26 Jul
2018
26 Jul
'18
2:03 p.m.
I came across Votrax at University of Illinois, where they attached Votrax boxes with that
chip in it to the PLATO terminals. You could write programs ("lessons") that
would talk to you, and the software would generate the correct data stream. It
couldn't handle straight English because of the spelling complications, but there was
a semi-phonetic English notation that would work. It did handle German, Esperanto,
Spanish, and IPA. For a test case, someone fed it the German sentence "Auf den
Autobahnen gibt es keine Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzungen" and it handled that fine.
:-)
paul
On Jul 26, 2018, at 4:07 PM, Henk Gooijen
<henk.gooijen at hotmail.com> wrote:
Ahhh yes, I remember the Votrax, SC-01.
There was an other chip that you programmed with phonemes,
the SP0256-AL1 (IIRC). I must have it somewhere, forgot the manufacturer.
Van: cctalk <cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org> namens Paul Koning via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Verzonden: Thursday, July 26, 2018 7:48:36 PM
Aan: Anders Nelson; General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Onderwerp: Re: Epson DECTalk IC
If you want even older technology (that actually worked rather well) there's Votrax,
which apparently is still available occasionally.
paul
> On Jul 26, 2018, at 1:38 PM, Anders Nelson via cctalk <cctalk at
classiccmp.org> wrote:
>
> It takes 9600 (8N1) serial input, and I found a forum thread:
>
> http://www.vcfed.org/forum/archive/index.php/t-34754.html
>
> "The DECTalk was a speech synthesizer (actually there were a few models).
> The DTC01 and 03 can do text to speech when fed ascii text over RS232."