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Toshiba lap top problem

D

Dana

Jan 1, 1970
0
I know you have to make sure the battery is in the computer before it will
boot. Does anyone know of a way around this? I have a toshiba lap top that
is about 5 years old, and it won't boot. I did try a friend's battery and
it worked then. I am blind and will have to get someone to check the
voltage on the power supply and make sure we have voltage on the terminals
on the computer also. Bet some of you guys have had this problem before.
E-mail me back to this address if you can help. Located in Georgia and
have unlimited long distance. Not verry good at typing out the problem.
 
K

Ken

Jan 1, 1970
0
Dana said:
I know you have to make sure the battery is in the computer before it
will boot. Does anyone know of a way around this? I have a toshiba lap
top that is about 5 years old, and it won't boot. I did try a friend's
battery and it worked then. I am blind and will have to get someone to
check the voltage on the power supply and make sure we have voltage on
the terminals on the computer also. Bet some of you guys have had this
problem before. E-mail me back to this address if you can help. Located
in Georgia and have unlimited long distance. Not verry good at typing
out the problem.

I do not know what model you have, but I trust you are aware of the
problem that some Satellite models had with the power connector jack??
List what model you are dealing with and perhaps someone can help. The
model I have will power up and boot without a battery if you use the
power adapter to power the unit. If yours will not, it could be that is
why your battery is bad and swapping another from a friend worked.
 
N

N_Cook

Jan 1, 1970
0
Michael A. Terrell said:
Once again proving what an asshole you can be. I know a ham radio
operator who is completely blind. He can touch type and uses text to
speech software to use E-mail nd browse the web. Another ham taught him
to assemble a computer form scratch, and install the OS and application
software after his asshole boss made a comment about how F'ing useless
the blind ham was. The funny part was the blind ham assembled & set up
the computer faster that the friend's boss who owned the computer store.

I met him about 15 years ago when he had computer problems, and had
let Best Buy work on it since they were only a few miles away, and my
shop was over an hour away. They had installed two additional HD
controller cards along with the original, all set for the same base
address and IRQs. I pulled the new cards and found a minor problem,
then sent him on his way.

Its probably easier for blind contributors on Usenet than practically
anywhere else on the www because of all the bloated sites /frames / flash
mangling and obscuring whatever info is buried in there. Usenet having
started with test-only terminals and 400 baud or so modems.

Are there stand alobne DVMs with voiced output ?, pc scopes with descriptive
text ?
I imagine there are electronic repairers with poor sight , but are there any
blind repairers ?
 
D

D Yuniskis

Jan 1, 1970
0
Meat said:
Seems you can type pretty good for being so blind that you can't read
a volt meter.

<frown> This was uncalled for.

Sight isn't necessary to interact with a computer.
Especially in a forum like this -- devoid of useless graphics, etc.

It is unfortunate that so many devices that we interact with
on a daily basis take sight -- as well as hearing -- for
granted, needlessly. Think about what's around you and how
you would interact with it if you were visually impaired;
or hearing impaired; or suffered from tremor; or any of the
dozens of other problems that many folks deal with every day
(if you live long enough, you *will* go blind *and* deaf!)
 
D

D Yuniskis

Jan 1, 1970
0
Meat said:
Aren't there issues in your local community where you could vent your
disdain for usefull purpose?

I spend a good deal of time dealing with -- and designing
devices to be used by -- people with various disabilities.

Let's flip your criticism of *my* comment around: can
you explain any reason for *your* reply to the original
poster -- besides wanting to see your name in print?
My aunt is blind. I'll hand her my laptop and have her post a message
and read the replies if any.

Great! Maybe she and Dana can exchange life experiences
and how they each cope with their specific issues!
 
D

D Yuniskis

Jan 1, 1970
0
Exactly. Note that there are some (voluntary) standards that
people can adopt to make "blind friendly" web pages, etc.
(e.g., "Bobby Approved"). However, it is painfully obvious that
most sites are geared towards the sighted.

You will also discover -- should you ever try to use the
"disability features" in your Mac/PC -- how clumsy these
interfaces can be. Turn your monitor off and see just

Maybe 300 baud? (400 isn't a standard baud rate)
There are DVMs with a serial port.

