All, let's start a new thread here to figure out what needs to be done with speakup. Here are my ideas and the issues I see with them: 1. What should we do with support for the internal ISA synthesizers? My thought is that these can be dropped. 2. We basically have two choices for the serial synthesizer issues. a. If we keep this code inside the kernel, the bottom line is it needs to be completely rewritten and there need to be changes made on the kernel side to make it work correctly. This will take time, and someone here will need to work closely with the kernel developers, and we'll need to find someone in the kernel community to guide us -- maybe not by writing the code for us, but at least consulting with us. b. If we move this code into user space, we can code it however we want, and that frees us from involving the kernel team. question: If we move the serial code to user space, I realize there is a concern about missing early boot messages. Would putting the user space daemon into an initramfs solve this? would you be able to start it early enough to get all of the boot messages if it was in an initramfs? William