Hello Doug and All, I booted to GRML, and all went well, except that it seems that GRML could not detect my sound card on my laptop. I had some sighted assistance come in, and I found that SwSpeak was running, and when I ran aumix -w 100, it did not make any difference. I ran plain aumix and the settings came up, and again, with sighted assistance, I still could not hear anything, which gave me the confirmation that GRML must not have detected my sound card. Is there a distro that will run from a CD, which is more forgiving of various soundcards? BTW, I have a laptop which is an Averatec 2300 using a Realtek High Definition Audio sound card. Thanks. Glenn ----- Original Message ----- From: "Doug Smith" <bdsmith@xxxxxxxxxx> To: <speakup at braille.uwo.ca> Sent: Saturday, February 24, 2007 6:16 PM Subject: Re: Speakup Digest, Vol 41, Issue 47 Ok, I will try to address two or three questions at one time. I accidentally set this subscription up the wrong way so that I get the digest form of all the mails from the list, so I will have to change it in a few minutes. Now, the question about the software speech. GRML comes with eflite and flite. It works with speakup, and here's how you do it. You might need some sighted assistance, the first time, but I don't think you will if you can hear the drive spin. first step: put the disk in and start the machine. The drive will spin for a short time, then stop. Second step: When the drive finishes its first short spin, you need to enterthis: grml swspeak You need to be sure that you spell it right, or you will end up having to reboot in order to try over. third step: Listen for the sound to come up. It will not be loud, because GRML only brings up the mixer setting for the alsa pcm device to 75%. You will year the words: finished activating software speakup, just run swspeak when booting finished You will know that you are successfully into the speech interface when this happens. fourth step: When the boot sequence is almost finished, you will hear the words: finished booting Now, enter swspeak and wait a while to see if you can hear the system come up talking. You will need to do this: fifth step: enter this: aumix -w 100 This will bring the sound all the way up. Now, if all went well, you should be ready to do something with it.