VMWare/JFW issues

[Nolan Darilek <nolan_d bigfoot com>]

Hi. I've recently been attempting to get a working VMWare/win98
installation using JFW, but I'm encountering quite a few strange
problems, and I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced something
like this before?

I was using an ancient version of JFW 3.0, but this simply refused to
work on windows; I received the infamous BSOD whenever JFW was
launched. So I decided to grab the latest 3.5 demo, hoping that the
problems would be solved.

The demo starts nicely, and the intro speaks. The demo introduction
sounds as if it's pre-recorded, while the remainder of the
installation is synthesized speech through the soundcard. For some
reason, the synthesized speech is pure static, though the occasional
sound effects play nicely. Additionally, every other sound which
windows makes works, so I'm sure the card is configured correctly. I
know that the static is synthesized speech because I can occasionally
make out fragments of words behind the static; I can't link this
phenomena to anything, however.

I've emailed HJ tech support, but I haven't received a response
yet. I'm not sure if this is due to the fact that I'm only running a
demo and there are paying customers who need help first, whether there
is normally a few-day delay for support, or whether VMWare either
isn't supported or isn't well-understood. :) I'm considering going to
the VMWare folks next, but I don't know quite what to say. "Hey, guys?
Your SB16 emulation works in 99% of the cases which I've found, but in
this instance . . . " Plus I'm not even sure which piece of software
is originating this problem, and I can't reboot to windows to test
it. Has anyone else experienced this?

This isn't my only problem, however. I'd like to use my soundcard,
instead of my dectalk, for speech synthesis under VMWare. For some
reason, when VMWare opens up the serial ports upon startup, it seems
to bombard the port with a large amount of binary data -- such a large
amount in fact that I can't seem to cleanly access the serial ports
after powering down. I've tried killing every Emacspeak session on my
system and using VMWare, but as soon as I start Emacspeak after
powering down VMWare the gibberish starts. Restarting Emacspeak or the
speech server doesn't solve the problem either; I'm forced to reboot
my system. Ideally I'd like to run Emacspeak and VMWare simultaneously
(while deactivating the Emacspeak speech server, of course), since I
usually have dozens of Emacs buffers open, and it's a pain to reload
all of the files and webpages which I usually have open. Has anyone
experienced anything like this and, if so, is there a solution?

Thanks.