Sorry for the many questions. This is very helpful, thank you. So what's the minimum amount of software i need to run? Is it just the emulator and ActiveSync? I know ActiveSync is used for syncing data, but why is it necessary to run this?

Hmmmm, this is very interesting. Slightly unrelated, but where can I find accessible guides and emulators for Dosbox, Apple 2, ETC?

Or truly discontinued stuff like the Maestro. I have the TRekker Solo software but that would obviously be useless on an emulator. When we're talking stuff that's clearly available, if there's irrefutable proof that it's been preserved, the best thing to do is to throw it in their face so they could make this easy on everyone and give the necessary permission for it to be preserved. Important pieces of A T history. Windows XP will probably go this same route, honestly they let it leak, so they would be wise to just let it be rather than wasting useless legal resources on a 20 year old operating system.

I'd be interested in this stuff. I have an old windows mobile 6 smartphone (samsung jack I636) with mobile speak installed. I used to have some of the braillesoft stuff on it as well but I ran out of space. since someone was already able to decript the rom containing the dls used by wm6, dumping the rest of the phone shouldn't be too hard. I'd also like to see the Eureka A4 emulated somehow (that one uses cp/m).

MS is has been activated for a fiew years as of this writing (on my phone at least). I only have the default dectalk engine, though.

THat message is nothing new. Code Factory always sold through a distribution network. I doubt any distributors are actually still selling thie ting, typically if they don't have a listing for it then all bets are off.

I do happen to have the official emulator for the n97 and can get an n82 rom as well. Problem? They both only work on Windows XP and must rely on inferior OCR, and Talks is not a signed binary, so getting the emulator to install unsigned binaries is going to be difficult.

@jack, any ideas as to my error in post 32? I still haven't been able to get the dam thing running.
BTW, and again this is slightly off topic, but do any of you know where I can get the latest version of talks for free? I heard there was a file somewhere, but I don't want to just go downloading and running exe files from random websites.

Not sure on public distribution. TEchnically, Talks is absolutely and completely abandoned, and you can't really purchase it anywhere. But who knows at this point. I know MObile Speak was actually developed a lot longer than Talks was, since version 5.90 came out on the Simbian store in January 2014.
For now, it's probably best we get the emulator running first, Talks in demo mode is at least better than no Talks at all.
As for why Windows XP? Compatibility layers don't work for this older emulation technology.

well, if the emulation technology is so old, then why can't we use something like qemu? I mean, sure, we can use something to speed it up, but I think qemu can emulate almost everything, with the right patches made, of course.

@bgt lover: Um no. It's called get an xp vm and run the emulator. It would take up hardly any resources considering the hardware it is emulating. Unlike Android, the Simbian operating system is not open. Initially you had to *register as a Simbian developer to get the proprietary emulator. Of course, that's kind of hard to do now with the platform pretty much dead.

@jack OK, I think I will install an xp vm. But, correct me if I'm wrong, xp doesn't come with narrator installed, right? So then, how do I use it? Is there a pre-made vm with nvda or jaws or whatever so that I won't need sighted assistance?
@rings: Qemu is about hardware emulation, while vbox/vmware is for hardware virtualisation. Not a big difference there, but there is still some. Emulation software like qemu, retroarch, mame, etc emulate real hardware almost completely in software, so that even if you run windows, you could still run, for example, software written for the omega os, like the first purebasic or blitsbasic. Disadvantage to this is that, while it trys to emulate hardware as fatefully as possible, due to the fakt it's completely done in software, it's very, and I mean very slow.
A vm, however works on the principle of let's split this huge computing resource into multiple, smaller such resources. So, it uses the actual processor of the host machine to execute the code of the guest OS, even if with some more complicated pieces of software called hypervisors that make a bridge between the two as well as make sure the guest doesn't escape the sandbox of the host. So, due to the way it's implemented, a vm is faster, but with the added cost of not being able to run operating systems not made for the architecture the host is running on. For example, if you are running windows and want to run windows for arm, or ubuntu for arm etc, you won't be able to because architectures differ.
however, nowadays there is not such a clear line between emulators and virtual machines anymore. Because people begun to realise that emulating a hole system, from processor to gpu is too slow in practice, they added support for things like make the emulator use the gpu of the host, or pass opengl drawing commands to the host in stead of rendering them directly, etc. Qemu can do this thing as well, depends how you configure it.
due to some security problems found almost everyday even in modern hypervisors, some vm makers decided to take some things from the emulator.
All of that out of the way, qemu, in it's bare form, is a general, multipurpose emulator and nothing more. That's why it's good for this kind of thing, because it can emulate the hole hardware, even though it might move very slow Though honestly, for symbian it's not gonna be a very big difference anyhow.
and we can't use it here, since the nokia people had their proprietary emulators all along, but I guess one could extract the rom from it or whatever, but that's fucking exhosting  for anyone who wants to try, so yeah.