Dectalk express with speakup as modules?

[Adam Myrow]

I have found that as of yesterday, the Dectalk Express driver is 
completely broken.  I installed Slackware 12.1, and tried compiling a 
custom kernel.  When I booted with this kernel, the Dectalk USB I have set 
to serial mode was found, but speech was unusable.  An occasional letter 
or word would be spat out randomly, and the computer slowed to a crawl. 
When I hit print screen to kill Speakup, I heard "you."  About 30 seconds 
later, I heard "killed."  It took another 30 seconds before I heard 
"Speakup."  So, I reverted back to the stock speakup.s, and patched in the 
older release of Speakup that it came with.  This was dated 4/16/08.  This 
version works, and finally fixes the long-standing bug where words with 
apostrophes were pronounced as if the apostrophe was a space.  However, 
the speakupconf script doesn't work with this version, and it is 
impossible to modify the characters file which lists pronunciations of 
characters.  Still, it's a lot better than nothing, and at least the rate 
and pitch can be changed by writing to those virtual files.  Since there 
is so much development going on, I think I'll stick with this version for 
awhile.