Category: Geeks r Us
I truly doubt anyone here could help me, but maybe, someone is good with hardware or knows someone who can help. Since the people at the sales department of Humanware can't help me find my Keynote Gold SA, I'm planning on taking the advice of a friend and contacting Jonathan Mosen. Surely, he knows someone who can help me. If not, then I really need to preserve the Keynote VoiceCard that I have now. It consists of a card that fits into a pcmcia slot of a laptop. It connects via a propriatary cable to the end of the card. The card end cable are very delicate. If I ruin/lose the cable or if just one of the pins on the card go, I'm screwed. I'm really worried now cause now they don't have any more left. Is there some kind of way that the chip can be removed from the card and put in something more stable like an external enclosure? I also have a Vert synthesizer, a BrailleNote and a Language Master, all with the same speech engine so I know the engine isn't unique to Humanware's synthesizers. Does anyone know it's actual name? I know the Keynote Gold Multimedia uses it too, but that's purely software. Perhaps, there's a speech chip out there somewhere that can be used in building a synthesizer with the same voice. Can anyone give me an estimate of the cost of having someone build me an SA? This is seriously the best speech on a DOS synth that I've ever heard. That's why I'm so hell-bent on getting one. If anyone can give me a sample of something better, I'd truly appreciate it. The only thing it can't do is speak Greek. For that, I'd need one of the Dolphin synths, or someone would really have to do alot of research to make a totally new one, and I definitely can't afford that.
Ok, so I've deduced that:
Theres a pcmcia card. cable goes out of the card to some weird blind device of some form.
Your worried about the card and the cable breaking so you want to change what cable is used and for some reason mount the card in a different inclosure.
The different inclosure for the pcmcia is actually fairly possible - theres a hole group of electronics geeks that do this sort of thing all the time. I know someone who bought a hole lode of scratched up nes consoles then mounted the internals in a much smaller & portable inclosure along with a 10 inch screen; he made a fair bit from them.
Assuming that the person knows the pin outs for pcmcia and usb for example, he / she would probably be able to hack together a different inclosure for the card that connects via usb for example.
Your still going to have the problem with the cable though. Theres no way that anyones going to be able to makeit a more standardised cable. They would require product design sheets that who ever makes this thing just won't give you, how ever much you paid. Even if only one end of the cable is prapriatry, its going to be connecting to a port that noone other than the product designers are going to know anything about.
So in summery, a new inclosure for the card is dooable although it won't protect the card any better, but theres nothing that anyone can do to convert it all into standard io ports.
If your after a dolphin synth then I suggest that you join the dolphinusers list; I know a few people on there still have one who might sell it if the price is right.
Your other questions about building a sa from scratch are pritty stupid, think of how much all blind devices cost when there new. The cost of production goes down in relation to the amount of units that are required; the prices are always $$$$ with thousands even hundreds of thousands of people uying them, so think how much its going to cost for just one unit. Use some comon sence for a change.
Considering that this is such old tech, I figured it would cost a little less to make one. However, the labour and research in finding the parts would probably bring it way up again. I guess I just need to see if anyone has an SA or try to find another synth. I do know of someone who has a Doubletalk, if nothing else. But I can't find any other synthesizers anywhere. Ebay isn't really a help and the manufacturers are either out of business or no longer sell them. I never thought it would be this difficult to find an external synth. It's ridiculous!
I absolutely loved the Keynote speech, which probably makes me crazy. It was so responsive, and although it was kinda robotic till the drop-offs at the end of sentences, it was very crisp speech. I wish they still made the software version, called Keynote Gold Multimedia. Alas, everything has gone to Eloquence now, which I think sounds like absolute crap.
No, you're not absolutely crazy. It's the best screenreader-compatible synthetic synthesizer I've ever heard. The speech is so clear and beautiful that I'd be happy to just let it read a book to me. That's why I've been looking for one for seven years.
You might be able to use the Keynote Gold Multimedia with XP but I'm not sure. I know they have a demo of it. You could try e-mailing Humanware and asking if they have a full version. They told me that they dropped it a few years ago but maybe, they could give you a key or something to turn the downloadable demo into a full version. If you do ask this, please find out for me if I can do the same with KeyNote for DOS. Mine seems to be messed up and actually freezes the machine whenever I try to use it.
lol omg, keynote reminds me of a very fat frog. Very amusing! However I used to own a braillenote and Keynote was my friend, so I love you keno man :)
I just installed Windows 98 in a virtual machine, and Keynote gold Multimedia works on there! under XP, it can't load the vxd drivers. If you can make XP load VXDs, I guess you'd be good. But maybe not, as the keynote Multimedia synth was made in 16-bit. You know... not even 32 bit. And that's unfortunate, because Windows NT systems will run 16 bit code but the program can't access the hard drive, which is a major drawback.
I also tried Keysoft STD 2.4A demo, which is on their site. Very interesting, how keysoft on the desktop isn't much different than the one on today's brailleNotes. I mean, it had a wordprocessor and Calculator and even e-mail capabilities. Quite nice. :)