WHOOPS ! (oh not not him again)
Re: WHOOPS ! (oh not not him again)
That's great news, thank you!
Re: WHOOPS ! (oh not not him again)
After some messing around with a terrible tape unit that I recently received... and reverting to a previous tape deck, here are the two programs shipped with the speakeasy.
- Attachments
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word_factory.cas- (5.58 KiB) Downloaded 621 times
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- word_compiler.cas
- (5.49 KiB) Downloaded 655 times
Re: WHOOPS ! (oh not not him again)
Thanks a lot!
Re: WHOOPS ! (oh not not him again)
Saturdays TV, booze and dinner interfered with me hacking those into disk versions, so I haven't tried them with the hardware on a real system yet.
However, I did see that the machine code demo, word factory, auto runs and will need a bit of finagling to produce a disk version. And it seems to include some sort of dancing devil rip-off!
Further resources now uploaded.
Box and Tape images, and a PDF of the 'manual'.
A disk image with cracked Word Factory and the Word Compiler basic programs.
Can we have a peripheral page edited up for this? One doesn't exist at the moment, and we have all the info on this thread now...
However, I did see that the machine code demo, word factory, auto runs and will need a bit of finagling to produce a disk version. And it seems to include some sort of dancing devil rip-off!
Further resources now uploaded.
Box and Tape images, and a PDF of the 'manual'.
- SpeakEasy box.jpg (759.87 KiB) Viewed 49615 times
- SpeakEasy tape - Word Factory side.jpg (878.55 KiB) Viewed 49615 times
- SpeakEasy tape - Word Compiler side.jpg (884.34 KiB) Viewed 49615 times
Can we have a peripheral page edited up for this? One doesn't exist at the moment, and we have all the info on this thread now...
- Attachments
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- SPEAKEASY.DSK
- (180 KiB) Downloaded 619 times
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- Speakeasy for the Dragon pdf.txt
- Rename to .pdf extension
- (874.84 KiB) Downloaded 594 times
Re: WHOOPS ! (oh not not him again)
So having completed the archiving, I've now been trying to get the thing to work...
And it doesn't.
Reading the datasheet, I'm somewhat confused by the circuit Peter provided (which looks identical to the unit I have).
Plugged in, it's constantly signalling busy to my Dragon 64. So prints just generate a hang.
What is particularly confusing though is what is happening to the printer strobe line.
This is handled as an active high write enable signal by the Dragon ROM. And the PIA line involved is inverted by a spare NOR gate on its way to the printer port in order to make it active low instead, as is required for a Centronics strobe.
The SP0256 in the SpeakEasy uses the !ALD pin to strobe phoneme input in, again, an active low signal.
However, my board, and the circuit Peter shows further back in this thread both show the Strobe signal being inverted again, which means !ALD it sits low constantly.
I cannot see how this could ever have worked using standard 'Print#-2' style writing to the printer port. Argh!
Yours, very confused.
And it doesn't.
Reading the datasheet, I'm somewhat confused by the circuit Peter provided (which looks identical to the unit I have).
Plugged in, it's constantly signalling busy to my Dragon 64. So prints just generate a hang.
What is particularly confusing though is what is happening to the printer strobe line.
This is handled as an active high write enable signal by the Dragon ROM. And the PIA line involved is inverted by a spare NOR gate on its way to the printer port in order to make it active low instead, as is required for a Centronics strobe.
The SP0256 in the SpeakEasy uses the !ALD pin to strobe phoneme input in, again, an active low signal.
However, my board, and the circuit Peter shows further back in this thread both show the Strobe signal being inverted again, which means !ALD it sits low constantly.
I cannot see how this could ever have worked using standard 'Print#-2' style writing to the printer port. Argh!
Yours, very confused.
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Serenarian
- Posts: 38
- Joined: Thu Oct 25, 2012 1:28 pm
Re: WHOOPS ! (oh not not him again)
Dear Confused....
T'is the pantomime season, so I must reply with ...."OH YES IT DOES" - the Speakeasy does work via the Dragon printer port, that is.
Sorry I've been a bit slow to reply, but I had to dig out my Dragon, and the Speakeasy and hook them up with my monitor, type in a few lines and record a WAV file.
