial port
header. So then it was just a matter of attaching the appropriate cable. So
even a machine I built myself has a serial port.

Look, I'm not saying you don't come across machines w/o serial ports. But
holy cow, I have certainly never had any trouble finding machines with
serial ports. Laptops & apples... You're in trouble there.

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