Re: Apple II Sound

[dastar@crl.com (Sam Ismail)]

Derek Peschel (dpeschel@u.washington.edu) wrote:
: In article <333e0f4a.1509652@news.magna.com.au>,
: Dave <deth@magna.com.au> wrote:

: >Just wondering if anyone apart from me ever had a speech card with a
: >program called S.A.M.?? You could full on type whole sentences in and
: >SAM would say the words. Sorta like the computer in WarGames.

: S.A.M. actually works without any card whatever, just software.  I was very
: impressed to find that that's possible.  It sounds grainy but understandable.

: Didn't I read in c.s.a2 that the card was pretty worthless?

The card was ot necessary for SAM to function.  It was just an A/D converter
so you could pipe the sound to an external speaker.  I have one and it
makes a nice collectible and that's it.

SAM was a pretty amazing program for its time.  Imagine, speech synthesis
on an Apple ][ in 1983.  Cool.  My cousin and I figured out the phonetic
rules on it and were able to make it talk really good, and even got it
to speak foreign languages.

I also figured out the speech synthesis engine and would include it in
programs I would write for school and other things.  It was cool.  You
could call the engine right from your BASIC programs so you could
incorporate speech.  Neat.

: And I think there was a Commodore 64 version.  Has anyone ever used that?

I played with an Atari 800 version that sounded better than the Apple,
because Atari's have a sound chip.  It just sounded less "grainy".

-- 

Sam
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Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass