Question about the Speech Synthesizer Unit

[xabin]

So, after watching an Ashens video, again, which shows one of them, I had to wonder, what's with the flip-up lid on the Speech Synthesizer Unit? What was it used for, and what could be inserted into it, if anything? It just seems odd that a flap would be built into one of these things.

[tschak909]

TI had originally intended for ROM cartridges with additional speech data. This did not pan out.

-Thom

 

[digdugnate]

The original intent was upgradeable speech with mini-cartridges.  Most synths don't have the ports for them. 

[+OLD CS1]

We (and by "we" I mean "someone other than me") should add this to the FAQ.  It gets asked enough.

[pixelpedant]

And even had they ever been mass produced, they would have been rather pointless.  Given that external speech patterns (i.e., ones not stored in the speech ROM) could be used, and even in BASIC were supported by CALL SAY via Speech Editor from the get-go.  The only benefit would be an ease-of-use benefit to end users without the means to compose their own new patterns.  Which was a problem Terminal Emulator II solved by adding text-to-speech.

 

But TI was evidently very sold on "solid state cartridges" being the solution to everything, from their 99/4 promo materials.  So it's no surprise they tried to make speech a "solid state cartridge" technology too. 

[Casey]

33 minutes ago, OLD CS1 said:

We (and by "we" I mean "someone other than me") should add this to the FAQ.  It gets asked enough.

It's already in there.

[+OLD CS1]

55 minutes ago, Casey said:

It's already in there.

[+arcadeshopper]

[+OLD CS1]

[JB]

The real purpose of the flap is so you can put a hand on it and make it open and close while it talks. 's what I did as a kid.

[+OLD CS1]

5 hours ago, JB said:

The real purpose of the flap is so you can put a hand on it and make it open and close while it talks. 's what I did as a kid.

Did it say "butter" or "parkay"?

 

 

[HOME AUTOMATION]

The future of speech synthesis...

[digdugnate]

The flap is clearly to put your weed in!

 

 

[Atarian7]

Police officers enter.   "There's no weed in there!"

 

[matthew180]

On 10/21/2022 at 8:11 PM, digdugnate said:

Most synths don't have the ports for them.

 

I have never seen (photo, or otherwise) any speech synth that *does* have the ROM port (not the lib, but the actual internal ROM plug).  Do we know for a fact that any version of the speech synth was actually made with a ROM port, or was the idea dropped before any speech synth PCBs were produced?

[+OLD CS1]

3 minutes ago, matthew180 said:

 

I have never seen (photo, or otherwise) any speech synth that *does* have the ROM port (not the lib, but the actual internal ROM plug).

Someone posted a photo of one in this very forum!

[+arcadeshopper]

53 minutes ago, matthew180 said:

 

I have never seen (photo, or otherwise) any speech synth that *does* have the ROM port (not the lib, but the actual internal ROM plug).  Do we know for a fact that any version of the speech synth was actually made with a ROM port, or was the idea dropped before any speech synth PCBs were produced?

I posted one.. (digging)

 

 

[+Ksarul]

12 hours ago, matthew180 said:

 

I have never seen (photo, or otherwise) any speech synth that *does* have the ROM port (not the lib, but the actual internal ROM plug).  Do we know for a fact that any version of the speech synth was actually made with a ROM port, or was the idea dropped before any speech synth PCBs were produced?

I received one as a surprise bonus in an auction I won a few years ago, and several folks here on the forum also have one. There are actually two different revisions of Speech Synthesizers with the connector, using different styles of connector cables but otherwise identical.

[matthew180]

Well look at that, it does exist!  Now a bunch of questions come to mind:

 

* Do we know a date or serial number range where they removed the connector?

* Has anyone taken theirs apart to get some detailed photos?

* Are there schematics for this version?

* Were any of the plug-in ROM module produced?

* Does anyone have a speech ROM module?

 

Wondering about the design to have the socket on the module instead of in the synth (looking at the photo above, it appears to be a PCB edge to receive a module).  Extra component and cost for each module.  The finance team probably did not like that at all.

[+FarmerPotato]

Look at the Speak  and Spell design. (Just a card edge on the main PCB?) A kid slides in the little orange module, which has only a narrow slot exposed. Think kid-proof. 
 

Ditto for all other speech toys (I mean educational product.  The Touch and Tell modules are the same idea. Need to open some modules when I get home.

The schematic for the speech synthesizer port is simple. Somewhere here in this forum… it’s marked “proposed” though. 

 

The VSM (ROM)  needs 8 pins. 4 address/data Nybble , CE,  I0, I1 and CLK. Oh yeah VSS and VCC.  CE is tied active. There are 7 traces to the built-VSMs (piggybacked) which branch off to the external connector. 
An external VSM would have to have a higher address in its mask.
 

Another mask option was for CE positive or negative (reuse the base addresses in a second set.) 

(Electronics Goldmine has unknown VSMs, the 6100s or 61002  maybe for the 5220. Speech roulette!)

 

Need to open some modules up when I get home. Should be more photos on Datamath though. 

You can see some BOM cost reviews in places like the 99/4B and QI scans. If I’m back at SMU  , I’ll check for that sort of thing in the speech synthesizer folders. 
 

[wierd_w]

Last I looked at my speech, there is clearly a neat row of tinned over thru-holes where the feature is supposed to go.  It's just not populated.

 

an interesting solution could possibly be put there, and on the sideport data connector, that basically houses an addressable SRAM into which speech samples can be loaded, and then handled by the speech unit. Say with CRU writes. This would put it outside the normal RAM area, and allow a lot of use out of the speech without sacrificing system memory to use CALL SAY.

 

There is ample realestate inside the speech enclosure for such a thing.  As demonstrated with the TIPI for the speech enclosure, a microSD card could even sit there (in the door), for disk based samples.

 

It's a missed opportunity in the modern upgrade realm, imo.  The speech really could be abused in some clever ways as an additional sound source. LPC can do much more than voice.

[apersson850]

I envision the game MASH 4077: "I can hear incoming chopters!" flaff-flaff-flaff

[+OLD CS1]

3 hours ago, apersson850 said:

I envision the game MASH 4077: "I can hear incoming chopters!" flaff-flaff-flaff

 

[+FarmerPotato]

On 10/25/2022 at 9:46 AM, matthew180 said:

Well look at that, it does exist!  Now a bunch of questions come to mind:

 

* Do we know a date or serial number range where they removed the connector?

* Has anyone taken theirs apart to get some detailed photos?

* Are there schematics for this version?

* Were any of the plug-in ROM module produced?

* Does anyone have a speech ROM module?

 

Wondering about the design to have the socket on the module instead of in the synth (looking at the photo above, it appears to be a PCB edge to receive a module).  Extra component and cost for each module.  The finance team probably did not like that at all.

 

Here's the Speech Synth schematic from the C.B. Wilson papers.    (The one I saw in the TI archives, SMU,  is not this complete. But the expansion connector is the same.)

 

speech_synth_1980.pdf

[dphirschler]

I am thinking, instead of speech, additional sound capability would maybe be possible.  Different wavforms (triangle, sawtooth, etc) or maybe more channels?

Edited November 12, 2022 by dphirschler