Hi: Firstly, a Dec PC is not a Dec express or external, and therefore there's no real reason why any of the commands have to be the same. Secondly, you're putting another pipe between speakup and the synth. Probably the reason why shut up takes 20 years to work is because of the buffering by your comms package. Speakup is going to dump all it can in one shot if it doesn't get told not to by your synth, so when you hit the shut up command, speakup will send it then, not several seconds ago when the text you're listening to was sent. I agree with Kerry. Run a serial console and you'll be just fine. Linux rarely crashes anyway, so it's not a real hassle. I used a serial port login, not even a console, for 10 months before my synth got supported, and rarely if ever had trouble with it. Either run a serial console or use a normal serial login and edit inittab to dump system messages to your serial port. But a serial console will probably be just as simple to implement. Oh and invest in a decent UART otherwise you'll drive yourself nuts. BTW: There is a direct interface to the synth via loadspk I think, but I can't remember the command. Geoff. -- Geoff Shang <gshang10 at scu.edu.au> ICQ number 43634701
