About 5 years ago, I started talking about trying to get speakup working on a soekris computer. This is a small computer a little bigger than a VHS tape designed for embedded systems or for people to build their own wireless access point. The cool thing about it is that the BIOS is accessible via a serial console. Cost is about $200. Anyway, I finally got it to work. Actually, it's easy enough with the right hardware. The problem was that the soekris I have has only 1 USB port. I needed a USB keyboard with an extra USP port for a USB headset. I bought one a couple of weeks ago. I installed debian lenny on it a few months ago. It has no CD or floppy drive but as I said, the BIOS is accessible via a serial console. SO I configured a PXE server and did a serial console install of debian lenny. Today I installed the debian lenny speakup-modules package, grabbed the espeakup package from squeeze, and BINGO! Speech! I am not sure exactly what use this thing is. It has 3 100 Mb ethernet ports, 2 serial ports one of which I have configured for an external modem. I was planning on taking it with me when I went to a resort last summer. Turns out the cottages didn't have land phone lines. Anyway, I was originally planning on using it to check network connections. I guess I'll do that.
