speakup & USB headset

[John G. Heim]

I have this small computer. Its like a predessor  to the Raspberry Pi. 
It has no sound card but I used to get speech with it via a USB headset. 
I use this computer  for debugging network problems in my building. If 
someone says they can't get a network connection, I can check the jack 
by plugging this thing in nd running diagnostics. But when I had to do 
that yesterday,  speakup wouldn't speak most of the time. The only time 
I got speech was when I pressed the caps lock or num lock keys. Then I'd 
hear "Caps lock on" or "Caps lock off". So it seemed speakup was working 
to some degree. I've never seen speakup partially work like that.

This machine is running debian squeeze. I did a dist-upgrade just to 
make sure everything was up to date as it can be given that I'm still on 
squeeze. I don't think I want to try wheezy on this thing. I also tried 
removing and re-installing espeakup.  I also noticed that espeak seems 
to funtion normally. I can say, "espeak hello" and it says hello.

Any ideas?

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John G. Heim, 608-263-4189, jheim at math.wisc.edu