Hello Mo,
Introduction
I have been experimenting with my old thinkpad T42 Windows XP pro system.
This system had a built-in CD/DVD drive which no longer seems to work.
Rather than trying to replace the internal drive I purchased a
USB CD/DVD external drive.
My first mistake was to plug this external drive
into a USB port on a USB hub.
When I booted my system, the external drive appeared to be ignored.
My next idea was to plug the external drive into a USB port on the
machine itself - ignoring the USB hub.
1. I simply pressed the power-up button on my machine and waited.
2. I heard some external disk drive activity eventually followed by a
beep
from sighted assistance
at this point, on the screen we see:
Arch Linux
there then appears a box of choices to which you apparently can tab to
make a selection
screen goes blank or freezes when I try to tab or cursor
the choices are:
boot arch linux
(this is the default)
boot existing OS
run men tees 86
(not sure I have correctly identified that choice)
hardware information
reboot
power off
and at the bottom of the screen it says
press tab to edit options
pressing tab or cursor keys has no effect.
(I think the screen goes blank and nothing appears to happen - must
check this when I get an opportunity)
pressing enter however, causes
boot arch linux
(the default)
I hear more disk activity
then I hear a welcome message as follows:
thanks for using the talking arch live system.
press control+c to skip this message
and use the first available sound card for speech output.
you are hearing this message because multiple sound cards were
detected on your computer.
To help you choose the card you want to speak
a beep will be played on each card
starting with the first available
giving you ten seconds to press the enter key to select it.
If all cards have beeped but no selection is made, the first card will
be chosen automatically.
Please make your selection.
I then hear a beep from the first sound card
I hear nothing having made a selection by pressing enter.
eventually I press enter and hear what I think to be
root@archiso
Curiously
Even when I disconnect the USB speaker from my computer and
in Windows, go to
start
settings
control panel
sounds and audio devices
find the audio tab
and check that there is only one sound card on my system,
I still get this welcome message telling me that multiple sound cards
have been detected.
However, there is only one beep.
note on the numeric keypad
It appears that:
pressing numpad-insert with 1
reduce speech volume
pressing numpad-insert with 2
increase speech volume
pressing numpad-insert with 3
decrease speech pitch
pressing numpad-insert with 4
increase speech pitch
pressing numpad-insert with 5
decrease speech rate
pressing numpad-insert with 6
increase speech rate
pressing numpad-7
speak previous line
pressing numpad-8
speak current line
pressing numpad-9
speak next line
Query
since I have been using a CD/DVD drive connected to a USB port, I
thought it might be worth trying to create a bootable USB stick from
the ISO image.
Any suggestions as to how I might achieve this would be most welcome.
Many thanks,
Mike.
