Talking Money -- public domain FREEWARE beta version by Bill Straub, 4/1997 Required hardware: -IBM PC AT - 286 or equivalent or better -CGA, EGA, or VGA adapter and monitor -(or Hercules compatible with SIMCGA or similar CGA emulator program) Recommended: -EGA or better monitor because CGA pennies are the wrong color. This is a problem I am trying to correct in future releases. Check out my web site for future updates: http://www.northcoast.com/~hope -Sound Blaster or compatible so you can hear the sounds. Talking Money was written in Borland Turbo C++ 3.0 for my students who are adults with developmental disabilities. Some of them are just getting used to using the keyboard so I made it a "keyboard banger" program with the option of having students type in the numbers to enter the value of the money. The program could also be fun for people learning literacy skills, people learning ESL (English as a Second Language), or for young children. If you can't hear the sounds then you will need to increase the loudness of your sound card. This may be accomplished in one of two ways: (1) by moving a dial on the back of your computer while the program is running, or (2) on newer sound cards by exiting the program and running a program which came with your sound card to set the volume. See the documentation which came with your sound card. If the sound becomes garbled then exit the program and restart it -- occasionally the memory used for the sound files may become corrupted. On older 286 systems with slow hard disks you may have garbled sound. The solution appears to be to run a full defrag (not just files). Running the program on a faster machine with a faster hard drive also helps eliminate the garbled sound. The program automatically starts out at level 3 (enter the value of the money by typing each individual number on the keyboard). You can change this when you start the program by typing: money61x [where x = the level you want, then press Enter] For example, typing money61 1, starts the program out on level 1 (keybanger mode). money61 4 begins the program using level 2 (where you need to enter each value of the money without visual cues). You can print out the money on a printer by using the Print Screen key on the keyboard if you have already run the DOS graphics program. For example, before running Talking Money I enter the following at the DOS prompt: CD\DOS [press Enter] GRAPHICS [press Enter] Then I run the Talking Money program. When I see the money I want to print displayed on the screen I turn my Epson dot matrix printer on-line and then press the Print Screen button on the computer keyboard. For other types of printers look up the MS-DOS graphics command in the manual so it will print correctly. Note that versions of DOS prior to version 5.0 (I think) will only print CGA but not EGA or VGA graphics. If you can't print and you have an EGA or VGA monitor you can either set your monitor to CGA mode before running, use a third party graphics print program, or you can upgrade your DOS version. Unfortunately the money will not print in color on a color inkjet printer without some additional software (you can use Corel Draw!'s screen capture utility in Windows). Talking Money beta version runs under MS-Windows 3.x but will not run in a DOS window. I suggest you exit to DOS or else the voice files may play very very slowly. It should run under Windows 95, but hasn't been tested extensively. This program is FREEWARE because I would like people to use it even though they may not have money for shareware. I would like to see more inexpensive programs designed for adults with developmental disablities and for people learning basic literacy skills. The graphics may be kind of rough, but I wanted it to run on old CGA monitors and computers where I teach. Note that CGA monitors will not show the pennies as the correct color. I'm working on a fix for this. This version talks using a soundblaster or compatible card. If your sound card is not 100% compatible then the program may not work. You can change the wav files to change what the money says. If you can't hear the sounds you may need to turn the volume of your sound card up -- this may be done with a dial on the back of the computer, or on some cards, by running a program to set the volume BEFORE you run Talking Money. Included with this program are several files which are NECESSARY for Talking Money to operate correctly. DO NOT DELETE THE FOLLOWING FILES: CGA.BGI SVGA16.BGI LITT.CHR TRIP.CHR ***************************************************************************** Legal stuff (I dislike this, but it needs to be said): The author makes no claims as to the suitability of this software for any specific purpose, nor will the author be responsible for any damage the program may cause, no matter the cause or fault. MS, MS-DOS and Windows are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. IBM is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corporation. Epson is a registered trademark of Seiko Epson Corporation. Sound Blaster is trademark of Creative Technology Ltd. Corel Draw! is a registered trademark of Corel Corporation. ***************************************************************************** If you have comments or suggestions about this program, please contact me: Bill Straub e-mail: hope@northcoast.com phone: (707) 822-6151 web site: http://www.northcost.com/~hope