17 Mar
1999
17 Mar
'99
10:11 p.m.
While sorting through a box of old stuff in my
basement, I ran across this
little box called a "SPEECH THING"
It appears to have been manufactured by Covox, Inc., around 1991. It is a
small tan box, about 1.5"x2"x1/2". It's got a male DB-25 connector on
one
end, and a female DB-25 on the other end. It's got a 3-foot length of wire
(the type that's on Walkman headsets) coming out of the side.
Only problem is whatever was on the other end of that wire was chopped off.
Stripping the wires, the inner wire (they're coaxial) is red on one, and
white on the other. The white wire is connected to "1" and "2" on
the PCB.
The red wire isn't connected to anything, although there is a "3" and
"4"
that it looks like it could be soldered to (but never was - there's no
solder on the PCB contacts).
Does anyone have any idea what this thing is, what it does, or what goes on
the end of the wire (I have a feeling it's some sort of plug)?
IIRC, the Speech Thing was what it sounds like, a speech synthasizer for
the IBM PC. Basically, it plugged into the parallel port. The other end
of the wire was probably a speaker (amplified, most likely).
I seem to recall Covox being very big into speech recognizition and
synthesis many years back.
<<<John>>>