PC with AT keyboard

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John G. Heim

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Mar 11, 2026, 1:12:42 PM (13 days ago) Mar 11
to Sector67 Public
Anybody  have an old PC with an AT keyboard that I could test some
software on? Those of you in the Linux user group would have  heard
about   my hardware speech synth projecct. I have built a hardware
speech synthesizer out of a  Raspberry Pi. Mainly, this is for blind
Linux systems administrators to get speech during boot. But some folks
who help elderly blind people with their computers asked me to try to
get my device to  work with DOS and the old screen  reader for DOS, 
Jaws. The problem is that you need an AT keyboard. Jaws does not respond
to key codes for even a PS/2 keyboard. I did the best I could testing
with a real PC and a virtual machine but I can't get anything to
actually send AT  key  codes except for a real  AT keyboard.

I'd have to have a PC that already has DOS or FreeDOS installed. Or I'd
have to install FreeDOS on it. Then I'd have to install the screen
reader, Jaws.  So  I'd probably have to mess the machine up in order to
do the test properly. You  might have to reinstall your operating system
when I'm  done.

I know this  is  a lot to ask.  But if I can't get my hands on a test
platform,  I'm just going to ship off a device configured to work with
Jaws for DOS and hope for the best.




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