What are these items

[Atari_Only]

Cant figure out what these are. All of these plug into a joystick port except the black box.

The black box has a couple caps, resistors , diodes and a Lm324n chip. One side has a mini phono jack and the other has a joystick port.

 

The this one looks like a pen with some kind on diode on the end and a SN74LS157N chip and a resistor

 

The blue box has a mini phono plug and 2 joystick plugs. on the inside it has acoup[le parts and a SP0256A-AL2 chip.

 

If anyone can figure them out please let me know. The black box and the blue box look like the connect together with the mini phono plug.

 

Thanks AO

 

Edited June 8, 2007 by Atari_Only

[classics]

A text to speech joystick port interface with an audio amplifier for the sound output?

 

Steve

Edited June 8, 2007 by classics

[Rybags]

Some sort of A/D convertor (for sound digitizing) with joystick passthrough?

 

The chip SN74LS157N is a quad input 2 to 1 data selector according to a search. The Lm324n is a quad operational amplifier.

 

But, isn't it a lot simpler than that to do A-D on the Atari? I thought it just required connecting the source to POT through a resistor, and GND

Edited June 8, 2007 by Rybags

[Rybags]

That first one might be just some sort of homebrew light pen.

 

Thinking about it,

the second one is probably some sort of D-A converter actually. So, maybe a speaker gets plugged into it and you can use it to generate an extra voice of digitized sound.

Edited June 8, 2007 by Rybags

[re-atari]

Cant figure out what these are. All of these plug into a joystick port except the black box.

The black box has a couple caps, resistors , diodes and a Lm324n chip. One side has a mini phono jack and the other has a joystick port.

 

The this one looks like a pen with some kind on diode on the end and a SN74LS157N chip and a resistor

 

The blue box has a mini phono plug and 2 joystick plugs. on the inside it has acoup[le parts and a SP0256A-AL2 chip.

 

If anyone can figure them out please let me know. The black box and the blue box look like the connect together with the mini phono plug.

 

Thanks AO

The strange shape of the hinges on the light blue pipe thingy leads me to suspect it might be a crude form of digitizer you mount on a printer. I remember an article in a german Atari magazine around 1987, that had a very simple schematic with just a LED and a phototransistor and an accompanying listing to digitize photo's using a Star NL-10. You had to mount the 'digitizer' on top of a print head and insert the photo you wanted digitized into the drum, as if it was a sheet of blank paper. The program would take care of the digitizing process, and the movement of the print head and drum. It produced only a mediocre picture in Gr. 9, but back in the days we were happy with just about anything we could experiment with.

 

The blue box is a hardware speech synthesizer based on the General Instruments SP-0256. There were 2 versions of this IC, one (extension -AL2 like yours) puts out allophones, the other (extension -PH2) does phonemes. For speech output you needed the AL2 type. The PH2 would just not output anything audible, just noise (speaking from experience). I bought a SP-0256 back in 1986, and of course the store had ordered the wrong type (the -PH2). Luckily I could return it, as the IC had cost me an arm and a leg (around 25 US$).

The IC is quite susceptive to static electricity (CMOS), so be careful when handling it. Back then a mate of mine managed to destroy one just by picking it up. He literally saw a small spark fly from his finger to one of the pins. Enough to toast it...

Connecting this IC to a computer is very straightforward, it was designed to be connected to a parallel port. I got my idea from a UK mag called Page 6, they used the 2 joystick ports. The article also contained a type-in listing, but there are other A8 programs around that were written for this IC. Check the web for a datasheet, it will most likely also contain a list of the codes the IC accepts and the respective allophones it outputs.

Looking at your picture I see it probably has to be connected to an external amplifier. If you know your way around with electronics and a soldering iron, you might build a small LM-386 based amp and loudspeaker onboard, there is still plenty of space available.

 

The black box looks, as Rybags suggested, like either a D/A or an A/D converter of some sort. Without documentation and/or appropriate software it's pretty useless in itself...

 

re-atari

Edited June 8, 2007 by re-atari

[Rybags]

If it's a D->A converter, then it would likely be simple to program - most likely that you'd just need to output the appropriate amplitude samples on the top 4 bits of PORTA.

 

5 minute job to write a program to do that.