Parrot Sound Add-on

[stroebeljc]

But 0x4F does set bits A4, A5, and A7 to zero, while keeping all the other bits at 1 to reduce the likelihood of hardware conflict.

Why anyone would use 0x03 I don’t know, that’s just asking for trouble.

Mark

You are totally correct. The problem is that the original guidance from the makers of the Parrot published 0x03 in all of their stuff. If you look at the book referenced earlier in this thread, you will see this. I switched to 0x4F precisely to reduce interactions.

[stroebeljc]

Cool stroebeljc !
Thanks for this code.

It able to update the Parrot SPO sound card on the VB81 emulator.
I had to add the &4F IORQ to the VTR/Mageco (@&3F) sound card, enclosed in the emulator.


Vb81 is now update for the Parrot SPO256...(r. 08/05/2020)

SPO on the &4F IOrq (IN & OUT) port.
Select the sound card, and reinit the computer.

If something's wrong let me know...
Have Fun.

I am liking your emulator. Lot's of nice features!

However, the SP0256 sound output could use much improvement. I have sampled all allophones from my Parrot and stitched them into my local build of EO. The sound representation is much closer to the real thing. I can provide you more information on this, if you are interested.

[XavSnap]

Sure !
I haven't this card in my poor collection.

[mcarlson_sb]

My SP0256-AL2 ICs came today
I did a quick test with an arduino and they both said "Hello World" after some coaxing.

Looking forward to figuring out how to get them talking with the zx81 (pun intended)

[stroebeljc]

If I recall correctly, the software that came with the Parrot was pretty minimal and was the same Test Program that's in the How to Make Your Computer Talk book. So, I created the attached files from the listings in the book (with bug fixes) and added the Phrase Finder program that wasn't on tape. I'm also including a program that speaks all of the examples in Appendix A of the book. The source is on github here.

[XavSnap]

Thanks a lot John !

[stroebeljc]

Here's a version for the VTR.

[Crayon21]

I see it's in the new version of the emulator. I have used speech synthesis before but that was on another emulator. do i have to poke the allophones or can I just print the words I want? I would rather:

Def word:
"Hello"
DO:
Word
say: "Hello"
End

versus:
(enter MC)
poke 16384+peek(16384 and 1)
rand usr(16384)
then get the text to speech

[stroebeljc]

Crayon21,
It differs depending on which hardware speech device is connected. We bundled instructions and software for each of the devices that are supported on both Zeddy and Speccy based systems.
As far as I am aware, the only devices that come close to what you are looking for are the dk'tronics Speech Synthesizer and the Currah uSpeech, both on the Spectrum. The uSpeech actually will speak BASIC commands as you type them, while the dk'tronics has a software utility that you must load, then a simple BASIC program with the words in strings. These are covered in the examples and documentation.
The ZX81 is not as sophisticated, but with the examples, you should be able to get speech up and running in your program in no time.
All of the speech modules are based on the SP0256 (allphone-based) except for the DCP S-Pack, which has actual recorded (compressed) voice words digitally stored in its ROM.

[Crayon21]

thanks