keithh@atreus.uucp (Keith Hanlan) (11/17/89)
A blind colleague is interested in a unix box for the home to be used as a stand-alone machine and as a (very) capable terminal. Is Amix (SVR4) for the amiga a cost-effective option for someone who is not interested in the graphics capabilities (or much of the amiga's capababilities for that matter)? What would be involved in setting up an Amiga with a line-terminal? If you can think of another unix machine that is more readily applied to this problem, please suggest it also. Thank you, Keith Hanlan Bell-Northern Research Ottawa, Canada
thad@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) (11/25/89)
Keith Hanlan in <526@bmers58.UUCP> asks: A blind colleague is interested in a unix box for the home to be used as a stand-alone machine and as a (very) capable terminal. Is Amix (SVR4) for the amiga a cost-effective option for someone who is not interested in the graphics capabilities (or much of the amiga's capababilities for that matter)? What would be involved in setting up an Amiga with a line-terminal? If you can think of another unix machine that is more readily applied to this problem, please suggest it also. Thank you, Keith Hanlan Bell-Northern Research Ottawa, Canada As much as I'd like to recommend the Amiga for your blind colleague, CBM failed to deliver much of the hardware and software that was originally announced at the Amiga's introduction (Answering Machine, voice editing, etc.) The company that DID deliver those items was AT&T with their UNIXPC (aka 3B1 aka PC7300). This is a UNIX SysV machine, 10MHz 68010, virtual memory and demand paged, multi-user, hi-res graphics, 3-button mouse, etc. which in many respects (except for color! :-) is what we expected of the Amiga back in 1985. As the guy who "sort of" runs the SF Bay Area AT&T Unix Users' Group (meeting at the AT&T West Coast Training Center in Sunnyvale, CA), I come across many "good deals". One existing RIGHT NOW is a source of 18 of the 3B1 systems for $400 (four hundred) each, with 85MB HD, 2MB RAM, and, of course, UNIX. In addition, the AT&T VoicePower card with a multitude of software support packages (e.g. Answering Machine, Voice Editor, Electronic Email (uucp) with both text and VOICE data files, Voice Text To Speech (similar to the Amiga's translator/narrator), etc.) is available for another $400. The VoicePower card does audio input, audio output, touch tone decoding and touch tone dialing, etc etc. If you've ever called a company and received the voice message "For more info, push 1; to leave a message, push 2; to speak with an operator, push 3." etc, then you've heard one of the capabilities of the VoicePower card (which is also, with the 3B1, the "Master Console" option of AT&T's System 25 PBX systems). To give you just a FEW ideas how simple it is to record one's own voice into a file, play it back, edit it, then dial a number and play the message: $ cat /dev/voice > msg.file # record from mike or phone $ cat msg.file > /dev/voice # play back the file $ ve msg.file # windowing graphical voice editor $ vplay -l 2 -r 5 -d 555-1212 msg.file this last example does: -l 2 specifies take "phone" off-hook -r 5 wait a maximum of 5 rings -d num dial the number <num> msg.file voice/audio file to be played when the caller answers All the voice and speech capabilities are fully integrated into the system software once one loads the dynamically loadable device drivers. All the audio files can be processed as any other UNIX file. One can plug up to 7 of these voice cards into the 3B1's expansion slots. You can also plug in Ethernet, StarLAN, multi-serial RS-232 cards, DOS-73 (similar to the Amiga's BridgeCard), tape backups, more memory, expansion chassis, etc. The 3B1 also comes with a builtin 1200 baud modem, Centronics parallel port, and built-in tilt-'n'-swivel hires (monochrome) monitor. For a review of a (stripped down) version of this system, look at the May 1986 BYTE Product Review (about 12 pages); the reviewed system only had 512K RAM and a 10MB HD. The 3B1 systems presently available have 85 MB HDs and 2MB RAM (on the motherboard) and are no slouch in the performance department. Before anyone flames the length (and nature (AT&T)) of this message, I want to re-emphasize that Keith was asking for help on behalf of his BLIND colleague who would be benefitted by the voice capabilities of the described system. ALL those features described above for the 3B1 were the same that were promised for the Amiga (and most were never delivered). Keith's colleague needs help NOW, and this posting is my response to his plea. If Keith and others with similar needs contacts me via email, I'd be happy to help them fulfill their requirements. Computers are ideal adjuncts for the physically handicapped. Thad Floryan [ thad@cup.portal.com (OR) ..!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!thad ]