Re: Updating mbrola (again)

[adr <adr%sdf.org@localhost>]

On Mon, 22 Jan 2024, Brian Buhrow wrote:

> Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2024 06:58:58 -0800
> From: Brian Buhrow <buhrow%nfbcal.org@localhost>
> To: adr <adr%sdf.org@localhost>
> Cc: Greg Troxel <gdt%lexort.com@localhost>, pkgsrc-users%netbsd.org@localhost, buhrow%nfbcal.org@localhost
> Subject: Re: Updating mbrola (again)
>
> On Jan 21,  4:56pm, adr wrote:
> } Subject: Re: Updating mbrola (again)
> } On Sun, 21 Jan 2024, Brian Buhrow wrote:
> }
> } Just for curiosity, what do you use as your trusted terminal?
> } Specialized hardware?
>
> 	Today, no specialized hardware.  Just a NetBSD machine with a couple of sound cards,
> running with Yasr and Eflite.

That was what I thought. It's a chicken|egg problem. I will make
pkgsrc ports of yasr and eflite and think about the best environment
for the system image, once I have all the packages polished. I'm
setting a current system and the good news is that usb isochronous
transfers are working on the pi4. Let's see if the fixes end up in
the next release.

The idea is that you could go to a computer store, buy a raspberry
pi, ask them to flash the image into the sd card, go back home,
plug a keyboard and a set of headphones, you are good to go. And
this is not a Good Samaritan thing. I could have an accident or
develop a disease and become blind. And now what? People don't
realize that so often.

> In days of your, one would use a hardware speech synthesizer,
> such as the DECTalk, DoubleTalk, something called the ARTIC Systems PC, etc.  I began my
> computer adventure on Apple II and IIe hardware using a hardware synthesizer called the Echo
> from a company called Street Electronics.  At one time, I could write 6502 assembly code from
> memory; that was a long time ago! Lol.
> -Brian

Reading that gives me hacking appetite. Thanks for sharing your
experience. I will ask for advice when things are ready in
netbsd-users, I hope we keep the conversation there.

adr