Project "Harvey" - naturally the question arises as to why you would build something that you can buy in any computer shop. Yet perhaps an impossible question should be posed here: why buy somethiing, if you can build it yourself? In a world where technology is sold in inviolable units, the girls practically broke a taboo. They opened up the casing the houses the sacrosanct technology and misused everyday objects for their purposes. Shamelessly uninhibited, they found an unconventional solution that defies all claims of standardization. The predetermined concept of hardware was redefined here in an unusual way.

Our project is concerned with the output of a stored text in spoken form. It is intended to be a reading aid for people, who are either blind or cannot read a written text for other reasons. The program Harvey makes it possible to have a text read out loud that is stored on a data medium, such as a disk.

A handmade soundcard on a beer mat was developed for this. The quality of the voice output is limited naturally, in keeping with this simple program, however it is sufficiently intelligible. IBM-ASCII files can be used, also text files (.TXT) created with the Windows 3.1 text editor. Even Write files (.WRI) (without graphics) can be made audible, if one doesn't mind background noise at the beginning and the end. The program runs best under MS-DOS, but can also be run under Windows 3.1. Windows 95 has not been tested. It was originally developed on an Intel 486 processor with 33 Mhz, but it should also be possible to use it on a Pentium with a higher clock rate. However, this has not been tested.