DecTalk Settings from Within Speakup?

[Chime Hart]

For maybe 16years since I purchased a DecTalk U S B, many of you know I 
experience frustrations many times a day as the pitch, volume, and rate drop 
suddenly. Well, a couple of months ago, 1 of my Linux experts had an e-mail 
exchange with Kirk, who mentioned something about defalt settings. Well, I 
looked in a copy of speakup_dectlk.c, was able to see where the rate says 180, 
meanwhile we set it at 229. Or the volume which I think says 60 when we set at 
86. Those are just 2 examples. Only by jussling those insert functions to alter 
volume or pitch will put them back after a sudden drop. Some time ago we created 
an alias to reload this dectalk when it gets hozed.
/usr/bin/sudo /sbin/modprobe  -r speakup_dectlk; /usr/bin/sudo /sbin/modprobe 
speakup_dectlk; sudo cp /usr/local/bin/characters 
/sys/accessibility/speakup/i18n/
However, even altering some of those values, I would also need to know what 
replacement to send dectalk so it might `always respect my changes.
I guess David in Canada was the last person who modified these drivers. I will 
be quite honest, each time I see Okash post, I become hopeful. But now with some 
amunision from Kirk, I hope among the movers-and-shakers, maybesome sort of fix 
or even better a real U S B driver can be created.
I realize, I am only a user-and-not a programmer, but if I were to guess, most 
Speakup users are programmers. Anyway, thanks in advance, whatever any of you 
can do. I had even considered sending Kirk an audio file demonstrating these 
issues, but I haven't yet patched out of an ear-phone jack to a recorder.
Chime