I started using the vinux distribution of Linux right around the first of the year and really like it. I work as a systems engineer for Oklahoma State University and so end up doing a lot of strange things to computers as I try to get them to behave as we want them to. One of the things I had had a little trouble with under speakup was accessing serial devices at 9600 baud or lower because the speech under speakup sounded strange to put it mildly. I did a test one day in which I set the serial line speed to 600 baud between the Linux computer and another Linux computer I was using for tests. The speech turned in to spelling which confirmed what I suspected was the trouble. As one who wrote a screen reader which I used under DOS for many years, I knew that there should be a rather short delay in which incoming data are accumulated without trying to speak them. Too much delay and the screen reader sounds sluggish. Too little and it thinks each character should be handled as a single character. After reading the speakup documentation, I set the trigger-time delay to 100 milliseconds and this made a great difference. Setting it to 200 milliseconds makes the 9600-baud connection sound quite normal. This is almost 1/4 of a second, however, so you probably will want to set it back to 10 for normal operation as it starts to get a bit sluggish. I am so glad speakup gives access to these parameters as this is a prime example of how one set of parameters does not fit all situations. The screen reader I wrote for my own use was written in 8086 assembler. It did a pretty decent job driving an Echo synthesizer but it was time to modernize. The Vinux distribution has given new life to several computers which are not quite up to running the ubuntu Live CD and Orca. I don't like to see still usable equipment go to waste so Vinux has really filled a nitch. Martin McCormick WB5AGZ Stillwater, OK Systems Engineer OSU Information Technology Department Telecommunications Services Group
