well, when I had a ppc machine here, having a working box was always the must 
have. However, that has changed over the last 7 years. Now, what I need is an 
accessible installation image as well as an accessible running platform (this 
means screen reader and braille support). There are a number of Linux packages 
that fill the bill, even on the PPC platform. These include: ORCA (for the X 
desktop), BrlTTY (for the console side of things), and some others. 
Unfortunately, there appears to be no ports whatsoever for these to make 
OpenBSD (or any flavor of BSD) accessible to the blind on ANY platform. Also, 
my recent exchange with theo wasn't encouraging either (yeah, talk about 
personalities!). So, unless someone who can code is willing to port some 
accessibility over to the BSD ecology, there are going to be a rather 
significant number of blind users who will never get the experience they need 
to be good systems admins (unless you want to count OS X or windows in that).

still, having the PPC packages would be a good thing as my Braille Sense U2 is 
mostly PPC/ARM based (right now, it uses windows CE 6, which is effectively end 
of Lifed). Having that device brought into the modern (and more secure) world 
would be desirable. 

Anyway, back to the subject at hand: I am not sure exactly which chipset the 
Braille Sense U2 is using and the company that makes it won't reveal that info. 
So, I guess I have to reverse engineer it in order to find out. Its that or 
spend another $6k on yet another device (which I don't have btw). so, am I (and 
millions of others like me) deserving of a secure computing environment? Yes we 
are! Do any of us have access to the development environments for the BSD 
architecture to create what we need? not really. Linux, OS X , (and god 
forbid!) windows have better track records. Still, there are those working the 
problem, but we are so damned few.

Anyway, enough of my rant. I only got involved in this conversation because 
someone else posed the question about the latest release packages for PPC (or 
the current lack of them). Ah well. Asked and answered on that point, at least.

-eric

On Apr 17, 2017, at 1:22 AM, Ben Brink wrote:

> Eric, if no one has yet offered to assist you with your project in regards to 
> openbsd and freebsd, please answer this question.  What are you trying to 
> accomplish?
> 
> I advocate for open source software and hardware and have run into 
> personality issues with others. Maybe there is yet a way to achieve your task 
> with openbsd and openfreebsd.
> 
> cheers,
> Ben

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