Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!pur-ee!pur-phy!murphy
From: murphy@pur-phy (William J. Murphy)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: LCD Touch Screen, is it possible with A500?
Message-ID: <2374@pur-phy>
Date: 19 Jul 89 15:49:50 GMT
Reply-To: murphy@newton.physics.purdue.edu.UUCP (William J. Murphy)
Organization: Purdue Univ. Physics Dept., W. Lafayette, IN
Lines: 31


This morning I had breakfast with my wife (a speech pathologist),
two other speech- pathologists, and a specialist in augmentative
communication devices.  The specialist workd for a company called
Phonic-Ear which makes a portable keyboard like device which synthesizes
speech for speech and language impaired people.  After listening
to the product, I felt that the Amiga does a better job at producing
synthetic speech and thought that it would be possible to generate
a program which brings up a custom screen with various icons or gadgets
which could be clicked on to provide speech.  

This is almost trivial with IconX and the Speak: handler, but it
works. My question/problem is that my Amiga 2000 is hardly portable,
so I would like to know if there is a way to make an A500 portable
by providing an LCD touch screen.  If not a touch screen, how about
just an LCD?  I know that some of you hardware hackers have tried touch 
screens, what about touch screens, and battery packs.

Commodore, I know that you are not in the augmentative communication
business, but there are thousands of children and adults who could benefit
from your technology.  $4000 for this portable Phonic-Ear Voice 160 
is outrageous, and can certainly be beat by adding a $500 touch screen
to an A500.  The software is essentially free if AR*xx is to be bundled
with 1.4. 8^).

Well, just an idea, but one which would make some real inroads in the
educational market and would start to train our youngsters on what
a real computer can do.

Bill Murphy
murphy@newton.physics.purdue.edu