Re: Votrax chip SC01/SC02

[Allen Bong <allenbsf6502@gmail.com>]

On Aug 29, 1:11 pm, "Michael J. Mahon" <mjma...@aol.com> wrote:
> Allen Bong wrote:
> > On Aug 29, 3:28 am, "Michael J. Mahon" <mjma...@aol.com> wrote:
>
> >>zwsdot...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> >>>On Aug 27, 7:13 pm, "Michael J. Mahon" <mjma...@aol.com> wrote:
>
> >>>>The SC-02, more commonly known as the SSI-263, is a phoneme- or
>
> >>>Where is the Votrax SC-02 more commonly known as the SSI-263? :)
>
> >>Votrax apparently had SSI manufacture the chip for them, and SSI
> >>took it to market as the SSI-263.  I've never seen a chip labelled
> >>SC-02 (though they may be inside Votrax products), but I've seen
> >>lots of SSI-263 chips.  There are still folks selling old stock
> >>SSI-263's.
>
> >>I have seen several SC-01's, but they don't seem to be available
> >>any more.
>
> >>>This is why the General Instruments SPO256A-AL2 allophonic speech
> >>>processor was a better pick; it had the companion CTS256A-AL2
> >>>processor IC that turned an English ASCII stream into an allophone
> >>>stream.
>
> >>Making a minimum 2-chip solution--a bad match for a microcomputer
> >>that already has a processor and memory available.
>
> >>Hmmm, no one's mentioned the TI LPC chip yet...   ;-)
>
> >>-michael
>
> >>NadaPong: Network game demo for Apple II computers!
> >>Home page:  http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/
>
> >>"The wastebasket is our most important design
> >>tool--and it's seriously underused."
>
> > In the game "Dung Beetles"  by Bob Bishops (???), he was able to
> > pronounce the phase "We've got you!" without any extra hardware.  How
> > did he do it?
>
> Check out my web page (referenced below) for a history of sound on
> 8-bit Apple II's and several programs that use the Apple speaker
> with a 5-bit software DAC to produce sounds of pretty good fidelity.
>
> Most games used the speaker in a 1-bit mode with a sample rate around
> 8-12KHz to play back "infinitely clipped" sound.  As you probably
> remember, it sounds very gravelly, and uniformly loud.
>
> SAM also uses the speaker in a "software DAC" mode to reproduce
> phonemes with reasonable fidelity.
>
> -michael
>
> NadaPong: Network game demo for Apple II computers!
> Home page:  http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/
>
> "The wastebasket is our most important design
> tool--and it's seriously underused."- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

Hi Michael,

Thanks for your great web site.  I will take a closer look on the
sound generation portion.

As for SAM I dont think it is a totally software-dependent speech
generator.  I just dug out my card and I found that there is a
AM1408N6, a 74LS273 and a 386 audio amp on it.  Isn't 1408 an 8-bit
DAC chip?

Allen