Back in the early 80s I built a small board using the SPO256A-AL2 made by=20
General Instruments and the companion CTS256A-AL2, also by General=20
Instruments.  Feed the CTS256A-AL2 ASCII text and it fed allophones to the=
=20
SPO256A-AL2, which output a speech signal that could be amplified.  The pai=
r=20
was true text-to-speech.  Don't have a working circuit anymore - sold it=20
years ago - just have one more set of the two major chips and crystals need=
ed=20
to build another one.  The circuit hooked directly to a parallel printer=20
port.  The spec sheets show the schematic needed to do this with full flow=
=20
control.  And an optional 2k input buffer using a 2kx8 memory chip.  Serial=
=20
interface too if you like.  It was a lot of fun at the time.  As I recall=20
(thru 40 years of dim memory), a mechanical sound to the voice like Robby t=
he=20
Robot with a hint of a Russian accent.  Put "COPY WARGAMES.TXT LPT2:" in th=
e=20
autoexec.bat file (board plugged into LPT2) and the machine came up with=20
"Hello, Jim, would you like to play a game?"

Jim H






Received from Mark Hanchey at 02/03/12 03:39 UTC:

>I knew microchip had been a maker of chips for a long time but I didn't=20
>realize how long until today. I once  owned a tandy color computer in the=
=20
>80's and bought the speech and sound pack for it. Today I was thinking abo=
ut=20
>the system and the sound pack and decided to dig around for info about tha=
t=20
>pack . The pack expanded the system to do text to speech and also extra=20
>audio using the ay series of sound chips.  To my surprise I found that the=
=20
>micro in that pack and the sound allophone chip were made by microchip. Th=
e=20
>part numbers were : SP0256B  - Narrator speech processor - text to speech=
=20
>algorithm included, 3.12Mhz PIC7040 - 4kb rom, 2k ram, 1.78Mhz
>
>The site here has the datasheets:
>ftp://maltedmedia.com/coco/MANUALS/TANDY/HARDWARE/TANDY_HW/PAK/SPEECHSOUND=
/
>
>
>Anyone know why microchip didn't continue to support text to speech as I=20
>don't really see any of their current products supporting that area. I jus=
t=20
>found it interesting that all the time growing up I was using a pic chip a=
nd=20
>never knew it . I would really love it if microchip produced a newer versi=
on=20
>of the chip, I could see lots of potential for such a chip.  That or just =
a=20
>general sound chip like the AY-3 series yamaha did would be useful  for=20
>function generators and sound effects.
>
>Mark


--=20
http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive
View/change your membership options at
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist
.