Hi all. Well, this seems strange, but the facts follow for anyone wishing to compile their own kernel and look for themselves. It turns out that in order for at least my bns to work with the latest cvs speakup and linux 2.4.19, CONFIG_SERIAL_CONSOLE needs to be configured into the kernel besides speakup. If that is not configured in, the kernel doesn't speak, and behaves strangely. I verified this by not configuring serial console support into a fresh 2.4.19 tree without speakup, and the kernel runs just fine. If you ask me, I think that more then new miscellanious devices were changed in 2.4.19. I'm specifically thinking of changes to the serial driver. Greg