-=> Quoting Roy J. Tellason to Jasen Betts <=-

 RJT> Jasen Betts wrote in a message to Leonard Erickson:
 
 LE> And finally, consider that these things are *not* "mass produced"
 LE> in any sense of the word. That last is probably the killer.
 
 JB> yeah. still seems a little steep though.

 RJT> I understand that some of those setups for deaf people to use over
 RJT> phone lines are outrageously expensive,  too.  For no particular
 RJT> reason that I can see... 

Non-standard and lack of demand. One of the local sysops was at least
partialy deaf. He could give you an earful.

On the other hand, all of them for the last 10-15 years include support
for Bell 103 using ASCII.

The original protocol was based on using a simple, half-duplex FSK
setup attached to surplus teletype units that used the Baudot character
set.

Baudot is a *5* bit character set (two of the characters are equivalent
to the ASCII SI and SO characters and cause the carriage to "shift" the
way old mechanical typewriters did when you hit the shift key.

The Weitbrecht "protocol" that the modified units used used 1800 Hz for
mark and silence for space. And ran at the stand TTY rate of 45.45 baud.

And Baudot TTYs used 1 start bit, 5 data bits, 1.5 stop bits (note that
every UART I've ever checked the data sheets for has the 1.5 stop bits
supported by treating "2 stop bits" as 1.5 when 5 data bits are
selected) 

Back in the early 80s, a modem that'd do Weitbrecht and Bell 103 ran
$300. Sad to say, when I stumbled across the web site in the late 80s,
it *still* cost $300.

I think the problem is that there's essentially *no* competition in
this field. And very little for gear for the blind. 

I bought a 1930s(?) brailler (think braille equivalent of a typewrite)
on ebay for a friend. We compared it with the brand new (asin I helped
take it out of the box) one she'd had on loan from the local Commission
for the Blind. They were essentially *identical*. And the design isn't
*that* "perfect". 

The markets aren't big enough for it to be worth trying to develop a
"better" unit, not with the current version being so entrenched.

I do see a big shakeup coming, as one of the two big outfits in speech
for the blind has just come out with a Pocket PC that has speech and
braille output for $2500, while the "entrenched" unit is a gizmo closer
in capabilities to an older Palm or other handheld (runs Windows CE
2.2) which runs $7000.

If they don't screw it up, I expect to see a bit of infighting. And
maybe some price drops. 

--- FMailX 1.60