MARDIS ORAC speech synth / communication aid

via this auction

"This is for a MARDIS ORAC speech synth / communications aid. I think it was designed as a tool for disabled people to communicate by pressing buttons in a stephen hawkins kind of manner, and i do know that these things are obscenely expensive to buy, but i have no idea if this one is working properly or even at all. This could possibly be down to the fact that i have no idea how it should operate but all i know is that you plug in an external 9v power supply, one of the keyboard LED's lights up and some blocks appear on the screen. Other than that its a mystery to me, maybe you need some kind of overlay in the front before it'll do anything, or possibly you need to charge an internal bettery.

Theres a lot more information on this thing at the Mardis website here http://www.lancs.ac.uk/depts/mardis/products/orac.html"