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From: krc@cs.purdue.EDU (Kenny "RoboBrother" Crudup)
Newsgroups: rec.ham-radio,sci.electronics,comp.ai,comp.misc,comp.periphs,sci.lang,rec.games.video
Subject: Re: voice synthesizer package needed
Summary: Try General Instruments' stuff
Keywords: voice synthesizer request
Message-ID: <2879@arthur.cs.purdue.edu>
Date: 7 Jan 88 03:20:43 GMT
References: <611@ndsuvax.UUCP>
Organization: The Little Computer Fixit Shop of Horrors
Lines: 38


(I'm afraid to kill any of those newsgroups- later recipients may decide)

In article <611@ndsuvax.UUCP>, nebezene@ndsuvax.UUCP (Todd Michael Bezenek) writes:
> I am looking for a voice synthesizer package that produces good
> quality voice.

> ...We need a good voice synthesizer which will be interfaced to the
> control unit.  The audio must be of a quality that will be easily
> understood when transmitted via radio.  It is not necessary that the
> synthesizer package come with any support hardware whatsoever.

I used to play around with the General Instruments (GI) chip set. There
is a member of its SP- series morpheme(?) generators masked-out to produce
allophones. There is a companion chip based around one of its micros that
takes regular old asynch serial and spits it out to the SP-AL2 so that
you get speech from ascii. The chip has a lot of options concerning
inputs/speed/etc. so you could probably do parallel (I forget.) These
chips, and a 2k x 8 RAM (as a buffer) is all you need.

>    Our budget for the interface is $100.
>    Todd M. Bezenek

The best part is that you can get it all from Radio-Shit for about $40.
I got mine from GI a long time ago and just proto-boarded it (the
chips were free) just to see what it sounded like. I did'nt have the
suggested filtering, or even the right speed xtal, but it worked good
enough for me. Of course, it screws up some words (like my last name,
and doesnt know context like the difference between 'wind' (air)
and 'wind' (watch)), but that is expected. You should have seen
folks faces, though! (Shall we play a game?)

Hope this helps.
-- 
Kenny "_R_o_b_o_B_r_o_t_h_e_r" Crudup		krc@arthur.cs.purdue.edu
Purdue University CS Dept.		
W. Lafayette, IN 47907			The above is practically Official 
+1 317 494 7842				University Policy. So there.