Gnopernicus Sending Output to Serial Device Crashes Hardware Synthesizer

["Beth Hatch" <bhatch200 comcast net>]

Hello everyone,

 

   

 

    I would like to let you all know that I have just placed the following bug report on Bugzilla: Bug 167221] New: Gnopernicus sends output to serial devices even when Braille is disabled. 

 

    I have been told by a colleague that he had tried to file this particular bug on the Bugzilla site with Lynx but had very little success due to the number of tables and other elements of the web interface.  I'm sure that what I'm going to say now is not the best thing to say on a Linux list,<smile> but I was only able to make Bugzilla work when I used Internet Explorer 6 and JAWS 6.0, my Windows screen reader.  Since it has come to my attention that some users who are blind have had difficulty in using Bugzilla with Lynx, I wanted to let you know how I was able to make it work.

 

    Now, on to the problem at hand.  I have just experienced a problem wherein Gnopernicus sends information to my hardware synthesizer connected on serial comm port 1, thereby causing it to be unusable.  The synthesizer is a Dectalk USB which also has a serial port.  I use this synthesizer for both my Linux Fedora machine and my Windows machine.  I have just installed Fedora core 3 on a new computer and was testing it with the Dectalk USB hooked up for the synthesizer in console mode and Festival for support via software speech in Gnopernicus.  I have not enabled Braille in Gnopernicus.  When Gnopernicus was run from the accessibility options, it sent a great deal of garbage to the Dectalk.  I've updated the firmware on the unit three times, and now it no longer works with either one of my computers in Linux or Windows.

 

    It seems the only thing I can do now is to send my synthesizer in for repairs and borrow another device so that I can use my Linux machine.  I wanted others to know about this problem in hopes that it can be fixed.  If there is no Braille device, probing for such a device should not be allowed to totally wipe out a hardware synthesizer.  I never thought this would cause any problem since Gnopernicus doesn't yet use the hardware synthesizer, but now I'm stuck without my Dectalk USB.

 

    Any thoughts or comments would be most appreciated.

 

Thanks,

 

Beth