Hi: Briefly touching on your serial port problems for a minute, this is a common problem that people have been having. A fix has been in CVS for awhile and works really well for me at least. So those who have had problems, give it a shot. If you look in /proc/speakup you will see a number of files for various synth parameters. You can view the current setting by viewing the file (e.g. cat rate). Likewise, you can set a parameter by writing to the file (e.g. echo 4 >pitch). Note that you will obviously need to prepend the path if you're not in /proc/speakup (e.g. echo 4 >/proc/speakup/pitch). You will notice that there is also a subdirectory for your particular synth. This contains settings specifically for your synth. ***WARNING!*** Messing with these can radically alter the performance of your system and quite possibly cause it to crash. It is highly recommended not to mess with these settings unless you have a very clear idea about what they do. Please refer to a message Kirk posted a month or 2 ago for more information on these settings. Most people won't even need to touch these. Geoff.
