Hello all. I'm pleased to anounce that Kirk and I have finally gotten a working set of Debian boot disks put together. The disk images and associated files are on the Speakup site in the /pub/speakup/disks/debian directory. The README file in that directory describes the files, and how the talking Debian installation with Speakup differs from the standard Debian installation. Unfortunately, we haven't gotten around to updating the html index files yet, so you'll have to use ftp to download the files for the moment. We'll post a note to the list when the web pages are ready. For those of you who are interested, I've included the README file below. If you have questions, post them to the list, and either Kirk or I will respond. But I will be out of the office until Friday, so Kirk have fun (grin)! The standard Debian installation documentation is in the /pub/speakup/disks/debian/doc directory. When we get the web pages up, the installation manual will be available in html format. For now, you can download and read the instll.txt file, or read the html file from a standard debian distribution site such as http://www.debian.org/. Pay careful attention to the note below about not mixing standard Debian installation files with the ones from the Speakup site. Please be sure to rtfm! Enjoy! Gene Collins cut-here Welcome to the talking Debian distribution of Linux installation directory. This Debian distribution of Linux has been modified to use the Speakup screen reading package. Using the files in this directory, a blind person will be able to completely install Linux with out sighted assistance. *** IMPORTANT NOTE *** In the following list of files, an asterisk (*) means that a particular file must be downloaded from this directory, and not from the standard Debian distribution sites in order for the talking Debian installation process to work properly. If these files are downloaded from the standard Debian distribution sites instead of this directory, the talking installation process will be broken, or not function at all. This directory contains the following files: 00-INDEX.html - the html interface to this directory. README.txt - The standard Debian installation README.txt file. README - This file, which contains notes about the talking Debian installation process using Speakup. * base2_2.tgz - A modified base2_2.tgz file containing the base installation files for use with the talking Debian installation process. basecont.txt - A discription of the packages contained in the base2_2.tgz file. doc - a subdirectory containing standard Debian installation documentation in both ascii and html formats. dosutils - A subdirectory containing DOS utilities for creating floppy disks and for installing Debian from a DOS subdirectory. (RTFM) drivers.tgz - The drivers.tgz file needed to install Debian device drivers and modules from a DOS subdirectory. (rtfm) * images-1.44 - A subdirectory containing modified 1.44 meg talking Debian installation floppy images. install.bat - A batch file for installing Debian from a DOS subdirectory. * kernels - a subdirectory containing Debian kernels that have been patched with the Speakup screen reading package. Each kernel supports one and only one synthesizer. The kernel that supports the DoubleTalk is called linux-dtlk.bin, for example. md5sum.txt - a list of md5 check sums. How does this talking Debian installation differ from the standard Debian installation? We thought you'd never ask! To start with, there is not just one rescue.bin or resc1440.bin. Instead, there is a rescue.bin image for each synthesizer. For the rescue.bin for the DoubleTalk is called rescue-dtlk.bin, and the one for the LiteTalk is rescue-ltlk.bin. You will need to download the rescue.bin for your particular synthesizer from the images-1.44 directory. These specially modified diskimages are * NOT * part of the standard Debian floppy disk set. The next thing you will need is the root.bin image from the images-1.44 directory. Although this file uses the standard Debian name of root.bin, it has been modified to include the special Speakup key map file. You must download root.bin from this site to make the talking Debian installation process function properly. The third thing you will need is either the drv14-1.bin, drv14-2.bin,and the drv14-3.bin files from the images-1.44 directory, or the drivers.tgz file from the directory you are reading this file in. These are the standard Debian installation drivers and modules files. Whether you need the individual driver disk images or the drivers.tgz file depends on whether you are installing Linux from floppies or from a DOS subdirectory on your hard disk. See the Debian installation manual for a discussion of the various installlation methods. This is in the doc subdirectory and the file name is install.en.html. If you decide to install from floppies, you'll also need the rawrite.exe file from the dosutils directory. A strong hint: do * NOT * have your screen reader under DOS try to read the screen while you are wawriting the disk images to floppies. If you decide to install from a DOS subdirectory on your hard disk, you will also need the kernel for your synthesizer from the kernels directory, the rescue.bin image for your synthesizer from the images-1.44 directory, the root.bin from the images-1.44 directory, loadlin.exe from the dosutils directory, the drivers.tgz file from this directory, and the install.bat from this directory. Read the Debian installation manual in the doc directory for more details about installing Debian from a DOS directory. To get Debian up and running, download the appropriate files from this site, and make your disk images as described in the Debian installation manual. Do * NOT * follow the download links in the installation manual, unless you want the standard Debian installation with out Speakup. If that is what you want, then you should ignore the files on this site alltogether. You should rename the kernel and rescue disk images you downloaded to the standard debian names. So if you were running a Dectalk Express synthesizer, you would rename the file rescue-dectlk.bin to rescue.bin, and the file linux-dectlk.bin to linux. Be sure to download all files as binary, except for any text files you want to read locally. After you've made the necessary floppies, if any, either boot your system from the rescue disk you made, or run install.bat from the DOS directory on your hard disk where you downloaded the installation files. If you booted from the rescue disk, press the return key once, and wait for the system to start talking. If you ran the install.bat from your hard disk, just wait, the system should come up talking on it's own. Depending on the speed of your machine, this might take a couple of minutes. If you are prompted to insert the root.bin disk, do so and press return. After the root disk is decompressed on to the ram disk, you should hear some release notes read to you. Press return, and the installation menu should come up. The first thing you'll be asked to do is configure your keyboard. To do this, just press return. The first keymap name you see should be qwerty/speakup map. This is the one you want, so just press return. Follow the instructions in the Debian installation manual from this point. For more information on Speakup in general, you should visit the Speakup web page at http://www.linux-speakup.org/. You can also subscribe to the speakup mailing list from the above mentioned web site.
