#printer timeouts
6 messages in this thread
Chip,
I was thinking of a hardware add on rather than a software spooler. For
example, I have one hooked up to my printer, and if I decide to dump it, I just
push a button and it resets the spooler back to 0.
But, now you do have me confused. I was under the understanding that
you did have the speech synthesizer hooked to the serial port and had a modem
hooked up to a second serial port. Where exactly is your synthesizer hooked
up, or are you using the Amiga's built in speech synthesis with a talking
terminal program. Sorry for the confusion, I probably made a few assumptions
about how you have things configured that are incorrect.
Perhaps I also mis-stated the idea behind the spooler. The hardware
type I am thinking of comes in several configurations. Parallel input parallel
output, parallel input serial output and serial input and serial output. The
first byte into the spooler gets dumped into the output device immediately so
you don't get anymore behind than you would if the output device, in your case
the synthesizer, were directly connected or not. If the message it is talking
isn't of interest to you, you just punch the reset button and it clears the
buffer of whatever may be in it. You then go on to the next message and so on.
Bye the way, as a suggestion (and you may be doing it already), you
might try to set up a script file that will log on, capture the message base,
or those parts of it of interest to you, and log off. You could then listen to
the message base at your leisure. I may be incorrect, but I don't think a
speech synthesizer can keep up with even 300 baud, because I believe that
translates into about 5 words per seconds and would be a bit fast. If you were
doing that, then it wouldn't matter too much if the speaker got too far behind
the actual text, since you would be off-line and not paying for it.
Just a suggestion. Perhaps you are already set up this way.
Don
Don,
I am using argoterm with its talking feature since I do only have the one
serial port and both the modem and the symnthesizer want it. The hardware
spooler sounds like a good idea and I have a couple of questions: how much do
they go for and how big is the buffer? I will also investigate your idea about
downloading the message base since you are correct in that this is very slow.
Thanks for all your help.
Chip
Chip, I don't recall if ArgoTerm has a capture feature (sorry Jez), but if it
doesn't you can use Starterm (DL4) to capture the messages. Set capture on –
do whatever you do to capture messages (whether you read them by categories or
the whole message base), type NS after the first message and close capture when
all the messages have scrolled. You will then have all the messages on disk to
read at your leisure. It's fastest to capture the messages to RAM.
Marlene
Marlene,
Thanks, argoterm does have a capture facility and I will try it that way.
I'm sure it will save me a lot of money.
Chip
Chip,
Hardware spoolers go for in the $200 price range. You can find them a
little above and a little below this and the memory typically is 64K standard
with options up to 256K. Of course, you need to use either a 2nd serial port
or the parallel port for output to the spooler. If you use the parallel port,
you'd need a spooler with the parallel input, serial output which should be
easy to find or have ordered.
As far as downloading the message base, we have a file called (spelling
it out) S A V M O N . H L P (I hope your speaker got that right) in Data
Library 1. If you need any assistance in getting this file, I'm sure some
arrangements can be made. It could lead to significant savings for you.
Now, back to the basic problem. ARGO TERM was written by Jez San and
he frequents this place. His ppn is 72247,3661. I'll leave him a message
asking him to read this thread. He may have a solution for the timeout
problem.
Don
Don,
Thanks I'll get that file and read it. On a related subject, I have this
idea that instead of buying a spooler and trying to make this external
synthesizer work (by routing all my output to prt:) it seems like I should be
able to use the translator/narator to do the speaking. It seems to me that
this could be done by either writing a special printer driver which did this,
or by creating a new device (such as voice:) to do it. Do either of these seem
possible to you?
Chip