Talking Amiga!

[Matt_H]

Say is one of the first things I install on a new system! I usually grab the files from OS2.04, but the 1.3 versions do have that more "classic" sound

Lots of options for what you're looking to do, although User-Startup is probably easiest. You can use Say from the command line without invoking the UI. Adding the line

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Say booting complete should do it. You might want to put a Run >NIL: in front of it so that the boot process doesn't pause while it's talking. You can include the usual Say switches for pitch/speed/etc. as command-line arguments.

If you want to get complicated, you could also invoke Say's -x switch to speak the contents of a text file (so that you can change what the machine says without having to edit the entire User-Startup). If you installed the files for the SPEAK: DOS device, you could also

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Copy yourtextfile SPEAK: for the same result.

Finally, instead of User-Startup, you could put the commands into a separate script, give it a Project icon (set the default tool to IconX, add the tooltype DONOTWAIT) and put that in WBStartup.

[Matt_H]

Wasn't there also a talking word processor?

Yeah, I have a recollection of an advertisement or article in Amazing Computing or Amiga World about something like that. Can't remember the name, though   

I think either Final Writer or Wordworth can also read back what you've written, but I don't think they pitched that feature as a key selling point.

[Matt_H]

I did not realise that the 1.3 voice is different to the 2.x voice.
That is interesting, I do have 2.04 and 2.05 disks at my disposal, for whatever reason I took it from 1.3.

What is the difference?

2.04 is ever-so-slightly more natural sounding. I’m not sure if it’s due to improvements in narrator.device or translator.library, but I suspect the latter. There’s an unofficial patch on Aminet for a v43 of translator.library that offers even more options, although the UI is a little clunky.