At 01:08 11/12/98 +0000, ard_at_p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) wrote:
>> Curiously enough, the text-to-speech capabilities of this machine sound
>> awfully close to the speech-sound pack I have for my CoCo's... methinks
>> it's based on the same chipset, as they're roughly the same era.
>
>Could well be. There were a pair of chips from GI - one was the SPO256
>which was a speech synthesiser chip, and the other was the CTS256 which
>was a PIC7000 (TMS7000-a-like), I think, programmed with the
>text-to-speech algorithm. The Speech-sound pack for the Coco used a
>microcontroller (I forget which) with much the same algorithm, but also
>with commands to control an AY3-891x sound chip.
These chips (the SPO256-AL2 and the CTS256A-AL2) seem really hard to find
these days, but I've found a supplier of them if anyone is interested. A
U.S. company called SMC Electronics, based in Brockton, MA, has the
SPO256-AL2 for $US5.00 and the CTS256A-AL2 for $US7.50 (both include
specification and application sheets).
SMC Electronics web page is
http://personal.tmlp.com/SMCONE/
The chips are listed on
http://personal.tmlp.com/SMCONE/IC.HTM
Regards,
| Scott McLauchlan |E-Mail: scott_at_cts.canberra.edu.au |
| Network Services Team |Phone : +61 2 6201 5544 (Ext.5544)|
| Client Services Division |Post : University of Canberra, |
| University of Canberra, AUSTRALIA | ACT, 2601, AUSTRALIA. |
Received on Thu Dec 10 1998 - 21:47:52 GMT