off topic but urgent

[Ben van Poppel]

Hi all,

I've just purchased a Toshiba Satellite 1710 laptop, and, due to a
gross misunderstanding on my part (being totally out of touch with
laptop developments and ignorant of USB altogether) found out too late
that the thing's got no bloody serial port, only a USB port. I can
still return the thing if all else fails, but has anybody had
experience with USB to serial adaptors under Linux? In particular, has
anybody managed to get serial speech devices talking under either
Emacspeak or Speakup using such an adaptor? 

Any help at all would be greatly appreciated, as I need to work out
whether I should get this box working or swap it. 

Thanks in advance.

Regards,
Ben
-- 
'"Down there," he said, "are people who will follow any dragon,
worship any god, ignore any inequity. All out of a kind of hum-drum
everyday badness. Not the really high creative loathsomeness of the
great sinners, but a sort of mass-produced darkness of the soul. Sin,
you might say, without a trace of originality. They accept evil, not
because they say yes, but because they don't say no."'

(Terry Pratchett, Guards Guards, P302)

-- 
'"Down there," he said, "are people who will follow any dragon,
worship any god, ignore any inequity. All out of a kind of hum-drum
everyday badness. Not the really high creative loathsomeness of the
great sinners, but a sort of mass-produced darkness of the soul. Sin,
you might say, without a trace of originality. They accept evil, not
because they say yes, but because they don't say no."'

(Terry Pratchett, Guards Guards, P302)