Yes. But then you need a speech synthesizer that has a serial
port (DECTalk, DECTalk express, etc.). Or, nowadays, a speech
synthesizer running on your PC tethered to the DMM, etc.
I've known a couple who were legally blind. They could make out some

Note that there is a difference between "legally blind" and "blind".
Also, the cause of blindness and its relative onset in life play
a big factor. For example, those blind from birth adjust differently
than those losing their vision later in life from things like
diabetic retinopathy (e.g., learning Braille in your 60's may
just not be an option -- especially with the neurological
damage that accompanies a disease like diabetes).
things with special glasses, but they only worked with simple, tube

Decades ago, I worked on the Kurzweil Reading Machine (a device
that "reads books" to the visually impaired). At the time, it
was implemented with a minicomputer (i.e., the size of a
dishwasher) and a hand-built scanner (consumer scanners did
not exist back then). It was not uncommon for us to talk
a blind client through the process of disassembling the
minicomputer to the point where boards could be reseated
or swapped out. Nowadays, isn't that all *real* "factory
 
D

D Yuniskis

Jan 1, 1970
0
Michael said:
I had a Bell's Palsy in my right eye in May of 2008. My left eye is
mostly for decoration, so I was almost blind for eight months, and could
only see what was visible out of the bottom left corner of my right eye,
and only when I could hold the lid open with my fingers. It was late
last year that I regained full control of that eye.

This is one of the early symptoms of Myasthenia Gravis (I am
not claiming that you have MG -- just drawing a parallel).
But, with Bell's, don't you also tear a lot? I.e., so you
almost *have* to actively close your eye to blink away the
tears...
I write HTML in Wordpad to keep the pages compact and fast. I use the
bare minimum of code, both for the visually impaired, and those who have
to use older computers & browsers.

Understood. But even things like page format/layout
can be confounding. E.g., trying to recognize columns (think:
frames within a page) is very hard for someone not
"seeing" the page.
Without text to voice and the ability to touch type, it's worthless.

My point is that even *with* text-to-speech (TTS), it is
very hard for most people to process information. Many
people are highly visual oriented. And, have, after a lifetime,
developed their skillsets oriented towards processing information
in this way.

Try, for example, to have a page of text *read* to you
and see how much of it you comprehend afterwards. Then,
realize that you can't just flick your "ears" back a few
paragraphs to review what you heard "back then" -- which
is something we constantly do with our eyes as we rescan
text that has previously been read for clarifications, etc.
Someone had written a simple 'serial to text' terminal program for
those type DVMs a few years ago.

Ah, cool! But, you still need a PC just to read your DMM.
I.e., there is a big inconvenience involved. I get annoyed
when I don't have enough room for my 5.5 digit DMM and have
to resort to using a Simpson VOM just because it's smaller.
(yeah, I really should buy an El Cheapo pocket sized DMM
but it seems a waste when I have so many others...)
I have been on the edge of legally blind all my life. I am not
allowed to drive without my glasses. My vision was below 20/200 &

<grin> Well, *technically* I can't drive without glasses, either
but that's just because the law (here) requires vision corrected
to 20/20 in order to drive. If I had to get to the hospital in
a hurry and didn't have my eyeglasses handy, I'd have no worse
problem than any other driver (especially those "handicapped"
by having a cell phone glued to their ear!)
20/400 when I entered the US Army in the '70s and has become worse over
the decades since.

20/200 is pretty bad. I know a gentleman who is in that shape
now. At 12 feet he is effectively "blind".
I'm on Gabapentin for Diabetic Neuropathy.

Hmmm... I thought gabapentin was for epilepsy? <shrug>
IANAD so I'm just recalling things from memory. Maybe
used for anything neurological?
Not at the factory. I troubleshot MC68340 based embedded controller
boards we built in house. I hand soldered 288 pin ICs under a stereo
microscope for several years. Then I was moved to our newest product, a
VME based telemetry receiver with several DSP & FIR filters per board.
You don't scrap new $8,000 boards if you can prevent it.

Yes, I was being facetious. My point was that a blind man can
still do some checking and repair/replacement. E.g., "Can you
verify that all of the cables are fully seated? Can you hear
the scanner motor starting up and the carriage moving across
the machine? etc."

My experience with visually impaired individuals is that they
have to rely on memory a lot more than sighted folks do. Whether
it is remembering where something is on/in a device or remembering
how to do something or remembering where they *put* something.

I have found working with deaf people to be much more difficult.
Sight is highly directional. So, we have other senses that
compensate and alert us to things that are not in front of us
(i.e., not in front of our eyes). Hearing being primary among
them. Try getting a deaf person's attention if they are not
looking in your general direction...! :-/
 
P

PeterD

Jan 1, 1970
0
Seems you can type pretty good for being so blind that you can't read
a volt meter.

Meathead, what a frickin moron you are... There is no need to see to
type. You're a complete ass, beginning to end.
 
P

PeterD

Jan 1, 1970
0
And you should **** off you pedantic pisswit. And I'm not a little
man,

Inside you are a teeny, tiny man, not much at all.
I'm 6'3" and around 230lbs. Like I told another poster if you
said some of this shit to my person you'd leave crawling spitting
teeth along the way.

Yea, sure... Easy talk when you are annoymous.
 
