Georgiana BrummellI am putting all of my DOS projects, questions, and links here in case someone sees this and can help me with one or more of them.
@tspivey I am including you in the discussion because I think 3 will be of special interest to you. Please fee free to untag yourself from this if you don't wish to participate in the discussion. You may also message me privately if you would rather talk that way.
I am a DOS user with a great ambition and also a few questions. Disclaimer: I am not a programmer, so I would either need to find someone who is or to try that vibe coding everyone is talking about. I would rather not do the latter, but I really have no knowledge on the subject, other than as a user of such software.
1. I wish to update an existing screen reader for use with modern versions of DOS. Ideally, though, I would like a modern version to be made fully accessible including installer. I wrote about this here. I am also interested in whether or not a true software synthesizer can be used with DOS, not via Windows. The SoundBlaster sounds interesting, but it might require actual hardware or a specific sort of computer.
2. In order to do this, I would rather update an existing screen reader than create a new one. It appears that Vispero now owns both JAWS for DOS and Vocal-Eyes, though whether they would make either of them open source I cannot say. I believe the original creator of ASAP, Larry Skutchan, is still alive. I recall writing to him some time ago, long before I had this idea, jhust to see if I could purchase the full version from him. If memory serves, he said he no longer has the software. But perhaps, he would permit me to reverse engineer it and update it. I would never do so without his permission. I know Provox is open source, but it's an extremely complicated system with no menus, etc. No matter what screen reader I use, it would all be open source. I have no interest in making money from this.
https://www.reddit.com/r/BlindAndFine/comments/1u8nw93/a_little_history_and_a_question_about_screen/
3. Right now, I am using Talking DosBox and would like to know if there is any way of updating it. It seems that it might be using a version of VreeDOS. When I use the ver command, it says 5.0, but when I start edit, it says something about FreeDOS. I know they're up to version 1.4 right now, which has several improvements, but I'm not sure if this can be upgraded directly in Talking DOSBox or if a new machine must be created. I would love to be able to just use a virtual machine in VMWare Workstation, but I can't install it without speech and don't know how to connnect it to the BNS driver, even if I could. I do have an MS-DOS virtual machine, but I can't get it to work for some reason, either under 32-bit or 64-bit. I installed Com0Com but nothing works. I have a wonderful mp3 with instructions somewhere, but I must find it in my files!
https://www.reddit.com/r/BlindAndFine/comments/1u5vtxv/talking_dosbox_questions/
4. I am interested in learning QuickBasic 4.5. However, I heard of something called QB64 that can work with Windows XP through 7 and maybe later. I downloaded it, but the ide (interface) is completely inaccessible. I decided to just learn 4.5. for now, because the way to make QB64 work with a native Windows interface is a bit complicated and right now, I just want to start learning and practising. But if anyone can help with creating a native Windows version of QuickBasic (preferably one that works with Windows 7), that would be great!
#accessibility #ASAP #blind #DOS #Dosbox #FreeDOS #JAWS #MS-DOS #programming #Provox #QB64 #QuickBasic #ScreenReaders #SpeechSynthesizers #TalkingDOSBox #technology #VirtualMachines #VMWare #Vocal-Eyes #Windows7
ProvoxJeunesse
