Re: Echo II emulation?

[BLuRry <brendan.robert@gmail.com>]

On Jan 22, 6:04 pm, dog_...@macgui.com (D Finnigan) wrote:
> mmphosis wrote:
>
> > 2.  It would be a leap to emulate the echo cards as the details of how
> > the actual Echo card works would need some research, and it sounds
> > like this product may still be sold which brings in copyright issues,
> > and possibly patent issues.  The MAME project has emulation for
> > TMS5200/5220 chipset.   The Apple II emulator software developers have
> > made leaps like emulating various Apple II hardware cards in software
> > such as the Z-80, mockingboard, uthernet, etc.  So, yes definitely
> > possible.  Legal?  I don't know.
>
> Work-alike software should be legal, as long as the exact Echo code isn't
> used. It's the same situation as distributing Apple II ROMs with emulators.
> Assuming that the Echo card does have a ROM, then legally, someone could
> write software which emulates the Echo, but you would need a physical copy
> of the card, and thus, the ROM.
>
> But I'm not a lawyer.

I think that there is a lot of source in Mame for simulating the TI
speech chip (e.g. Wizards of Wor) but all of these efforts mostly look
for common parameters and playback pre-recorded wav files.  I have the
tech specs for the TI (votrax) chip, but it's not exactly as
straightforward as emulating something like the AY sound chip -- more
involved and requires DSP programming skills to implement filters,
inflection, etc.  Otherwise the chip itself is very much black-box and
the docs only explain so much of how it works.

Putting that aside, I have a question of practicality for you: Do the
text talkers on the apple 2 only work with text-based programs?  Or
are there some programs that might be graphically-oriented that have a
direct tie-in to the Echo card?   If the applications you want to
support are text-based, maybe it is feasible for the emulator to offer
a mode where it can track changes to text pages and re-code those into
text strings that can be passed off to the host OS to speak.  This
isn't exactly a wasted effort for sighted folks to work on, since this
functionality could also be used to copy/paste words from the emulated
screen.  Comeon, admit it sounds neat!  :-)

-Brendan