@2: BNs = Braille 'N Speak, a note taker first released in the mid to late 1980's and developed through the early part of the 21st century. Developed by Blazie Engineering, which eventually murged with Arkenstone and Henter Joyce to form Freedom Scientific.

@1: As far as I know, Jack probably has just about the most complete archive of BNS software I know of. I have no idea if Freedom still has archives of any of the stuff they/Blazie produced or sold. Already much may be completely lost to history, or at the very least, rotting away on 3.5 inch floppy disks in drawers, boxes, basements, closets, and attics.

Alright, here we go.
https://cp.sync.com/dl/f2007d4d0/d284n7 … g-9g2dxbkc
a complete archive of all the games, software and firmware I have for the BNS. Some of this came on the bns2000 firmware diskette, some of it was code examples from the Basic interpreter package and then there's obviously Dan's Basic games. Basic package also contains compile.bns and run.bns, run.bns is a definite requirement for running any of the Basic games, and compile.bns if you want to write your own stuff.
This archive does not contain any of Munawar's earlier BPC stuff for the BNS, unfortunately. We're still looking for earlier versions of Treasure Hunt and Tournament, and the Unending Adventures. Didn't Liam also make a game for the BNS as well?
If anyone has any more to add, let me know. If the BNS's were in somewhat wider circulation, or if there were an emulator, we could possibly have a proper community-supported archive. AS it stands, my own Braille-n-Speak2000 just recently jumped the shark as I yanked the battery loose thinking it would run better on AC, but now the unit's freaking out and still saying battery low anyway. Good bye to that poor thing. All I have is a BNS640 with no means of connecting it to the serial port. Which, for those who still remember this, is the reason why the Arcade port has not been completed yet - I don't have a working BNS with a copy of the game that I can run through line-in.
Have fun!

Yes, Liam also wrote a game for the BNS called type.

Thanks for that, jack. I've been looking for a copy of the games contained on that firmware disk for ages. Now to see if I can find my Braille Lite 40, which somehow got misplaced, and see if it even works anymore. I guess transferring the files might present a bit of a challenge, though, since modern versions of Windows don't contain Hyper Terminal, and the Blazie disk drive I had died years ago.

@Turtlepower17: You could always grab WinDisk, though you may need a Windows XP installation for it. It was released later on to simplify file transfers between Windows machines and the Braille-n-speaks.

You're out of luck if you want to pay any of the sound-based games. Braille Light 40 can't utilize the beeper in your speech chip. So you'd need to play the games either in their respective text-only modes, or just not play a few of them at all (pinball and Click Invaders will absolutely not work, since they rely entirely on sound).

Ahh yes, the Freedom Scientific takeover. I remember when Blazie actually made it a priority to insure everyone's support inquiries were solved. Same with Henter Joice and Arkanstone. But then the FS merge led the tech support system into some priority disarray favoring x level of paid customers and how important the issues were. If you look at Access World backissues you'll also see that the FS merger was bad news for dealers like Humanware that were actually allowed to sell copies of Jaws, and An Openbook Unbound devices, as FS cut off all dealer relations.

Huh. I hear the amount of beeping they utilized in pinball was using code that conflicted with other hardware in the device. Just like how they never got those games to work on double speed-activated Bns2000s if double speed was on.

Did I miss something? or is this topic like 5 years old?

I will send this stuff to Deane Blazie, maybe he can make a lot of it work on his new bt speak product. and yes, blazie engineering is back:

www.blazietech.com