Re: Observation about group

[Stephen Shaw <xstephenx@apple2.org.za>]

On Sat, 15 Dec 2001 06:04:43 GMT, Jeff Blakeney wrote:

> On Fri, 14 Dec 2001 17:21:47 -0600, Roy Miller <millers@inetnebr.com>
> wrote:
>
>>I've often wondered why a computer couldn't have a speech recognition card
that
>
>>was in essence a second computer dedicated solely to interpreting the speech.
I
> F
>>the total resources of, say, a pentium 100 were devoted to speech
recognition,
>>could it do the job? And then send the code to the OS of the host computer to
>>perform the task commanded?
>
> That's exactly how the speech recognition card that Steve Circia
> designed and published in Byte magazine in his column Circia's Circuit
> Cellar worked.  I've always wanted to track down that article and
> build one of those cards and maybe expand on it.  It is a very simple
> design in that you simply record yourself saying something and it
> compares whatever it hears with what it has recorded.  It could record
> up to 64 samples and when it found a match it would send a single
> character or string to the Apple II so you could say catalog and it
> would send the text "CATALOG" followed by carriage return to the Apple
> II.

There was the Votrax (or Vortrax) I saw one in operation at a computer faire
in the early 1980s. I pronounced the letter as you pressed the key except for
the backspace key when it said "Oh shit" I never found out if it could be 
programmed that way or if the card left the factory programmed that way.

Is there any way of building any of the Circuit Cellar stuff without having
to get specialised parts from a dedicated supplier? I have 2 or 3 old Bytes
featuring CC but you always had to order the printed circuit boards/EPROMs 
and preprogrammed chips from a dedicated supplier. The EPROM dumps or 
pcb etching patterns were not supplied in the magazine.
 

-- 
....CChheecckk yyoouurr dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh....