Speech synthesiser chip (was Re: HX20) - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

10 Dec 1998

At 01:08 11/12/98 +0000, ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) wrote:

...
   Curiously
enough, the text-to-speech capabilities of this machine sound
 awfully close to the speech-sound pack I have for my CoCo's... methinks
 it's based on the same chipset, as they're roughly the same era. 
Could well be. There were a pair of chips from GI - one was the SPO256 
which was a speech synthesiser chip, and the other was the CTS256 which 
was a PIC7000 (TMS7000-a-like), I think, programmed with the 
text-to-speech algorithm. The Speech-sound pack for the Coco used a 
microcontroller (I forget which) with much the same algorithm, but also 
with commands to control an AY3-891x sound chip. 
These chips (the SPO256-AL2 and the CTS256A-AL2) seem really hard to find
these days, but I've found a supplier of them if anyone is interested.  A
U.S. company called SMC Electronics, based in Brockton, MA, has the
SPO256-AL2 for $US5.00 and the CTS256A-AL2 for $US7.50 (both include
specification and application sheets).

SMC Electronics web page is http://personal.tmlp.com/SMCONE/

The chips are listed on http://personal.tmlp.com/SMCONE/IC.HTM

Regards,

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