You have several options ... If you have a serial ports, two hardware synths are currently being made. There is Speakup support for software speech, and more coming soon. You may, or may not, be able to install with software speech. With only one computer, perhaps not. With two, however, there are solutions. You might want to use Google's advanced page to search through the archives. All the info you need has been on this list at one time or another, but putting it all together into a single message isn't something anyone has done as far as I'm aware. Nor does it appear to be something anyone is willing to do, even though the question comes up quite often. Perhaps you'll be the one to document this for the next person? After you've gathered all the data and solved it for yourself, of course. ANN writes: > Hello everyone, > > I once had a very nice Slackware installation with Speakup set up on my old > computer, which used an internal doubletalk synthesizer. well, this computer > has now gone to the great junkyard in the sky, computer heaven, wherever. > LOL! I am now using a newer machine, but without the benefit of being able > to use my internal speech card since they don't make ISA slots in computers > anymore. > > I'd like to have some Linux on this machine, but have never even begun to > play with it and any type of software speech setup. So, what I'm looking > for is advice on which distribution works best (or at all) with software > speech, and is installation by a totally blind person possible? Or, now that > I have no hardware speech, and will not be getting any, am I just completely > out of luck in the Linux department? > > Thanks much. > > ~Ann > > > > --- > avast! Antivirus: Outbound message clean. > Virus Database (VPS): 0603-0, 01/15/2006 > Tested on: 1/15/2006 4:54:40 AM > avast! - copyright (c) 1988-2005 ALWIL Software. > http://www.avast.com > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Speakup mailing list > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup -- Janina Sajka Phone: +1.240.715.1272 Partner, Capital Accessibility LLC http://www.CapitalAccessibility.Com Marketing the Owasys 22C talking screenless cell phone in the U.S. and Canada--Go to http://www.ScreenlessPhone.Com to learn more. Chair, Accessibility Workgroup Free Standards Group (FSG) janina at freestandards.org http://a11y.org