P

PeterD

Jan 1, 1970
0
I spend a good deal of time dealing with -- and designing
devices to be used by -- people with various disabilities.

Let's flip your criticism of *my* comment around: can
you explain any reason for *your* reply to the original
poster -- besides wanting to see your name in print?


Great! Maybe she and Dana can exchange life experiences
and how they each cope with their specific issues!

You're wasting your time arguing with meathead... He's a child in a
man's body, and never will grow up.
 
D

D Yuniskis

Jan 1, 1970
0
Michael A. Terrell wrote:

[attributions elided ... along with much of the body]
NO, I had to use saline solution quite often for the first month or
so. Bells's Palsy is caused by the temporary loss of blood flow to the
nerves and muscles of the eye, requiring it to regenerate the nerves &

Ah, OK. MG is a breakdown of the nerve-muscle junction.
Think of it as the junction becoming "saturated" with use
so that it no longer functions. Those junctions that
can't "rest" to recover -- eyes, lungs, etc. -- eventually
stop working (you die from suffocation with MG)
muscles. It is one of those conditions they aren't sure of all the
causes, but one is a low level infection which I've had problems with
for over 35 years.
Understood.


That's me. I was a Broadcast engineer, I also produced & directed
live newscasts, while setting some camera shots.

I have tried to learn to use "audio books" just to get some sense
of what it must be like. However, I just can't process things through
my ears as well as my eyes. :< So, it is hard for me to relate
my experiences to someone who is visually impaired.
I know what you mean. I spent half a day with 'Blind Mike' the blind
ham radio operator helping him fine tune his system to where he rarely
had to go through a page more than once. Of course, he had several
years practice using the software, and had been blind a lot longer so
he's had a lot of practice.

Just listening to a speech synthesizer can be an eye-opening
experience to folks who've not had to rely on that technology.
Your *ears* "get tired" (I don't know of any other way to explain
it!)
$1.99 at Harbor Freight on the 16th, 17th & 18th of this month. Lot
numbers 90899/98025

<grin> Yeah, but then it would be one more thing to keep track of!
At least the big meters are easy to find (they can't hide under things
as easily as a pocket DMM)

It does make you wonder how they can make things that cheap!
Scary.
I can drive, if I know where I'm going, but I sure can't read any

For years, I've been reading street signs by "counting letters"
and guessing at distinctive shapes -- "5 letters and looks like
the first letter is round... probably Olive Street..." -- despite
the fact that I have 20/20 corrected vision.
signs without my glasses. Of course it's a heavy fine if I drove
without them, and got caught.

An interesting corollary: if you have a vision restriction on
your license and then have corrective surgery that restores your
vision (e.g., cataract surgery), you *still* must wear your glasses
in order to drive -- even though the glasses will now give you
*imperfect* vision! I.e., you need to have your license updated
to have the restriction removed before you can legally drive
with your "new eyes".

This makes *some* sense but is actually counterintuitive to
many folks who have been down this road...
I was told it was developed to deal with the pain from Diabetic
Neuropathy.
Ah.


Spit wads. ;-)

Yes! :> A pair of (old) neighbors were deaf. When trying to
get their attention I would resort to tossing pebbles. Always
afraid that I would *hit* one of them, though... :<
Actually, I talk with one character on line who is profoundly deaf,
and was blind for several years. A few years ago they managed to return
some vision to him. He is a real nut case, like a lot of the disabled
people I know. :) They crack silly jokes about their condition, to cope
with their problems rather than become bitter jerks.

There are "all sorts". I was first exposed to that population
as a teenager. I can recall asking a client that I had developed
a friendship with: "What's it like to be blind? What do you see?"
and, almost as soon as I had finished saying that, realized how stupid
my question was. As a testament to how cool this guy was, his
reply was, "Don, if you can tell me what *you* see, then I'll
tell you what *I* see.".

Of course, I still felt bad for askingn such a stupid question.
But, it forced me to think about the problem and keep it in
mind when I design things.

For example, 1 in 15 men are color blind (to some extent).
Ask your kids' teachers if they know that figure. In practical
terms, it means that one boy in each classroom can't reliably
distinguish colors. Do they know that when they formulate their
lesson plans? "How many red balls are in this picture? How
many green balls are there?"

"Press the RED button to shut down the nuclear reactor in
the event of a disaster. Press the GREEN button to restart it."

:>
 
N

N_Cook

Jan 1, 1970
0
Michael A. Terrell said:
D said:
Michael A. Terrell wrote:

[attributions elided ... along with much of the body]

--


A registered (not quite) blind person, I know, had great difficulty with
locked-down sites with no text size change option.

No one had told him about highlighting with CTL-A, then CTL-C and then CTL-V
into a basic text handler , notepad/wordpad or whatever , where he could
easily increase text size and more importantly use a negative script.

