On Sat, 17 Feb 2001, Saqib Shaikh wrote:

hi, i wonder what is the audiodata st4 hardware? i am interested as i live in england where it is almost impossible to afford a braille display! i would be interested in this audio hardware and how does it work with linux? thanks, saqib

Please visit my home page at: http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~sshaik

Hi Saqib: I don't know where to start. First of all I thank You for the reply. Audiodata Hardware is nothing but a screen reader made up as a hardware. The only thing it does is read the contents of a text screen. It is an external device, that is You put it, rather the card, into a slot of Your machine. Yes You have to sacrifice one slot. Attached to the card is a cable that goes to the external device. The advantage is You don't have to load a software that runs in the background or something like that. That means You can use it for any system as long as it is text-based. You can even go into the Bios and change the setup. And since it doesn't have to be loaded You can follow what's going from the verry start of the machine! The only thing it requires is, as i said earlier, an ISA Bus card for the monitor. And one more advantage I'm verry gratefull about: In case the OS crashes or whatever may happen You can always read what it says on the screen which is not the case with most screen readers which are loaded last of all the software. It's got almost all the facilities of the screen readers nowadays but You have to make the screen monochrome. That is it can't tell You the color of the text on the screen. It has been developed in the old Dos times to make screen reading as independent as possible from any other programs. They have a home page: www.audiodata.de that contains also english language but I am not sure whether they've still got much of these things laying around. But why not apply to them and see what happens? It isn't verry cheap too. Ok I hope this information I gave You is enough to get You going! otherwise please give me a mail. Regards Ernst

----- Original Message ----- > From: "Ernst-Dieter Wedekind" <0421700919-0001@t-online.de> To: Sent: Saturday, February 17, 2001 1:17 AM Subject: [suse-blinux] Test

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Hi Guys out there: I'm a member of this list for two days now and i didn't get any mail through to me! Is it possible that I have to use these administrative mails to get mail? My name ist Ernst-Dieter Wedekind and I'm living in Bremen (northern part of Germany). At present I'm using the Audiodata ST4 hardware to work with Linux, which does quite well. I'm looking out for a braille display because i won't be able to use this hardware for a long time, since I have to use ISA Bus Cards, and they'll soon become obsolete. It turned out to be verry difficult to keep Linux and Windows 2000 on one computer. That's why I joined this list. I hope I'll get an answer from anyone out there! regards Ernst