Speakup and serial adapter cards

acollins at icsmail.net acollins at icsmail.net
Tue Jan 24 23:58:29 EST 2012 

Hi Curt and all.  I was thinking about something similar.  I was
thinging that speakup could read a user defined config file in to an
array that would tell speakup the irq, address, and device name of each
serial port on the system.  Then Speakup could walk the list of user
defined ports, to see if any of them has a synth attached to it.  The
Kernel folks would like Speakup to be able to use standard serial
drivers which are already in the kernel, instead of having each hardware
synth driver look for it's own ports, but for right now, I think that
should be a separate issue.  Getting each driver to read a simple text
configuration file, and then walk the list of defined ports should be an
easier fix that would solve the current issues for both usb and pci
ports, without having to totally rewrite each synth driver.

Gene

>Gene and others:
>I think we need to separate the problem into two parts, because
>the two parts should have different priorities.  The first part,
>and the one with the highest priority is to make speakup capable of driving
>any serial port connected to the system, regardless of whether it is a serial 
port
>on the mother board such as ttyS0, ttyS1, etc., or on a PCI expantion
>board, or on a PCI-E board, or on a USB to serial adapter.
>
>The second part of the problem, and the lower priority part is for
>speakup to recognize the serial port that is connected to the
>synthasizer automatically without human intervention.  This is lower
>priority, because there are various interventions that could be
>used to tell speakup which port to use.  Among them, there was once,
>and maybe still a boot parameter that can tell speakup which port to use,
>and it should also be possible to configure something in initrd
>to do it.
>
>D. Curtis Willoughby
>
>P.S.  I am not quite sure what the actual interface between speakup
>and the kernel is, but on the surface it would seem that that
>interface should be the same regardless of which port is being used.
>If this is true, giving speakup the device filename, or maybe
>the major and minor device number should be all that it takes
>for speakup to drive any port.  The figuring out automatically
>which port to use may be much harder.
>
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>> Hello Curt!  This is Gene Collins.  Part of the problem for Speakup is
>> that each of the serial synthesizers are managed by a separate driver. 
>> They all use the standard irqs and addresses for ttyS0 and ttyS1.  I
>> think they even support ttys3 and ttys4.  Since pci serial ports get
>> assigned whatever irq and address is available at boot up, Speakup in
>> it's current form has no way to know where to look.  I think the same
>> situation holds true for usb serial ports.  So the question developers
>> need to answer is how to poll the system for the existence of any kind
>> of serial port, before polling the list of ports for a synth matching
>> the driver.
>>
>> Just a suggestion for a starting place for developers to look at.
>>
>> Gene Collins
>>
>> >This is getting to be a big problem!
>> >
>> >I have a new computer without a serial port.  To use a hardware
>> >synthasizer like a Doubletalk LT I must use a USB to serial
>> >adapter or a PCI-E card.  This computer does not have PCI slot(s).
>> >If this combination of "cannot do" restrictions is not fixed,
>> >serial hardware synthesizers are doomed to become obsolete.
>> >
>> >I guess there are a few USB synthesizers, and software speach is
>> >still well not wonderful.  I have not been able to establish
>> >whether the few PCI-E cards can manage IRQs and I/O addresses
>> >so they are treated like internal serial ports, but I suspect
>> >they cannot.  Is it not possible to modify speakup so that it
>> >can use any serial port on the machine, rather than just ttyS0
>> >and ttyS1?  Would you developers please look at a solution for
>> >this one?  Please!
>> >
>> >D. Curtis Willoughby
>> >
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>> >> Nope, Speakup in now way supports pci serial cards.
>> >>
>> >> >Hello,
>> >> >I know that speakup cannot work with synths connected through a USB to s
eri
>> al 
>> >> adapter, however I would like to confirm whether speakup can use serial p
ort
>> s p
>> >> rovided by a PCI-express or PCI serial adapter card? I am most interested
 in
>>  th
>> >> e PCI-Express adapter cards.
>> >> >
>> >> >Michael Whapples
>> >> >_______________________________________________
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