[sci.electronics] TALKER CHIPS, HELP?

egul@hp-lsd.COS.HP.COM (Ed Gulczynski - FIS) (11/07/90)

Does anyone know of an 'off the shelf' CMOS one chip IC that will talk?
I want something cheap with a predefined set of words/numbers that I
can access/concatonate to build a talking clock/timer that is portable
and driven of an uP. My first attempt was with Radio Shack's SPO256 and
although it works it is too much of a power hog and the voice is
not nearly of the quality I hear nowdays.  I know JAMECO has one, the DIGITALKERbut haven't checked it out.  The software to run the device will be 
relatively simple and I want everything to work within 8k.  Any ideas?

cgordon@vpnet.chi.il.us (Crash Gordon) (11/13/90)

The Digitalker chip is _old_!  That thing was obsoleted several years ago. 
But if your project is a low-quantity deal, it may be OK.  The Digitalker
chip produces audio with a low S/N ratio; the filter circuit given in their
data sheet isn't very effective.

I have some vocabulary ROMs around somewhere and can give you a couple more
pointers.  Email me if you're interested in this beast.

-----------------------------------------------------
Gordon S. Hlavenka            cgordon@vpnet.chi.il.us
Disclaimer:                Yeah, I said it.  So what?

richard@pegasus.com (Richard Foulk) (11/15/90)

>The Digitalker chip is _old_!  That thing was obsoleted several years ago. 
>But if your project is a low-quantity deal, it may be OK.  The Digitalker
>chip produces audio with a low S/N ratio; the filter circuit given in their
>data sheet isn't very effective.

So what's more modern?  (And hopefully affordable.)

-- 
Richard Foulk		richard@pegasus.com

josef@nixdorf.de (Moellers) (11/16/90)

In <1990Nov14.212439.5748@pegasus.com> richard@pegasus.com (Richard Foulk) writes:

>>The Digitalker chip is _old_!  That thing was obsoleted several years ago. 
>>But if your project is a low-quantity deal, it may be OK.  The Digitalker
>>chip produces audio with a low S/N ratio; the filter circuit given in their
>>data sheet isn't very effective.

>So what's more modern?  (And hopefully affordable.)

I have used two different chips, both of which are phoneme-based:
- the SC-01, which is very simple, has little possibility for
  variations, but ... You can interface it easily to a centronics port and
  (a tiny little bit less easy) to an RS232 port. Fun to play and
  experiment with. Not very expensive. No idea if it's still sold
  anywhere.
- the SSI263, which has a bus-interface, so You'll need a processor to
  drive it. Features "5 8-bit internal registers, 8 rates of
  articulation, 16 amplitude levels, 256 phonemes equivalents, 4096
  pitch variations, 4 handshaking modes, 16 speed settings, 255 settings
  of vocal-tract frequency responses". With all these features You can
  even have it sing!
Check Your back-issues of BYTE (go back a long time when they still
catered for the hobbyist and home-brewer and before they changed
into a glossy PC-Magazine). Steve Ciarcia hat articles on both of them
in short succession (one article on the SC-01 and two months later one
on the SSI263).
Micromint used to sell these chips and kits using them.

--
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