[BRLTTY] Alva?

[Dave Mielke]

[quoted lines by Lee Maschmeyer on 2011/06/28 at 19:05 -0400]

>Are Alva braille displays very well supported? 

Yes. All known models.

>When I first started using brltty back in about 2001, they removed support for 
>the parallel port on the Alva ABT340 because the parallel driver was not open 
>source. And at least once somebody reported on the list that they had called 
>Alva about getting specs for how to drive a display and were told that they'd 
>write a driver for Linux sometime or other (but that wouldn't do us any good 
>because it wouldn't be open source).

i'm actually prepared to take a go at providing open source support for the 
parallel port on old Alva models. The only thing stopping me, really, at this 
point is access to an actual device.

>I'm thinking of getting a new braille display in the next few months, probably 
>one that has bluetooth.

The only braille display which offers Bluetooth but for which brltty doesn't 
yet support Bluetooth is the Braille Note. Again, the only obstacle is access 
to a device.

>So: Are all Alva displays supported? 

Yes, they all are. The BC models need a recent enough version of the firmware 
else they don't work properly via USB on Linux. I'm not sure if they come from 
the factory with a new enough version of the firmware or not. The upgrade is 
easy enough to do, though.

>I use a serial-connected Alva at work so at least some of them are. Is there 
>anything by that or any other company that isn't supported by brltty?

The only two things that aren't supported have already been discussed above: 
old Alvamodels via a parallel port, and Braille Note via Bluetooth.

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Dave Mielke           | 2213 Fox Crescent | The Bible is the very Word of God.
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