1980s Echo PC serial port voice synthesizer

[donfroula]

An early 1980s Echo PC voice synthesizer box with serial port interface. You simply send text to the box over the serial port and it speaks it. I plan on connecting it to my IMSAI 8080 kit when assembled. It should very easy to interface.

The box was a gift from a blind friend, who used it on an early MSDOS PC. It uses the same TI chip as the old "Speak and Spell" toys from the 1980s. I managed to find documentation on the control codes needed to vary a the voice in interesting ways.

Don

IMG_0683.mp4

[monraet]

Noticed there is a lot of "Speak and Spell" toys on eBay. Maybe the TI chip and support chips may be salvageable to make a voice interface for the IMSAI

[donfroula]

The chips were amazing, but they needed a host CPU to manage the functions and provide the serial interface. They have a text-to-speech mode, but also a phoneme mode that supports more sophisticated speech generation. The voice is a bit rough! Lowering the pitch emulates the War Games voice a bit better.

I fed it the final speech from "Colossus: The Forbin Project" movie. Kind of chilling!

[inerlogic]

of all the emulated devices, clearly there was a mis-step in leaving out the speech synthesizer..... Yes Joshua..... i would like to play a game.....