Looking for CTS256 (text to speech processor from the 80-ies)

The CTS256-AL2 is a text to code processor. It converts English text to phoneme codes used by the SP0256-AL2, which is a speech generator. It is all stuff from the 80- ies, but it would be great fun to do a little project with this chip... Any speech chips appreciated. Please let me know if you can help me.

Thanks.

George

Reply to
GdB
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Maybe you can find something on the Texas Instruments TMS5220 with a custom Acorn ROM I played with in the eighties/nineties in a bbc-b computer. That unbelievable computer had a socket reserved just for that purpose. And no, I dont have the chip or computer anymore.....

Reply to
Sjouke Burry

Best results for me: lurking at ebay.com Electronic Components and/or Vintage Computing with keywords like "Speech" and/or partnumber. Only in very tough cases like Digitalker scanning the www with google got better results.

Currently available at ebay: General Instruments SP1000 ( LPC-lattice Analyzer, Syntesizer ) Interstate ASA16 ( filterbank for recognition ) General Instruments SP0250 ( LPC-lattice Synth. ) General Instruments SP0256AL2 ( LPC-lattice Synth. with Phonem. ) Votrax SC01A ( Formant Synth. with Phonem. ) I can scan datasheets and other documentation for most of these oldtimers.

Have been at ebay in the last year, but expensive. And even if they had been cheaper: the SP0256-AL2 with its PWM-output had always a lousy quality compared to Votrax. The CTS256 probably implements the Naval Research Algorithm [1] on a PIC7041 microcontroller. For anyone using the SP0256-AL2 directly there has been an Application Note containing precoded a list of common words [2].

MfG JRD

[1] Elovitz et Al. "Automatic Translation of English Text to Phonetics by mean of letter to sound rules" United States Naval Research Laboratory Report 7948 year: 1976 ( don´ t have it, but would be interestred ) [2] Janet May "Allophone Speech Syntesis Technique" General Instruments 1982 ( can scan it )
Reply to
Rafael Deliano

Saw these as well, all quite expensive, it's just for fun and I'm sure someone has them in a drawer...

Wow, that would be useful! I got the SC01 as well as its datasheet.

A PIC??? Or doesn't this have a relation with today's PIC's...

I've got the whole datasheet. If someone needs it. It holds the whole list of allophones and examples of words to allophones...

Regards,

George

Reply to
GdB

The SP1000 from Voyager are cheap. For the others one can contact the seller to see if one can find something agreeable for both sides. Note that they and ebay aren´t in it for hobby and apart from the Votrax there isn´t that much sold.

Datasheet:

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Application Note:
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Manual:
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My board:
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My unfinished description (in german):
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Avoid the PWM-filter in the article, doesn´t work.

The problem with the SP1000 is that i and some other people found it not working. But there was an article about it by Steve Ciarcia in Byte and there seem to have been some applications that used it. Its unclear if there are batches of faulty chips or if the datasheet is wrong. Even if it would work: the LPC-synthesizer has the usual problem with the lousy PWM output. The gradient lattice LPC analyzer is highly suspect too.

Datasheet:

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Article:
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My board:
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My description (in german):
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Found it easy to use. But make shure power-up sequencing for its 3 supplies is properly done.

Datasheet should be easy to find in www. There is a good description of it in the book Bristow "Electronic Speech Synthesis" My board:

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My description ( in german ):
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Other: VCP200 zero crossing speech recognition IC speaker independent, fixed vocabulary There is a datasheet, but haven´s scanned it yet My board:

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My description ( in german ):
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This is the lowest cost approach and one should not expect too much.

HM2007 4 channel filterbank speech recognition IC speaker dependent / trainable Datasheet should be easy to find in www. My board:

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My description ( in german ):
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The datasheet and the IC are slightly buggy.

Digitalker Mozer speech synthesizer There are several datasheets for the Digitalker, too many to list them here. My board Digitalker:

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My board UAA1003:
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My description ( in german ):
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There was another earlier Mozer IC from Telesensory. The UAA1003 is a talking clock available in english and german versions.

I have included pictures of my boards so one see what external circuits are necessary. But note: aliasing filters are mostly not included. The layouts could be a good start for anyone using Eagle 4.15.

Anything there is called a PIC even a MIPS. Texas Instruments tried in those days to introduce their 8 bit TMS70xx controllers with much fanfare and General Instruments was their second source. TI dropped them soon afterwards and so hardly anyone remembers them.

Probably these:

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I am a bit sceptical about the usefullness of text-to-speech. Steve Ciarcia ( who was involved with the Votrax 2 it seems ) published several articles in Byte with code in BASIC. That would be a reasonable starting point for a simple implementation that would probably work better then the CTS256.

MfG JRD

Reply to
Rafael Deliano

Wow! That is A LOT of useful information, thanks a bunch! I know this all can easilier and better be done these days, but it is the fun to try and find all those very old IC's. And for some reason, especially this CTS256... ;-)

[.....]

It seems you added your board picture twice, instead of the description... No big deal as I have never heard of this chip.

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edFORTH.de/temp/tts8.pdf

I know the TTS is very poor, but this is of course a chip from the 80- ies, incredible by then! The wole idea is to try and find it.

Hertzlichen Dank! It's a wealth of information!

George

Reply to
GdB

Thats it:

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Available for $25 ( i got them via ebay ):
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Make shure to store it, the files are only temporary on the website.

MfG JRD

Reply to
Rafael Deliano

Agree... I can not find it right now, but will post it if I can find it, but I saw a project that uses the SP0256-AL2 ROM, but was (MicroChip) PIC based. Funny...

I know that website, indeed they sell the SP0256-AL2 and, the much more hard to find, SP0256-17. However, I'm actually looking for this CTS256, where they sell a modern replacement (TTS256).

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These guys are funny, $ 5 for sp0256-al2 DATASHEET!???

I did, many thanks.

Regards,

George

Reply to
GdB

Look here for a pdf copy of the original GI SP0256-AL2 spec sheet (no Charge and has chips for sale).

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Gnack

Reply to
Gnack Nol

Microchip Technology, the manufacturer of the PICmicro family of microcontrollers, was originally part of General Instruments. At that time, they made several families of microcontrollers. They had a few PIC16xx parts that were the predecessors of the more recent PICs, and they also had PIC70xx parts that were a second source of the Texas Instruments TMS70xx microcontrollers. There was no relation between the PIC16xx and PIC70xx other than that both were made by GI.

Reply to
Eric Smith

The other speech chip I recall was the SC-01. Had many pre-programmed "speech" sounds - sound "parts" that could be played by the CPU in strings to make pretty convincing "words" in english (and maybe some parts of other languages if you wanted to try ?)

I saw this used was on several of the Gottlieb system 80(A) pinball machines.

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In the game "Caveman" (1982) it even synthesised very realistic "cricket chirp / jungle" background sound effects as well as I vaguely recall. (though they might not be that exciting by modern "sound blaster" standards.)

Sound board in that was pretty basic 6532 processor system.

Reply to
KR

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