Sent from my iPhone > On Jun 28, 2023, at 1:42 PM, Linux for blind general discussion <blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > I appreciate the answers all of you have provided because I felt > rotten after posting because it's kind of off-topic for > the discussion list. I run debian Linux on 3 Raspberry Pi's plus > 3 PC's. Two of them are working relics, one of them having been > made in 1998 or so and the other in 2004, judging by the BIOS > dates on them. The third one is a HP Pavillion which I bought a > year ago last March. The debian install for the new box was via > an off-the-shelf image which is the AMD64 version of debian 11, > better known as bullseye. The installer talks if you press the > lower case s as soon as you hear the beep so the only thing I > needed sighted help with were some BIOS setups such as turning > off secureboot. > > In a nut shell, it seems to be working well with Orca but > the sound isn't right. The new HP had Windows10 on it and sound > worked fine with that so it's not the hardware. > > My fix for that is to use a hdmi-to-analog converter > because sound is fine on the hdmi interface. > > Now, back to the topic at hand, the DOS PC has been > sitting in our attic for maybe ten years. It had a 60-megabyte > hard drive which is now junk because when you turn on the power, > you hear the platter spin up like it's going to do something > useful then the head un-parks and there's this little bzz extra > noise and the controller shuts down the platter motor, waits a > few seconds and tries again with similar results. I have knocked > the drive against a few things and shook it but it still makes > bad noises so I think it is a goner. Fortunately, there wasn't > much on it and surprisingly, the floppies all still work but one > of them makes questionable noises but still reads and writes. > > Back in the day, I wrote my own DOS screen reader in > assembler and even used it at work until speakup on debian boxes > came along. The dos screen reader sends the screen output to > com2 on the PC and I can feed that in to microcom and or kermit. > > Something, however, is wrong with my serial ports on the > DOS system because while the mode command lets me set the baud > rate, number of bytes, parity and so forth, the system locks up > the instant I try to send stuff in DOS to com2. Com 1 also lets > you set it but it's even worse in that I haven't gotten one byte > through it in maybe a decade so I'm not holding my breath. > > The basic version I am using is actually called basica > and I think it should fit perfectly with those .bas files but I > can tell you that you are partly correct in that a lot of a .bas > file is ASCII text since the unix utility called strings sees > lots of words but since basic is an interpreted language, there > is a lot of binary stuff mixed in so one wouldn't get too much > that you could trust by just catting xyz.bas |strings. > > This is not gwbasic or qbasic but the basic that > Microsoft bundled with DOS until about 1983, I think. > > The programs I will eventually recover are examples for > programming a X10 CP290 interface. X10 is an early home > automation system that has been around since the late seventies. > > The gcc unix program I wrote in the mid nineties that > talks to this interface was based on listing the basic programs > but back in 1995 when I first wrote the program, the program > worked. > > Now, I realized that I should have documented the source > code better because there is a spot where one shifts a byte 4 > bits to the left and then combines thelower 4 bits with 4 more > bits from another byte. I must not have done it properly because > it quit working relatively recently due to upgrades in gcc. > > So, this isn't really worth a lot of effort on anybody > else's part but I should be able to list those basic programs > then transplant the logic over to the C program so that the CP290 > sees what it is supposed to again. > > This also makes me doubly appreciate unix because so much > stuff in unix just works whereas in DOS, it mostly worked but you > had to fiddle around a lot more to connect systems together. > > We all know that the designers of unix weren't thinking > of people who are blind at all but unix-like operating systems > are inherently easier to make accessible due to their basic > structure and the concept of standard input and output. > > I will keep poking at the museum hardware I have and > probably figure enough out to list these programs. > > It's kind of fun but it brings back some unpleasant > memories, also. > > Martin McCormick > Linux for blind general discussion <blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx> writes: >> .bat files are executed by the command interpreter. There might be a way >> to >> execute a system command from BASIC, but I don't remember now. Regardless, >> your .bat file would need to invoke the BASIC interpreter again, so I >> don't >> think that calling it from within basica (although I'm wondering if you >> really mean gwbasic here) would help you. It sounds like you want the >> BASIC >> interpreter to execute some commands automatically. You might be able to >> do >> that by redirecting standard input, but I don't know for sure that that >> will work. And it sounds like you have a limited number of .bas files to >> convert, so trying to automate the task might be more trouble than it's >> worth. >> >> >> -Mike Gorse > > _______________________________________________ > Blinux-list mailing list > Blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx > https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list > basica has a system function to run commands outside of itself. If memory serves, system(“command.bat”) should work with no command parameters. With command parameters put them in the same way you would if bat file was being run outside of basica just before the closing quote. _______________________________________________ Blinux-list mailing list Blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list