gentoo dropping speakup support

[Travis Siegel]

Doug.
Your suggestion of having a small installation on the machine is a  
good one, and it probably would work.  However, this assumes you  
already know what the problem is that needs fixed.  Without having  
access to the actual boot messages (not just the ones you see while  
booting into your sandbox as it were) you'll never be able to solve   
any major problems that crop up in regards to the main system.
it is however, not a bad idea, since it would allow some degree of  
free usage w/o sighted assistance on simple fixes.  it wouldn't  
address the  main issue though.
And, in any case, it's functionally equivalent to the original  
suggestion of using a live cd to boot and work on fixing the issues  
from there.