Re: Echo II emulation?

[winston19842005 <bjjlyates@NOSPAMbellsouth.net>]

On 1/25/10 4:00 PM, in article
deacf181-3b8c-4e46-98b1-b181a1d662cc@p6g2000vbl.googlegroups.com, "BLuRry"
<brendan.robert@gmail.com> wrote:

> 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!  :-)
> 
>

Well, MESS and MAME are related, right? The TI-99 version of MESS supports a
TMS5200 speech chip, IIRC, and it wouldn't be pre-recorded WAV files.