Hi! >>>>> "OPS" == Owen Patrick Smith <ender3rd at WPI.EDU> writes: OPS> Well the device doesn't seem to have been opened. Did you run $ OPS> mknod -c /dev/usrdev c 252 0 before running middleware Yes! That > was my mistake! Thanks! It's talking now. But it seems to me that speakup keymap does not work. While configuring the kernel i answered 'yes' to use speakup keymap by default. But it does not work. Then i tried loading manually speakupmap.map found in the archive, bot loadkeys outputs a lot of error messages and refuses to load the keymap. I tried to replace any symbolic descriptions in speakupmap.map with digital ones found in Keymap Tutorial but that text does not have all the commands. What else can i do? And one more question: is it possible to control speech rate and volume from within speakup while it works with Festival? Thanks in advance, Sergey.