Category: Geeks r Us
For many years, when it came to DOS, all I had was my Keynote Gold laptops. One of the most precious things I own, the Keynote Gold Voicecard, is in one of them. The other broke and was removed. That one hasn't started correctly since then. It makes a beeping sound, and something about not having a Voicecard pops up. I tried bypassing the Autoexec.bat file, but to no avail. Still, I had the other one. But now, that one's doing the same thing! The card appears to be fine, and the special cord goes into it without a problem. Yet, whenever I try to turn the laptop on, I hear that beep and it just freezes. I made an MS-DOS 6.21 boot disk, in the hopes that it would skip the hard disk and go straight to the floppy. I heard the drive start for a split second, and then the beep. I tried the other machine and got the same result. I'm sure the disk is fine, as it was the self-extracting kind and I got no errors when making it. I'm also fairly certain that it's 6.21 on those machines and not 6.22. Would it make a difference?
I'm praying to The Gods that it's something stupid in the bios and isn't the card. I cannot! get another one! I e-mailed Humanware, and although they were very nice, they couldn't help me. I've been looking for a Keynote Gold SA or Companion for well over a decade now, but with no luck. All I have, as far as synthesizers, are my two Echos (the one which runs off a 9-volt battery and the other which runs off electricity) and my Braille Blazer embosser. I can't find the cord to my Braillenote, or the Braillenote itself, and my Braille Lite 2000 is as dead as a 30-year-old piece of wood! Can anyone tell me if there's still hope for my Voicecard to work? Is it just the bios on those old machines? If not, does anyone know where I can find a synthesizer, preferably for under $100, which works either with a standard pcmcia slot or a serial port?
Hi,
I know nothing about the computer you're working with, but I do know a fair bit about bios and the order that things happen when computers boot.
If you're getting messages like the ones you are then this isn't a bios issue; it seems like a program that is meant to interact with the synth your using is being called but is returning some error. Assuming this is in autoexec.bat, have you tried adding some echo statements to it so you can see what exactly is causing the error? E.G. before each line, add an echo statement to say what the line does, that way you get some debugging.
That would be a reat idea if I could actually get the machine to boot. *sile* It's not even starting. No speech, no nothing. Just a beep. I tried booting from the flppy, and also hitting f5 to bypass autoexec.bat, but nothing worked. I didn't think I needed to change the boot sequence in order for the floppy to work. I thought that, when inserted before the machine is turned on, it would boot from it. But I heard the floppy drive try to start, and then the usual beep. It's as if the machine freezes. It's really weird too, because I did use it awhile ago and didn't change anything in autoexec.bat or use a program that would.
Wow. This is quite the blast from the past! Is this the PCMCIA version of the voice card? If so, then you need to insure that certain drivers are loading in config.sys as well as autoexec .bat. The first thing that needed to load was your machine’s PCMCIA manager. There were various versions of the PCMCIA manager, each with several different devices and commands that went into config.sys. Then once all that was loaded, there was the driver for the voice card itself.
Some machines did also have a setting in the bios called something like PCmCIA mode. I don’t remember what the various settings were for PCMCIA mode, but I do remember that only one allowed the voice card to work; so, if you have the PCMCIA mode setting in your bios, it might be worth playing with that as well.
Hope this helps, I really can’t remember well enough to be any more specific, but I can try to answer further questions if you have them,
Al
The thing is that both machines were working properly. I didn't change anything in either autoexec.bat or config.sys. But now I'm worried that I won't be able to use it in my new machine! I thought VocalEyes handled the driver for the keynote Gold synth and was unaware of the pcmcia mode. I have the disk, but have no clue where it is right now. There is a copy in the laptop, of course. I would try copying it to a disk and loading it into the new one, but since this one won't start, that makes it kind of difficult. I really hope that I will be able to use my regular pcmcia card adapter with my compact flash card. But hopefully, those drivers shouldn't be difficult to find. I'm so glad I finally found soeone who knows about this stuff!
The thing that's worrying me is that both machines are doing the same thing. The one had the synth removed. I took out the other one, to see if it would change things and they remained the same.
excuse me whilst I lol at all these 90s problems. Haha, it sfucking dos, its dead, move on. :d
Hmm, do you have any other PCMCIA devices? If so, can you get them to work? If they work, then you know the problem is with the voice card itself and not with the PCMCIA manager.