Re: Votrax chip SC01/SC02

[heuser.marcus@freenet.de]

On Aug 29, 7:03 am, Allen Bong <allenbsf6...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Can the IIgs sound chip be programmed to produce speech?  I have the
> Music Synthesizer card which has 3 GI AY8910 chips and a 6522 VIA on
> it and I was wondering whether it can be programmed to produce simple
> speech.

Only in the way Michael described. To get "high fidelity" speech on
Apple IIs (or other 8/16 bit computers) you need dedicated hardware.
SAM is great but eats up practically all CPU cycles - on the C64 it
even switches video DMA off to get the maximum.

By the way: A nice Apple II soundcard to tinker with is the AE Phasor.
It offers 4 AY8913 and up to two SSI 263 chips, some software to
try it out and a good manual. Sadly games seldomly support it directly
and programs that support the speech synthesizers are rare.

The card is also rare and expensive (on ebay, at least) but can be
worth it if you don't want two cards for speech and sound.

bye
Marcus