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From: josef@nixdorf.de (Moellers)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics
Subject: Re: TALKER CHIPS, HELP?
Message-ID: <josef.658740361@peun11>
Date: 16 Nov 90 07:26:01 GMT
References: <25150009@hp-lsd.COS.HP.COM> <273f25f8-559.1sci.electronics-1@vpnet.chi.il.us> <1990Nov14.212439.5748@pegasus.com>
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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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