[Blindapple] Exciting news for the Blind Apple II emulation community!

[Rachel Keyte]

wow, I have fond memories of some of the Echo games - one that comes 
to mind I loved was where Echo would announce a key on the keyboard 
and repeat it getting higher in pitch til you pressed it. If you 
missed, it would explode.
Also remember wordtalk?
I still have all those floppy discs; guess they're no good now but 
just can't throw them out. Lol
I'm worried I'm not technical enough for the below but I might 
certainly give it a go. :)
At 10:37 AM 28/08/2013, you wrote:
>Hi all,
>
>It's finally happened, what we've all been waiting for. I didn't 
>know about it until a week or two ago, and I got it working this 
>morning. I'm talking about the MESS project emulating the Apple II 
>systems. Not only that, but someone decided to add Echo II 
>emulation! Yes, you heard right, at long last, you can get a feel 
>for how the old systems really worked for us blind folks back in the 
>80's without ever buying any Apple hardware.
>
>Disclaimer: The file I'm about to link to includes ROM images. It is 
>illegal for anyone to possess these ROMs unless they own the 
>original hardware, in this case, an Apple IIe Enhanced and a Disk II 
>controller card. However, since these files are absolutely necessary 
>for the emulator to do anything at all, I've decided to make things 
>easier by providing the ROMs.
>
>If you'd like to take this emulator for a spin, you'll need to be 
>running Windows. MESS runs on many platforms, but Windows was the 
>system I chose for this quick distribution since it's what I most 
>often use. Download the following file:
>http://bluegrasspals.com/messapple.zip
>
>Unzip it somewhere. In the disks folder are a few talking .dsk 
>images for you to play around with. To start the emulator with one 
>of them, do, for example,
>mess apple2ee -flop1 disks\egames.dsk
>
>Yes, you do need to write apple2ee with two e's, since we're 
>emulating an Enhanced IIe. This system has an extended 80-column 
>card, an Echo II in slot 4, and a disk controller in slot 6. Once 
>the program starts, you may have to hit Enter to start the Apple. 
>You'll notice that the Echo speech sounds a bit fast, I noticed that too.
>
>For the most part, things work like you'd think. F12 is the reset 
>key, left and right Alt seem to be open apple and closed apple. To 
>quit, hold down scroll lock, press Insert, and release both keys, 
>then press Escape. To make this work, if you're using Jaws, you'll 
>need to passthrough or have Jaws go to sleep or unload it. Same goes 
>for Control key commands in the Apple. I don't know how the arrows 
>are emulated, so I use the Control key equivalents, Ctrl+H for left, 
>Ctrl+U for right, Ctrl+J for down, and Ctrl+K for up.
>
>I don't know of an accessible way to switch disks during a session, 
>so you probably don't want to use this to play Eamon. The MESS UI 
>doesn't seem to be accessible.
>
>Hope you can get something out of this! I certainly have enjoyed it.
>Jayson
>
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