speakup success

[John G. Heim]

About 5 years ago, I started talking about trying to get speakup working on 
a soekris computer. This is a small computer a little bigger than a VHS tape 
designed for embedded systems or for people to build their own wireless 
access point.  The cool thing about it is that the BIOS is accessible via a 
serial console. Cost is about $200.

Anyway, I finally got it to work. Actually, it's easy enough  with the right 
hardware. The problem was that the soekris I have has only 1 USB port. I 
needed a USB keyboard with an extra USP port for a USB headset. I bought one 
a couple of weeks ago.

I installed debian lenny on it a few months ago. It has no CD or floppy 
drive  but as I said, the BIOS is accessible via a serial console. SO I 
configured a PXE server and did a serial console install of debian lenny.

Today I installed the debian lenny speakup-modules package, grabbed the 
espeakup package from squeeze, and BINGO! Speech!

I am not sure exactly what use this thing is. It has 3 100 Mb ethernet 
ports, 2 serial ports one of which I have configured for an external modem. 
I was planning on taking it with me when I went to a resort last summer. 
Turns out the cottages didn't have land phone lines.

Anyway, I was originally planning on using it to check network connections. 
I guess I'll do that.