Pray tell, wat TI chip did it use. Or, put another way, what TI speech chip
is good?

At 02:33 PM 4/9/98 -0700, you wrote:
>Yes - there are PIC's in Microsoft's Barney Actimate robot (learning
>toy).  I actually wrote code for the darn thing - but, alas, the feature
>that I created was removed from the final production unit...  maybe
>that's not such a bad thing!
>
>In fact, there are 2 PIC's and a TI speech processor chip in each
>Barney.  If you include the external RF "puck", there are 3 PIC's...
>The guy that wrote all of the code is Harjit Singh - he's definitely
>good at it...
>
>While I'm not impressed with the (lack of) capability in final product
>(mind you, though, it's very well designed and built) - you should have
>seen the early concept prototypes - with 2.5 times as many degrees of
>freedom of movement, and lot's of other potential real-time I/O
>features...  what the generic robot could have been and what it is are
>two diametrically opposed "beasts"...  but - MS wanted the most bang per
>buck, and there was such a hard cost ceiling dictated by the SRP and
>(profit) margin requirements that they hacked and slashed the hardware
>functionality right down to the bone (snicker!).
>
>Guys - don't hold my working on it against me - after all, my "feature"
>didn't make the final unit (an whopping 25 cents extra - wee!)...
>
>Ciao,
>
>Chuck Mauro
>RAPID Engineering
>KLA-TENCOR
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Harrison Cooper [SMTP:hcooper@ES.COM]
>> Sent: Thursday, April 09, 1998 12:43 PM
>> To:   PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
>> Subject:      [OT]  OH NO!!!  Barney is PIC'ed
>>
>> Just read....that the inteactive toy Barney the Dinasour
>> is powered by a PIC!  I love you....you love me...lets
>> all use our PIC's today...
>>
>> can you tell that I have small kids?
>