Re: [Audyssey] question regarding emon games

Ibrahim Gucukoglu Fri, 19 Oct 2012 13:01:12 -0700

Hi Shaun.

Well, I've just been doing some digging around and while I never owned aDectalk Express or anything like that, I have found an old Keynote Gold VCwhich was the PCMCIA card Pulse Data put out in around 1995 1996. I alsohave the driver disks for Master Touch their screen reader and the PC carddrivers so I can get this up and running with little difficulty. I'll keepyou posted as I said, but I cant envisage any problems unless the auction isfor a laptop which is a dud.


All the best, Ibrahim.

-----Original Message-----From: shaun everiss

Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2012 11:26 PM
To: Gamers Discussion list
Subject: Re: [Audyssey] question regarding emon games

I aggree.
the fact the keynote gold needed a 386 was the issue I can probably
get a single core unit for cheap.
In fact I know I can get one for nothing.
However I don't have synth hardware.
My plan is to eventually buy one of the usb synths but I think my
days of pure dos are over.
I tried for about 2 years.
I have given up now.

At 09:11 p.m. 17/10/2012 +0100, you wrote:

Hi Shaun.

Sounds like you had a lot of bother, but the joys of playing textadventures under my native DOS are just too good an opportunity for me topass this one up. If I can get the hardware cheap, I can make it a labourof love and rig up the DOS computer I've always cherished. Call me sad butI have many happy memories playing AGT, TADS, ZCode and Alan games, plus ofcourse all those games that were never ported to the programming standardsof IF including Humbug and Jacaranda Jim by Graham Cluley, the Hugo trilogyand on. There is a fantastic selection of games at the Interactive FictionArchive in the PC directory which will only run on DOS and it would be goodto relive those happy and less sophisticated days.

All the best, Ibrahim.

-----Original Message----- From: shaun everiss
Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2012 7:40 PM
To: Gamers Discussion list
Subject: Re: [Audyssey] question regarding emon games

ibriham Its been a major project since my old toshiba t1850 died.
Ofcause all the pulsedata readers needed a 386 else they didn't work.
So I decided that I'd just run with stuff on trademe or ebay or something.
Trouble was at least locally I couldn't find a good box.
I managed to find a loggable unit once but it was heavy and the
keyboard was dammaged.
I then went for another box but still couldn't find it that worked ok.
Then all my synths crapped out the keynote sa needed a battery change
and was useless even on power.
I never found out how to change the cells so I chucked the synth away.
The dectalk functioned for a bit but keynote stuff only supported
keynote synths.
I hadn't used jaws though knew I could use the free reader or hal
free reader for dos.
In the end I just decided enough was enough.
The only way I think I'd ever go back to dos was if I either
1.  got someone to give up a keynote gold external synth and a 386 system
or a keynote internal and a steady supply of parts, I would need a
keynote gold.
or 2.  that I found room for a linux box just to play old dos games.
I will bee aquiring a single core crappy old mangled dog of a box my
grandpa uses which is a begger to use and setup but it will do for
the old windows games especially if I go 64 with the laptop.
Dos though unless someone has hardware to give or an idea how I could
do it as software and in such a way as I could run the hints and
other things in windows and also to emulate the pc speakers setups
and stuff  by making stuff run at the right speed while not effecting
anything else I may seriously concider it.
Right now though dos is just to hard to obtain.
I guess I could have pushed for a new gold running box back in 1995
and probably should have.
 Ofcause thats ages ago and I'd never have fitted things back then.

Back then I still relyed on now mostly dammaged floppies I still havethose.

Most of my stuff was and performance was gotten via vertual memmory
management and optimisations of the system.
I also disabled sertain things and hacked their address space.
Must say though the more I look at it the more I realise its really
not practicle to use dos as a primary os anymore on a system.
Academic as it is, I actually have dos 5.0 wp 5.1 dos6.22 and I think
dos7 that I used in the old days.
I have all my keynote software, and even other stuff I coppied for things.
Those days seem like a long time ago now.
Just thinking of them brings me to tears some times.

At 05:48 p.m. 17/10/2012 +0100, you wrote:

Hi Thomas.

I still mess around with DOS as a hobbies and have the hardware synths andsoftware for it, however I've just had to locate a new laptop as the one iwas using died after some 17 years long hard service, not unfortunatelyunder my tender ministrations. I've now managed to find an HP Omnibookmachine however whether it'll be too powerful is still something I'mdithering over since whether I can still get the DOS drivers for thevarious components is a consideration.

all the best, Ibrahim.

-----Original Message----- From: Thomas Ward
Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2012 4:04 PM
To: Gamers Discussion list
Subject: Re: [Audyssey] question regarding emon games

Hi Shaun,

Well, it wasn't that the Dectalk etc requires more than one set of
drivers to initialize them, but the drivers were separate from the Dos
screen reader itself. You got a floppy disc with your unit which you
installed to your Dos PC and then to initialize the synth you ran a
batch file like
c:\dtexp\dtexp.bat
to initialize the Dectalk Express. The Dectalk PC and various other
hardware synths had a similar procedure for initializing the synth
before using it with your screen reader. Once that was done you could
do something like
c:\Jaws\jaws
to run Jaws for Dos to begin speaking.

In any case that is all pretty academic now. Very few people actually
own hardware synths and most of the screen readers for Dos are closed
source and aren't suitable for an open source project like Dos Box. So
I think if we want speech in Dos Box someone is going to have to
reinvent the wheel by figuring out how to create a TSR type shell that
runs on top of the Dos shell and speaks everything via synth like
ESpeak. Either that or somehow integrate the speech directly into Dos
Box itself rather than as a separate application that can be bolted on
as needed. :D

On 10/17/12, shaun everiss <sm.ever...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hmmm.
I am not sure.
I have been able through public and other means  to access manuals on
disks, the net and other computers I was able to get access to over the
years.
The dos readers were mostly tsr shells that simply ran over the
command prompt but allowed it to run.
The screen itself was read directly via device con which was a direct
screen port, probably there was or were  irqs and ports for various
devices.
or memmory addressing.
It would only read text modes supported by the video card and culd
read lines and symbols and other stuff.
info was directly input via a direct link to the keyboard device.
For most there were no drivers though there were configurations
simular to scripts at least in mastertouch which were like our say
application settings in control panel would be now.
Ofcause the reader could only do 1 thing at once but dos could only
do one thing at once.
I should imagine there was some buffer in memmory, though vertual
buffers were configured at startup as well as file handles and stack
addresses.
Sertainly I don't think things were ever created on the fly.
Most synths well actually the keynote gold  were supported directly
with a driver the reader ran itself.
any intercepts would be started and stopped when reader launched and
were part of the startup program.
I have read that some synths like the dectalk all versions the
keynote pc card and a few others like accent and maybe artic needed 1
or more device drivers to init them.
Ofcause we can't exactly do that in windows.
I used to use a keynote on windows and it worked fine.
However I tried dectalk with hal and the system failed.
I reformatted about 10 times or so.
each time the system other got the wrong language, or its video card
chain broke.
My theory was but never proven that it tried to directly access  a
memmory address or port.
Due to security reasons just after win95 was released, ms blocked
direct access to hardware to prevent memmory address stealing like
happened in windows 3.11.
It does mean though that you can't traditionally read the screen
without mangling something.


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