Re: Talking Images for 64-bit Laptop

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I am sorry, but I have bad news.  I downloaded the image, sent it
to a 32-GB usb card and tried it.  The system immediately found
the EFI partition and played the 3 notes in ascending order
within 5 or 10 seconds after powering on.  I pressed Enter and
waited and waited and waited, left the room for a few minutes,
came back, waited some more but that was the last sound.

	Later, it occurred to me that I might get it to talk if
there was a usb sound card since those devices are in common use
everywhere.

	I now had this lap top with a 4-port extender containing
a full-size keyboard and the 128-GB thumb drive that was the
target of the Linux installation so why not also plug in a usb sound
card.

	I did and slint found that card.  This is a very good way
to set this part of the installation since the person doing the
install must respond.

	I did make several later tries and confirmed that this
lap top's native sound interface is like a lot of native sound
interfaces in that it is too proprietary for it's own good.

	One of my favorite items when doing this sort of thing is a
portable AM radio to more or less get an electroencephalogram of
whether the computer seems to still be alive.  One tunes to a
blank spot near the low end of the AM band if there is no radio
station there and listens to the static that the circuitry in the
computer makes as it computes.

	If something is wrong and the computer locks up, the
crackle, pop, beep and squeak abruptly stop and there is nothing
but the hiss of the radio.

	The computer, in this case, doesn't lock up but slint
never sees a viable native sound interface to probe.  I hear lots
of zips, pops squeaks and beeps of all kinds indicating that the
computer is still alive and well but not talking.  Adding the usb
sound card gives slint something it can recognize as a sound
interface.  It did start voicing the screen just like it should
but it should have found the native interface automatically.

	I have another Debian 11 distribution that uses the same
concept of sending an English message to every sound card asking
one to press enter if this is the correct card and it talks all
the time through the installation process.

	For now, I am using that installer since it is the same
debian version I wanted anyway which is bullseye or debian 11.

	That install image does find the HP lap top's native
sound interface.  When the installation is complete, it has
produced some unpleasant surprises on other systems I have used
it on if their native sound cards were particularly complex.  One
system, for instance, talked all the way through the installation
but wouldn't reliably talk after booting to the installed system.
Simply unplugging the speaker or plugging in a set of headphones
would kill the audio.  It turned out to think that hdmi was
supposed to be the correct output.

	If this helps any, this lap top appears to have no
trouble sending the musical notes at the boot time.  The oldest
PC's had a system for making noises which you are probably very
familiar with which used a timer-counter integrated circuit that
was fed from a roughly 1-MHZ clock.  The 16-bit counter in the
chip is fed with some constant depending upon what note or pitch
one needs.  There is also a gate which connects pure DC to the
speaker or nothing if we are on the low half of the cycle.  Tones
are produced by stuffing this constant in to the counter and the
counter counts down to 0 and then restarts after sending a pulse
to the speaker.

	You can get an amazing number of noises out of such a
circuit from Morse Code to at least video-game quality music.

	I am guessing this lap top has some modern version of
that noise-maker timer-counter-switch in order for the music to
come  through but obviously, we need to find the built-in sound
card for speech to work.

	I am certainly not complaining about slint.  As one who
likes to tinker with computers, PIC microcontrollers and radios,
I know how difficult it is to make just about anything work over
the broad range of situations that public users produce so, if
there is any information I can provide to help, I am glad to do
so.

Linux for blind general discussion <blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> Hi Martin,
> 
> sorry for the mistake in the Handbook. Of course I should have written:
> 
> wget https://slackware.uk/slint/x86_64/slint-15.0/iso/slint64-15.0-5.iso
> wget 
> https://slackware.uk/slint/x86_64/slint-15.0/iso/slint64-15.0-5.iso.sha256
> 
> then:
> sha256sum -c slint64-15.0-5.iso.sha256
> 
> I will fix that and/or make a link like slint64-15.0-latest.iso
> 
> Cheers,
> Didier

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