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Re: Teleport use of Votrax speech synthesizer - how to get it to work?
On Tuesday, November 13, 2012 12:31:54 PM UTC-6, BLuRry wrote:
> On Thursday, November 8, 2012 11:47:33 PM UTC-6, Hot Rod wrote:
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> > Hi,
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> > Long story short - I ended up looking a bit at the game Teleport, by Mike Abbott and published by Cavalier Computer, 1982. Recognizing that Mike Abbott's other games had secret keys in them, and not seeing Teleport on my list, I thought I'd poke around in it.
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> > I did find that it does have a few. But what I also learned is that apparently this game is meant to use something called a Votrax speech synthesizer (best I can tell is that this was some sort of phoneme-based speech chip). The interesting thing is that the phoneme text and the code to play the text is present, but I don't know what to get it to play through. AppleWin and Mockingboard emulation doesn't seem to be enough. What would this have played through in 1982?
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> > Some of the secret keys are for playing secret messages; I can read the phoneme text for them in the code, but it would be neat to be able to play them (some look humorous). I can't think of any other secret keys like these, that lead to audio messages. There are also regular game messages to be played too.
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> > Seems like a Mockingboard would be the nearest thing. Any ideas on how to map it in?
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> > ]HR
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> Well, nevermind... found a hi-res decap photo here:
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> http://www.visual6502.org/images/pages/Silicon_Systems_SSI_263P_die_shots.html
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> So it's possible to extract the rom from the image. looks like 29 bits wide by 66 (or so) rows -- that would be the phonenme characteristics.
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> -B
I was off a little... 64 rows (one per phoneme I'd imagine) and 27 bits across. I enhanced the rom and color coded the blobs to see the data better. Here's the rom decoded, though it might be flipped 180 degrees the wrong way (so the last row might be phoneme #0, etc). If the blobs are 1 and the absence of a blob is zero then this is the SSI-263 rom decoded:
101000011000101000001000011
111100111001110001011000000
111100111000111010010001001
111100111000110011000010011
111100011001010011001001000
111100111001110001011000001
111100111000110001010011011
111100111000101000010000001
111100111000001001011001010
111100111000001001001000010
111100111100000001000001001
111100111100000001001001010
111100011101001011000001011
111100010101011011011001011
111100010101001011011001011
111100010101011011001011001
111100010101001011010000001
111100110000001001001001011
111100110000001001000011011
111100110100000001010000000
111100110000010011011000001
111100110000011001000010000
111100110000000010001000011
111100100000100011000001001
111100110100010011000001000
111100110101000001011001010
111100010101001011010001010
111100010100011011000011010
111100100000011001001001000
111100100000000000001001011
111100100000100000011000010
111100010001011010011001001
111100010001100011011010011
111100110000110001000001011
111100110000101001000010011
111100110000000000001001001
011100110000100000010000011
011100111000100001000000011
111100111000000010011000001
011011010010001100010100000
010011011010101101000100010
011010011010000000011000001
101100011001101010001000011
001100111001101010001010011
101011011000101000001000011
001011011000101000001000011
101100011001101000101000111
110001010000100100011011001
110011010010110100010100010
111001011000100101011010010
111010011010100101011000010
111000010010000010011011010
111010010010000000011001010
110000010000110101011010011
110010011000001101000000001
111000110000000010110001110
111000111000100000100001100
111000011001110001101000100
111000111000001001001000011
111000011001000010001001000
111000110000010010010001011
111000111000000011000000010
111000010001011011011010010
111000110000100001000000011
Given the rest of the data sheet and a more careful study of where the rom sits in the chip it should be possible to match up each bit column with the registers/filters that the bits control to produce somewhat of a better simulated ssi-263 sound. It will not be possible to produce a 100% accurate reproduction since the chip synth is analog, but hey this is a start...