That Braille display was a KTS BrailleOterm. I had one of those too. When I got a 486 and inserted the card, the Braille display said "graphics mode." At that point the card was useless and the display could only be used by serial port with its included software. Not many Windows based screen readers supported that display. I think an early version of JAWS and Hal, Dolphins now "screen reader" as well.
I ended up sending that display to Doug many moons ago. I'm sure he remembers it well. Chris -----Original Message----- From: Talk [mailto:talk-bounces+cgrabowski=aisquared....@lists.window-eyes.com] On Behalf Of David via Talk Sent: Tuesday, October 25, 2016 6:14 PM To: Dave <dlh...@centurylink.net>; Window-Eyes Discussion List <talk@lists.window-eyes.com>; Kevin Minor <kmino...@outlook.com> Subject: Re: Reminiscing about old Screen Readers and Synthesizers Well, would be a great thing for the VFO team, to get their resources together and make such a thing possible. Let's get a box that you connect to the external display connector on the back of your computer. Let the box have something like 4, or even 8 GB of RAM, enough to hold your screen reader, all apps and settings, and if necessary a secondary screen reader. Let the box have a USB connectorr, for updating the onboard software, when new releases come out. Now, feed the box with all the info from the screen directly, and let it process that info. Gone would be all the internal conflicts with Windows, Office or any other software not leaving the screen reader access to the screen content. The box would basically just be operating like an OCR of the screen content, at any given moment. All controlling could either be done by dedicated keys on the box, or you could (first the OS is loaded), let the user control it by keystrokes on the keyboard, which would be send to it either wirelessly, or through an USB cable. You now could operate the Bios, fool around with cheap alternatives to Office, like modern versions of WordPerfect (which many of us old-timers enjoyed). Or, you could finally go free, and install things like OpenOffice. Should you, for whatever reason want to go for any other OS than Windows, you just run Linux or whatever. Since the box would interpret signals sent to the display, it would no longer depend on one OS in particular. OH, WELL! Still dreams of tomorrow are permitted, ain't they? Trouble is, if they invented such a unit, they would have done something really great. And that is not going to happen, my guess goes. I do know, that at least one of the German Braille displays, back in the late 80's/early 90's - the Braillo display - had a board inserted into the computer, and would be up running even at BIOS level, long before anything booted. Used to have that one, numerous years ago, and was able to set up computers from scratch for my customers. Then came all the laptops, with no wa of installing such an extension board, and gone was the whole idea. Today, with fast processors, well-established OCR technology, and cheap memory - a Screen Connector-based box, should be possible for the dreamers. And maybe would have boosted the market for the screen reader industry. y David On 10/25/2016 11:14 PM, Dave via Talk wrote: > Hi Kevin, > > So there was a way to get to the BIOS. Since my first PC back in the > mid 80's I've wanted to be able to get in there to make changes. > Still would in fact. > > Would be very nice to Update, Fix, and Repair my own Hardware, all > with Speech. > > > Grumpy Dave > > _______________________________________________ Any views or opinions presented in this email are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Ai Squared. For membership options, visit http://lists.window-eyes.com/options.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com/cgrabowski%40aisquared.com. For subscription options, visit http://lists.window-eyes.com/listinfo.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com List archives can be found at http://lists.window-eyes.com/private.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com _______________________________________________ Any views or opinions presented in this email are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Ai Squared. For membership options, visit http://lists.window-eyes.com/options.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com/archive%40mail-archive.com. For subscription options, visit http://lists.window-eyes.com/listinfo.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com List archives can be found at http://lists.window-eyes.com/private.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com
