Category: Geeks r Us
Hi.
Ledgende (google) speaks of a device dis continued long ago that would plug into a isa slot and would talk.
Now you might be thinking, big deal, so what, there are other more up to date hardware synths out there.
True, but according to several emails that have been archived and indexed by google, the speaqualizer is / was the only device that was ever able to read the bios, menues and everything.
Obveously to take advantage of such a device today, you'd have to get a isa to pci converter and i'm not sure how much the rate of speech would depend on the cpu speed (Like some games of the same age) but this does sound really really cool.
I'm posting in the hope that someone can inlighten me to he effectiveness of the product and or if someone has / knows of one still in use? I'd be willing to give money (a small ammount but still money) for one of these on the assumption that it won't mess up when i'm running it on p4's when its meant to run on 286is.
Any pointers would be great.
Chears, BEN.
Wow, that's ancient history. I remember using one a long time ago. But, if I recall correctly, it was made by IBM for their defunct operating system (I can't remember the name). It had a keyboard from which you entered speech commands. It also had its own language (I think it was called PAL for program access language). When you started up your computer, the first thing you got was speech, before the screen came on or anything. I loved it.
It wouldn't be useful at all today though. I'm fairly certain we are talking about the same device.
Like other accessibility tools, it was a really good idea, but no future in it.
Bob
I have a Keynote Gold laptop, 486 cpu, running Dos 6.22 and Windows 3.1. Would it work on that? I doubt I'd need it, but still. I'm an old tech fanatic! What about my IBM Insight desktop running the same stuff? Btw, what kind of slot does that use? I couldn't recognise it. It's not a pcmcia card slot right?
@bob, thanks for the info. I mean you kinda burst my bubble but still, sounds very interesting. The stuff that i found about it said that it would work on ibm compatable 286is which gave me some hope of perhaps getting it working on something.
@the other person. Na its not pcmcia, isa was a type of connection that came along before pci and is used in desktop computers. Its internal - any combination of sound, video, moem and ethernet probably use isa on your 486.
Actually got a 486 out earlyer on today, just love the way that something older than my sister still works fine.
Chears all.
never heard of this device. just wondering what does the speech sound like? I mean it can't be eloquance can it? is it something like keynote gold or something?
The speech was kind of like a keynote gold, but tinnier. Speech was pretty clear, but robotic. I do remember that it was very responsive and it should have been as it didn't use your computer's resources at all, except to read the video ram.
I loved the fact that it was programmable. I wrote a routine to strip the leading zeroes from numbers, because this thing would read anything, including memory dumps before the system crashed <lol>. I also wrote a nifty little time anouncement routine with alarms etc. and a calendar function that would tell you how many days were left before a certain event, etc.
If you can't tell, I thought the thing was neat. It was tied to IBM's early attempts to get the market from microsoft's windows. I think the operating system was called ps2.
Ok enough reminiscing, thanks b3n for reminding me of this device.
I think something could be built today but would have to be developped in conjunction with the computer manufacturers.
Bob
os2?
I thought OS 2 was an Apple thing.
Check out the following article at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS/2
If I got the href right here.
Bob
i heard of something which is in development much like this. apparently there is a new bit of kit that can read words off a picture taken from a digi camra. this is retailing in the UK at the moment. apparently they got it to read a pc screen just by taking a snap of it. there is talk of the developers making something which will plug into the vga socket on the pc which could read the bios etc. the product which reads the words from a digi snap info can be found at: www.comproom.co.uk. or if not there, then the chap who owns that business can give other info about the reader. while this is not a direct solution, it could be useful in its present state to read errors etc when there is no speach output as the thing takes a snap and then reads back whatever it sees.
I wonder if that could also be used as a portable scanner or at least, as a new type of ocr sollution. I'll have to read more on that os2 link. Does it work with screenreaders?
Hi.
I actually used one of these in high school back in the early 90s. The speech was really robotic and tinny; but the most annoying thing was that nothing would read automatically. So when text appeared on the screen, you had to use key commands on the device for example, to read next line, sentence, etc. The speaqualizer actually did work on any IBM compatible with an ISA slot and was completely OS independent, that's why it could do things like reading the bios and pre OS startup screens.
A few years later, IBM released the OS2 warp operating system. The screen reader for that was called, creatively enough, IBM screen reader 2. IBM Screen Reader 2 featured an external keypad that you used to control the screen reader. I think that keypad was in principle similar to the Speaqualizer, but they were definitely different devices.
--Al
hi, was it more keynote gold, or accent? if ya wanna demo of accent speech, trythis link. sounds kinda like a braille 'n speak. lol.
For whatever reason, the link to the accent demo appears to be broken; However, based on some long berried memories, I would say that the speech was more accent / braille and speak like than anything else. I can say with certainty that it wasn't keynote, at least not the generation of keynote speech you would find in the SA or BrailleNote.
and my links not showing up either. just in case i misstyped it, the url is: http://www.pdaudio.net/synths/accent-demo.wav
enjoy!
Thanks Al, you are quite correct. I think I was confusing the speakqualizer and ibm screen reader2. The speech on both devices was very tinny and robotic. But, you can adjust to anything if it reads the information you want.
That's an interesting approach that Grizzly Bear talks about. Hmmm, taking a picture of a screen then reading it. It would work, but seems awkward and possibly a potential for errors in the conversion of a picture to text. Have to think about that one.
I do know there has to be a better way.
wo i used to use that in hi school also looked weird but it did the trick. gees what memories.