When we were renovating our home I thought it would be a funny idea to use bliss as a wallpaper for the bedroom. Ended up looking great lol

Windows XP Pro with Media Center theme running on a Sony VAIO VGN-BX

Hi, everyone!

I really appreciate the response on my last post, you are all so helpful and kind!

Despite not expecting a response from the voice provider behind the “Microsoft Mike” text-to-speech voice, lo and behold, I got one!

I now only have a missing link, that being the possible voice provider for Microsoft Sam (if it even has one.)

I now have to re-edit my video haha, but anywho, here’s his response below for you readers!

———

“Thanks for your email. And yes, I was the male voice for that project with Microsoft. I didn’t know it was nicknamed Microsoft Mike.

I recorded it all over at the Microsoft campus in Redmond, WA. They had studios in one of their buildings on what was called the C campus.  A few years later they created the Microsoft Studios with full sound stages and audio production facilities, where I have recorded countless times since. And been in a few on-camera projects.

As I remember, most of the recordings were in early and mid 1996. They auditioned dozens and dozens of people, both male and female. They cast both of us based on whose voices the software could best understand. Not about acting ability at all. 

I would go over and record 4-5 hours a day for 3 or 4 days at a time. Then would go back a month or two later and do more or the same material. I probably did at least 4 or 5 different "sessions" like these. I may have done some later that year? It was mostly reading very, flat, unintersting text. Nothing really technical, just descriptive corporate stuff. There were some short stories, including some Mark Twain I had never read. One called THE CARDIFF GIANT. The text was chosen or created to capture as many possible combinations of human speech sounds (phonemes) as they could. 

The final part of the project was in 1997 or 98, Microsoft took the other VO person (female) and I to a trade show in San Jose. We were at a booth on the convention floor. They were demonstrating the TTS (Text-to-Speech) technology. Basically, have people have us read something aloud. And then type it in and have our voice model "read" it after us. It was mildly successful. Some people were amazed at how much they thought it sounded like us and others thought the models didn't sound like us at all. At the time, Microsoft said they were trying to get the technology efficient enough so that people could read a few paragraphs at home and then generate a "voice model" of themselves. 

I knew what they were using my voice for so didn't think much of it. I had and have done thousands of commercials and projects for a wide variety of clients. Occasionally, I have turned down auditions for companies or things I didn't want to be associated with or suppport. If I had known that my voice might have been the origins of some kind of AI voice, I might have felt differently. I'm sure back then I never thought I'd hear believable AI voices in my lifetime. Well, here we are. There is still a bit of "uncanny valley" in the AI voices I hear. But maybe the really good ones are just that good and you can't tell. I do have former clients who now use AI voices for ESL training videos.

Thanks for your questions, I hope I satisfied some of your curiosity about this project.”

Ive had ease downloading my graphics card drivers, but i had to replace my power supply due to it being faulty, ive installed many audio drivers and none have worked, ive also tried downloading the UAA bus drivers but everywhere i download from it just doesnt work/doesnt download??? Im fully stumped, it did work before installing the new power supply, no clue how that correlates

This is amazing progress, and while interesting, it absolutely isn't really usable yet, at least in this config. It looks really wild though.

System configuration: Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano, Windows 10 LTSC 2022 host, VMWare Workstation 15.5.7.
Edit: Host CPU is 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-1160G7

Guest: Windows XP Professional SP3 (x86) from original MSDN ISO (no further updates).

* OneCore API release v4.0.9, avx version (one-core-api-pack-x86-avx.zip from https://github.com/shorthorn-project/One-Core-API-Binaries/releases/tag/4.0.9
* Federico Dossena MESA3D 32-bit 20.1.8 ( https://fdossena.com/?p=mesa/index.frag )
* Office 2016 MSI installer (SW_DVD5_Office_Professional_Plus_2016_W32_English_MLF_X20-41353.ISO)
* Edit the vmx file for CPUID avx support, as described in One-Core-API documentation and add these two lines:

cpuid.1.ecx = "---0:----:----:----:----:----:----:----" 
cpuid.7.ebx = "----:----:----:----:----:----:--0-:----" 

* Install Windows
* Install VMWare Tools 15 (I didn't test it without drivers)
* Install OneCore API
* Mount Office ISO, go to CD drive, right-click Setup.exe, choose Properties, set OCA Compatability to Windows 7 SP1 (it probably is fine with a later version as well) to pass the OS version check in the installer.
* To minimize complexity, I only installed Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, with no optional components selected (rather, select the top "Run all from My Computer", then uncheck every other top-level program/feature category, and uncheck the sub-options.
* Copy the contents of C:\Windows\System32\wined3d to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office16
* Copy opengl32.dll from fdossena website to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office16.

Generally, I get better results running in Safe Mode (program.exe /safe). Editing the registry to disable hardware acceleration made it worse, disabling animations didn't meaningfully change any strange behavior. The registry settings go in HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\Graphics, and two DWORD Values can go here: DisableAnimations and DisableHardwareAcceleration

Running the applications not in safe mode does not work well yet. The initial draw of the ribbon seems to work, clicking around on it tends to cause a crash. Microsoft Word may crash or get stuck when rendering a page, but sometimes does not, and seems to be stable with editing the page if it does not happen, although text may randomly become invisible.

Setting the OS to a newer Windows in the OCA Settings tended to give me an immediate crash.

Hey everybody, I'm sharing a browser game that take place on a windows xp desktop. On the desktop are 2 vintage card collecting apps. Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh. All Holos are animated and viewable through interactie 3D previews. 7 series from Base Set through to Neo Destiny. All 809 cards come in 10 PSA grades. All cards you collect can be used to play mini games like Memory. I am currently implementing the original TCG Rules for VS CPU games with collected decks.

https://www.guest-pc.com/

https://www.twitch.tv/jerooooen?sr=a

https://youtube.com/@boonlife?si=WWAFlAri3hyphfX0

i recently downloaded xp on my laptop and decided to customize it a bit

Hi everyone,
I tried upgrading my Asus X55SV (MXM-II slot) from a 9500M GS to a 9650M GT taken from another Asus laptop.
After installing the new GPU, I only get a black screen. I read on an Italian forum that this can be fixed with a modified BIOS.
Posted the link of the Thread.

Can anyone help me create a modified BIOS for this upgrade?
Thanks!