Recreate the Votrax Type & Talk?

Z0rb · Post by **Z0rb** » Sun Jun 16, 2013 11:49 am

SWEET!! 2400 did the trick for me as well, HOWEVER I have a host of problems to sort out. I do see text coming in but I need to set up some flow control and add a carriage return and line feed to the end of my transmission so the text to speech knows to start talking. I also need to add some filtering on the power supply to I get consistent results.

Video to follow once I get all that worked out

rmelick · Post by **rmelick** » Sun Jun 16, 2013 12:34 pm

Vic20-Ian wrote:Please record samples for Jeff!

I progress. I quickly threw together a video. YouTube is processing. Will post a link here shortly. Hopefully the audio is loud enough, else I'll have to do it over.

Vic20-Ian · Post by **Vic20-Ian** » Sun Jun 16, 2013 12:37 pm

What do you hear?

rmelick · Post by **rmelick** » Sun Jun 16, 2013 12:58 pm

Vic20-Ian wrote:What do you hear?

I hear the Adventure Land game working as I would expect it to work with a Votrax Type 'N Talk, but with a little better voice quality than a TNT.

Below is the link to the video (if YouTube ever finishes processing it). The video is only about 4 minutes in length, so I don't know why they are so slow converting it today. Maybe something about Father's Day is slowing everything down.

http://youtu.be/zS-lUBOI9aY

Vic20-Ian · Post by **Vic20-Ian** » Sun Jun 16, 2013 1:01 pm

Rick, can you describe a bit more for others who never heard this "as expected" - i.e. Does it read all text or select phrases?

rmelick · Post by **rmelick** » Sun Jun 16, 2013 1:34 pm

Vic20-Ian wrote:Rick, can you describe a bit more for others who never heard this "as expected" - i.e. Does it read all text or select phrases?

Oh, sorry. Thus far it seems to read everything sent to the display including your commands.

There is an issue with MegaCart and the way it starts the adventures. I'm having to exit back out and go in to basic to issue the SYS32592 myself. Then it seems to work ok with the voice output. I have no clue why this could be. I'm using Version 20 of MegaCart.

Vic20-Ian · Post by **Vic20-Ian** » Sun Jun 16, 2013 2:01 pm

I am on a slow link away from home so only get snippets at a time on the video but it does what I guessed it would - Echoes all the text on screen to the synthesiser.

"I am in a Forest. Trees. N.S.E.W. A voice booms out....Welcome......."

"in some cases mud is good", "The dragon is not bothered by this" etc.

"What Shall I do now" is already wearing thin

Glad that a bit of digging and bug hunting helped dig out the correct baud rate so you could both get your projects talking with Scott Adams cartridges.

There may be some software settings to slow the speech rate down on the Pi that will help it sound more 8 bit. Also I hope there is some tuning to make it a bit less clear and more phonemey

On Gorf arcade I remember "Bad News Space Cahhdet" a bit more stilted than this modern synthesiser.

Impressive that you can hook this up with a Raspberry Pi for a few dollars (despite it being a full Linux PC

.

Off topic - I wonder if you could do it all virtually with one Pi..... emulate a Vic20 running Adventureland with a virtual port output to the serial port of the Pi and read it back into the speech synth?

Off topic 2 - Does anyone know what the synthesiser was for Wargames on David Broderick's Imsai? That sounded very good.

Cheers
Ian

Kweepa · Post by **Kweepa** » Sun Jun 16, 2013 2:10 pm

OT2: Pretty sure the computer voice in WarGames was just a filter on a voice actor.

Z0rb · Post by **Z0rb** » Sun Jun 16, 2013 2:14 pm

rmelick wrote:
Vic20-Ian wrote:What do you hear?
I hear the Adventure Land game working as I would expect it to work with a Votrax Type 'N Talk, but with a little better voice quality than a TNT.

Below is the link to the video (if YouTube ever finishes processing it). The video is only about 4 minutes in length, so I don't know why they are so slow converting it today. Maybe something about Father's Day is slowing everything down.

http://youtu.be/zS-lUBOI9aY

Hah excellent! The bps was the issue on my end as well. I got everything together and made a little video of mine working as well. I still need to tweak the Arduino code a bit but other then that it does work. I also need to put a stereo jack on it so the voice sounds a little better.

Here is the video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQrmqna934Q

Vic20-Ian · Post by **Vic20-Ian** » Sun Jun 16, 2013 2:22 pm

Cool - two Votrax emulators in one day - and 2 videos, Jeff will be chuffed seeing the number of times he has posted asking for it

rmelick · Post by **rmelick** » Sun Jun 16, 2013 3:03 pm

Z0rb wrote:The bps was the issue on my end as well. I got everything together and made a little video of mine working as well. I still need to tweak the Arduino code a bit but other then that it does work. I also need to put a stereo jack on it so the voice sounds a little better.

Good job. I gave up on SpeakJet, and you did it! Wow!!

Z0rb · Post by **Z0rb** » Sun Jun 16, 2013 3:22 pm

rmelick wrote:
Z0rb wrote:The bps was the issue on my end as well. I got everything together and made a little video of mine working as well. I still need to tweak the Arduino code a bit but other then that it does work. I also need to put a stereo jack on it so the voice sounds a little better.
Good job. I gave up on SpeakJet, and you did it! Wow!!

Thanks. I still need to clean up the Arduino programming and maybe have it strip out things like non text characters to improve on the user experience. I might want to add some goodies like make it so you can configure the bps so you can run it at 1200 for BASIC programming

Z0rb · Post by **Z0rb** » Sun Jun 16, 2013 3:25 pm

Also the raspberry pi solution is a great one since your not having to deal with chips, reset lines and amplifiers. I think in the end that is the route to go for the hobbyist solution. The voice also sounds less robotic.

In the end I just wanted to prove that the Little Speakjet Could

rmelick · Post by **rmelick** » Sun Jun 16, 2013 3:39 pm

Vic20-Ian wrote:Cool - two Votrax emulators in one day - and 2 videos, Jeff will be chuffed seeing the number of times he has posted asking for it

Vic20-Ian, a *BIG* thank you to you as well. Without you it would not have been possible. The answer was here all along in the forum. Thank you for doing the research and helping to resolve the issue. I truly appreciate it.

Commodore's misprint in the manual really caused a lot of head-scratching. I didn't even know the VIC-20 was capable of 2400 baud. There is a lot of confusion about that factoid as well.

To all the Dad(s) out there -- or in whatever way you may serve as a father-figure to others -- Happy Father's Day!

Rick

eslapion · Post by **eslapion** » Sun Jun 16, 2013 8:15 pm

rmelick wrote: I didn't even know the VIC-20 was capable of 2400 baud.

Around 2007-2008, I sold a few user port RS-232 interfaces for the VIC, 64 and 128.

The VIC is actually capable or more reliable and faster RS-232 comms then the C64 with a reliable 9600 baud.

The 64 can usually send at that speed but usually cannot reliably receive at 9600 baud unless the display is turned off.

The C128, when set to fast mode (2 MHz) can actually go up to 19200 baud without the need for a special RS-232 cart such as the swiftlink.