[Blindapple] introduction

[Jason Brown]

wow, what different versions of space invaders were made?
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tony Baechler" <tony at baechler.net>
To: "Blind Apple Discussions" <blindapple at jaybird.no-ip.info>
Sent: Wednesday, July 27, 2005 1:31 AM
Subject: Re: [Blindapple] introduction


> Hi.  As far as I know, I still have it.  I think I actually have a couple
> different versions of it.  Getting it out of storage and into a disk image
> form is a different matter though.  I was going to get an IIgs but I've
> given up on that.  Besides I have nowhere to put it and I don't know the
> first thing about imaging.  Also to be honest I don't really have enough
of
> an interest now to make it worth my while.  I still like and collect Apple
> stuff, but I've pretty much resigned myself to leaving my Apple stuff in
> storage permanently, at least until I find lots of room to set up another
> computer.  I don't have the luxury of a basement or other spare rooms, and
> I have three or four computers set up already.
>
> Now, about emulating the Echo card.  This might be easier than you would
> think.  Actually emulating the Echo sound would probably be
> impossible.  You might as well forget about hearing an Echo voice come out
> of your emulated Apple.  However, there might still be a way.  I know of
at
> least two emulators with source available.  Actually three, but one never
> got completed.  I am only talking about emulators which are
> accessible.  One is called A2 and is written in C.  The other is Applemu
> and is written in assembly so it would be hard to port to anything but
> DOS.  The third is Appleemu and is also in C and assembler but was never
> finished.  Probably the easiest one to hack would be A2.  It runs best on
> Linux but can be made to run under DOS.  Somehow it would need to be
> programmed to set up a dummy card in slot 4 or somewhere that the Echo
> goes.  That way you could run Textalker and it wouldn't crash.  Also
> somehow that slot would have to route everything to a port, such as a
> serial port.  What you could then do is plug in something like the
DEC-Talk
> Express into a serial port, run the emulator, brun textalker, and you
would
> have approximately the same thing as an Echo emulator.
>
> Now, if you know anything about speech, you will see one obvious
> problem.  That is that the codes for the Litetalk, DEC-Talk etc are
> completely different than the Echo.  Actually in that regard the Litetalk
> would be the easiest to work with because the codes are very similar.  My
> solution to that would be to write a new, specialized Textalker or maybe
> look at Scat for the Doubletalk.  Someone would have to change all the
> codes to match the other synthesizer.  Another option would be to do that
> within the program itself.  In other words, when Control E, C is sent to
> slot 4, increase the speech rate to 300 words per minute or something by
> sending the [: code.  That would be a lot of extra programming though, but
> Textalker is simple enough that it would not be impossible.
>
> Finally, there is yet another idea which might work but I haven't tested
> it.  I have an alternative screen reader for the Apple.  It is not
> Textalker but is similar.  It's supposed to be compatible.  I think, but
> I'm not sure, that I have source.  In that case, it's just a matter of
> compiling that screen reader and using it in place of Textalker.  Routing
> the slot to the serial port is easy, Applemu will do it already.  A2
> supports dumping anything sent to a printer to a log file, so something
> similar could be done to send slot 4 to Com1 or ttyS0.  Jayson also has
> this screen reader but it isn't otherwise in general distribution.  Even
if
> it doesn't have source, I think it supports other synths easily
> enough.  Any thoughts?  Any programmers on this list?
>
> At 05:13 AM 7/26/2005 -0400, you wrote:
> >Hi,
> >Sounds like Space Invaders to me.  Once again, I don't have this disk,
but
> >someone I talked to once had it.  Don't know if anybody here on this list
> >still has it, but if so, we'd love to have it!
> >I do wish that an emulator did support the Echo synthesizer.  It'd have
to
> >be a Windows or Linux-based emulator, but if it were to emulate an Echo
> >card, that would give us the accessibility to Apple stuff we want through
> >the traditional Textalker software.
> >Jayson.
>
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