Actually, loading speaking LILO was very simple. I just added the line serial=0,9600n8 at the top section of the syslinux.cfg and it went off talking. However, this didn't resolve the problem of Speakup not detecting the synthesizer. Kirk, perhaps you'd have some interesting ideas? Again, below my final syslinux.cfg after correcting some errors: default linux serial=0,9600n8 prompt 1 timeout 600 display boot.msg F1 boot.msg F2 general.msg F3 expert.msg F4 kickit.msg F5 param.msg F7 snake.msg label linux kernel vmlinuz append initrd=initrd.img local label text kernel vmlinuz append console=ttyS0 append initrd=initrd.img local text label rescue kernel vmlinuz append rescue label expert kernel vmlinuz append expert initrd=initrd.img local label ks kernel vmlinuz append ks initrd=initrd.img local
