Re: Teleport use of Votrax speech synthesizer - how to get it to work?

[Michael J. Mahon <mjmahon@aol.com>]

Hot Rod <hotrod.apple2@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Friday, November 9, 2012 2:45:00 AM UTC-6, Michael J. Mahon wrote:
>> The SC-01 chip used in the first Sound-Speech Mockingboards is the direct
>> 
>> lineal descendant of the Votrax synthesizers. 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Like most phoneme-based speech synthesizers, it accepts a stream of bytes
>> 
>> (6-bits of which are the phoneme code). The chip signals when it is ready
>> 
>> for the next phoneme. 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> You'll have to take a look at the code to determine how the program expects
>> 
>> to communicate with the synthesizer. The original Votrax was a serial
>> 
>> interface. The Mockingboard provides access indirectly through a port of a
>> 
>> 6522 VIA. 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> It shouldn't be to hard to retarget the synthesis code. 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> I don't recall whether the phoneme codes were actually the same from Votrax
>> 
>> to SC-01, but it's probably no more than a mapping through a table to match
>> 
>> them up. ;-)
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> -michael - NadaNet 3.1 and AppleCrate II: http://home.comcast.net/~mjmahon
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> From what I've scraped online, it did seem like the chip had made its way
> to the first Mockingboard (or one much like it), so there's a least a
> chance of getting this to work.
> 
> I think what would be helpful is an example of phonmeme text being fed to
> a Mockingboard.  Then I could see about stitching in the init and use of
> it within Teleport. But the Mockingboard examples I can think of are all sounds or music.
> 
> Anyone know of any speech use examples for Mockingboard?  (I never had a
> MB back in the day, so using AppleWin emulating one is the first time
> I've even been able to hear what I missed.)
> 
> ]HR

Any of the Mockingboard factory demo disks had speech capability, so I'd
take a look at one of them to see how they drove the SC-01. 

Later versions used the SSI 263 (otherwise known as the SC-02), and that
chip was slightly different, with different bugs. ;-)

-michael - NadaNet 3.1 and AppleCrate II: http://home.comcast.net/~mjmahon