trouble shooting dectalk express

[Glenn Ervin at Home]

GWmicro may have some DecTalk power supplies.
I was looking into this when I thought mine was bad, as it was doing the
same thing.
I found it to be just a bad power supply connection, and a wiggle of the
wires made it work.
But I was prepared to find another power supply, and cut the cable off of
the DecTalk power supply and match the polarity and re-connect the wire to
another power supply of the same voltage.
You can still get the polarity from a dead power supply, as it will only
read in Millie amps, but if it is reversed from the cables on the V O M, it
will read as a negative value.
Once you cut the cable off, if you lose track of which wire came from the
plus or minus on the power supply, you can use the ohm meter of the V O M to
determine which part of the plug matches which wire.  Total resistance (0
ohms) means the wire you are connected to at one end does not connect to the
part of the plug you are testing.
The plug on the DecTalk seems to be different from most, and make sure if it
is post positive or not before cutting off the wire.
Glenn

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "cris" <filastin48 at hotmail.com>
To: <speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Thursday, July 15, 2004 6:45 AM
Subject: trouble shooting dectalk express


Hi folks,
My dectalk express suddenly stopped working.  When I turn it on it gives the
message that battery is low, and then it starts making weird noise and stops
talking.  It gives this message even when it is connected to external power.
In the past, the message i got was "dectalk express is ready, external power
on."  Could this mean that the battery needs to be replaced, or is it that
the power adapter is no longer working?  Does dectalk express work on
external power alone, without battery?  If the battery is to be replaced,
can I get it replaced in a regular store, or it can only be replaced by
dectalk?
I would appreciate any help.
Cheers,
Cris

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