Every now and then a poorly-sighted browser praises my gimmic-free pages on
the www , just text and pics
 
D

D Yuniskis

Jan 1, 1970
0
Michael said:
Asking stupid questions can help you get a feel for their problems.
I repaired some low vision cameras & monitors for a school system years
ago. The looks on the kid's faces when they could read again was
priceless.

When we would install a Reading Machine at a new site, it
was always "priceless" to watch the expression on the client's
face as they first started using the machine. The synthesizer
was *really* had to get used to -- the stereotypical "computer
voice". You could see the client straining to make sense
out of these grating noises coming from the speaker. The
inflection was suboptimal, prosody was stilted, etc.

But, there would come a point where you could *see* when they
had started to understand complete sentences. Their eyes
would literally "light up". You could almost hear their thoughts
afterwards: "Now I can read ___________ without having to get
someone to read it *to* me!"

(Libraries carrying materials for the visually impaired had
dreadfully small collections at the time. And, waiting
lists for popular titles would often be *years* -- Braille
is expensive to produce; synthetic forms are "hard on the
hands". And, anything current -- like last *month's* news
paper -- are almost completely unattainable due to transcription
times and costs.)

I can remember a client grinning that he would now be able to
read Playboy (which seemed like doubly funny -- "Does anyone
actually *read* those magazines?")
"Cut the red wire to disarm the warhead." of course, I've made a lot
of wiring harnesses out of a single color & gauge to keep people from
messing with them. I hated spending half a day repairing a test fixture,
just to have some moron screw it up. When they open it up and see over
100 light green 22 AWG stranded wires, they didn't try to 'improve' it,
to pass a bad module.

The military used to place a special premium on color blindness
ages ago. Most camouflage is easier for a color blind person
to spot than for someone who is not. I guess the perception
of color aids to the confusion of what the mind sees.
 
D

D Yuniskis

Jan 1, 1970
0
N_Cook said:
Michael A. Terrell said:
D said:
Michael A. Terrell wrote:

[attributions elided ... along with much of the body]
--


A registered (not quite) blind person, I know, had great difficulty with
locked-down sites with no text size change option.

No one had told him about highlighting with CTL-A, then CTL-C and then CTL-V
into a basic text handler , notepad/wordpad or whatever , where he could
easily increase text size and more importantly use a negative script.

Negative script == white on black. I don't understand why this
is the case but this does seem to be easier for folks with
*low* vision to read.
Every now and then a poorly-sighted browser praises my gimmic-free pages on
the www , just text and pics

For years, I used a text only browser to surf the web.
Even now I disable images -- since most are just advertisements.
Why waste bandwidth on something that benefits an advertiser?
If I *need* to look at an image, I'll *know* which one(s)
I'll need to see.
 
N

N_Cook

Jan 1, 1970
0
D Yuniskis said:
N_Cook said:
Michael A. Terrell said:
D Yuniskis wrote:
Michael A. Terrell wrote:

[attributions elided ... along with much of the body]

--


A registered (not quite) blind person, I know, had great difficulty with
locked-down sites with no text size change option.

No one had told him about highlighting with CTL-A, then CTL-C and then CTL-V
into a basic text handler , notepad/wordpad or whatever , where he could
easily increase text size and more importantly use a negative script.

Negative script == white on black. I don't understand why this
is the case but this does seem to be easier for folks with
*low* vision to read.
Every now and then a poorly-sighted browser praises my gimmic-free pages on
the www , just text and pics

For years, I used a text only browser to surf the web.
Even now I disable images -- since most are just advertisements.
Why waste bandwidth on something that benefits an advertiser?
If I *need* to look at an image, I'll *know* which one(s)
I'll need to see.

This schematic was originally the negative form etched into a side panel of
the first? miniature oscilloscope.
http://www.diverse.4mg.com/miniscope11.jpg
This inversion of the original is much easier to read, size for size etc
otherwise the same pic. Try saving to a graphics package and doing the
negative of it
 
J

John Kimball

Jan 1, 1970
0
The fact is I'm not polite or proper just to 'fit in'.

Why don't you go back to picking on the mentally handicapped in
alt.usenet.kooks, Meat Clod? It's more your speed, you impotent little
piss-flap.
And if some of
the replies I get from people on Usenet had been done in person, some
people would have been crawling away missing some teeth.

We're all shaking in our boots. Really we are.

*Guffaw*
 
J

John Kimball

Jan 1, 1970
0
Meathead, what a frickin moron you are... There is no need to see to
type. You're a complete ass, beginning to end.

Some say the best part of his daddy ran down his mother's leg, while she
was bent over the dumpster behind the Quickie Mart.

Or so I've heard.
 
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