Re: SPO-250 "Orator" Chip - Revisited

Jenison Mark-QA3578 wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> A few years back we discussed the SPO-250 issue with regards to Sega XY
> speech boards.
>
> Just curious if we ever came to a conclusion or a possible solution, or if
> anyone ever found a source for these.
>
> If so, I'd be interested to hear about it.

I've got some experience with the SPO-256, but not a -250. The -256 was
a General Instrument voice synthesizer chip that sounded like a robot
from Zenbar, but it worked. There was also an ASCII-to-phoneme
translater chip that you could interface to it and attach it to the
parallel port of your computer and LPRINT BASIC commands to it to make
it talk English. I know because I built one. :)

I periodically see the -256 chip appear at flea markets and hamfests
because Radio Shack used to sell it. It would work with a crystal from
about 3 to 4 MHz. It was designed to use a 3.12 MHz crystal, but a
colorburst crystal worked just as well with a slight increase in the
pitch of the voice.

Matt J. McCullar
Arlington, TX
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Received on Tue Jun 13 19:55:27 2000