But having got a WAV file, the forum won't accept it as an attachment. with a WAV extension, so I've cheated and changed the extension to .JPG. Just change it back to hear it.
I can confirm, that those are my pictures of the board (excuse the clumsy soldering) and my decode of the circuit. And yes it works fine on my Dragon32 and will on the Dragon64 if I fetch it down.
Just to give you a bit of context I used to belong the the Northwest TRS80 User Group that met every month at Lancashire Aeroclub. I was teaching at the time and got roped in to giving many of our monthly lectures and demos - including a whole meeting devoted to speech synthesis on the TRS-80 Model 1/3 and the Dragon/CoCo. If you are in the museum Tony, you may find some of my ramblings in our REM80 monthly newsletter. I think you have a few issues there.
We could, perhaps should, devote a new thread to the topic of speech synthesis. For those who are interested. Ii can be doe without any hardware, and you can even record and digitise phoneme waveforms through the joystick ports and inbuilt DAC on the Dragon/ CoCos as I demonstrated back in 1984/5.
Peter Mooney
T'is the pantomime season, so I must reply with ...."OH YES IT DOES" - the Speakeasy does work via the Dragon printer port, that is.
Sorry I've been a bit slow to reply, but I had to dig out my Dragon, and the Speakeasy and hook them up with my monitor, type in a few lines and record a WAV file.
But having got a WAV file, the forum won't accept it as an attachment. with a WAV extension, so I've cheated and changed the extension to .JPG. Just change it back to hear it.
I can confirm, that those are my pictures of the board (excuse the clumsy soldering) and my decode of the circuit. And yes it works fine on my Dragon32 and will on the Dragon64 if I fetch it down.
Just to give you a bit of context I used to belong the the Northwest TRS80 User Group that met every month at Lancashire Aeroclub. I was teaching at the time and got roped in to giving many of our monthly lectures and demos - including a whole meeting devoted to speech synthesis on the TRS-80 Model 1/3 and the Dragon/CoCo. If you are in the museum Tony, you may find some of my ramblings in our REM80 monthly newsletter. I think you have a few issues there.
We could, perhaps should, devote a new thread to the topic of speech synthesis. For those who are interested. Ii can be doe without any hardware, and you can even record and digitise phoneme waveforms through the joystick ports and inbuilt DAC on the Dragon/ CoCos as I demonstrated back in 1984/5.
Peter Mooney
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Serenarian
- Posts: 38
- Joined: Thu Oct 25, 2012 1:28 pm
Re: WHOOPS ! (oh not not him again)
Having just composed a reply to Tony - confirming that the Speakeasy does indeed work on the Dragon printer port, and setting up my Dragon32 to record a WAV file, my submission failed. Ah well, perhaps another day.
Peter Mooney
Peter Mooney
Re: WHOOPS ! (oh not not him again)
Try zipping the wav file, as far as I know zipped files are ok.
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rolfmichelsen
- Posts: 328
- Joined: Wed Apr 08, 2009 8:43 pm
- Location: Oslo, Norway
- Contact:
Re: WHOOPS ! (oh not not him again)
Most archive formats are allowed, so are most images and special Dragon formats, such as cassette and disk images. Most other extensions, including .wav, are not allowed in posts (if I read the forum config correctly).
-- Rolf
Re: My Unworking Speakeasy
Hi Peter,
At the moment, it's more of a mystery than a pantomime I think. But give it time, as I haven't had the soldering iron out yet!
I will continue my investigations... My unit makes noises on power-up, but it always eventually hangs the Dragon when attempting to print to it. I still hold that the design appears to be doing the wrong thing with the Strobe signal though, which is really weird.
I have another piece of kit with an SP0256 in it, so I can swap Dragons or SP0256s potentially if all else fails.
Kind regards,
MikeM
At the moment, it's more of a mystery than a pantomime I think. But give it time, as I haven't had the soldering iron out yet!
I will continue my investigations... My unit makes noises on power-up, but it always eventually hangs the Dragon when attempting to print to it. I still hold that the design appears to be doing the wrong thing with the Strobe signal though, which is really weird.
I have another piece of kit with an SP0256 in it, so I can swap Dragons or SP0256s potentially if all else fails.
Kind regards,
MikeM