jbdigriz

The Smithsonian Speech Synthesis History Project, conducted by H. David Maxey in 1986-2002, has a LOT of useful background on the field, including a section on TI's efforts, with a quote from Goudie indicating that the TIPC speech board used a modified version of MITalk (also covered in the SSSHP project). Among other things, there is referenced an IEEE Spectrum article by Frantz and Wiggins that may be of interest here; @FarmerPotato has probably read it (probably posted a link here, too, but I'm too busy reorganizing a bunch of stuff to look) but it may be of use to others. I don't have access myself, regrettably. 1982 Frantz, Gene A. and Richard H. Wiggins, "Design case history: Speak & Spell learns to talk," IEEE Spectrum, Feb. 1982, pp. 45-49. Development of Speak & Spell speech synthesizer.

Be nice if all the pieces of the speech puzzle come together. Great work!

You are correct, sir! That would do it for cloning. I was just thinking about the historical aspect; be nice to have the original code.

Was the DSR on those 8" floppies you also found? Can't remember and haven't had a chance to dig through all the messages. Thanks for posting!

Good choice. I have great confidence in Stuart's judgement in making the best disposition and/or use of these items. I do hope that one or more of you UK guys can help get that Blanden 990 up and running so that any development code and/or docs that may be on it can be archived and made accessible. Thanks, and regards, jbdigriz

A bunch of us have been looking for the 9996 data for a long, long time. Decades, in fact. Thank you very much Colin for posting this! Thanks again, jbdigriz

That looks incredibly useful!

ROM dumps for the TMS7000 EVM here: https://electrickery.nl/comp/tms7k/doc/ And much else.

By the time the TMS7000 evolved into or was replaced by the TMS370 series the standalone XDS was still in use, but it appears to me that TI decided to host the debugger on a PC, or other computer, rather than onboard the XDS. So there may not have been a production XDS/44, nor possibly even an XDS/33, or if there were, it was only briefly. Just guessing, though. Like to know for sure, but seems possible, if not likely. By that time the PC add-in emulators and SDKs were available, so most of the software tools as well as the debugger could be hosted on a PC. Reference: https://www.ti.com/lit/ug/spnu127a/spnu127a.pdf, Section 17.

Accoding to this brochure in the tranche of documents above, http://bitsavers.org/components/ti/TMS7000/brochure/MPL_54_TMS7K_Brochure_1983.pdf, p. 14, the XDS/44 is/would be a "Standalone emulator. All features of XDS-33 plus bulk memory storage capability with additional board (to be announced)." TM990/303, maybe? Bubble memory? Not sure if this XDS was ever in production, but should be possible to replicate the hardware at least.

New TMS7000 additions to bitsavers today, including the generic http://bitsavers.org/components/ti/TMS7000/xds22/SPDU017_XDS_22_Installation_And_Operation_Guide_198310.pdf, which tells us that slot 3 is for "emulator board #2". Not sure if that is for a 2-board set, multiples of a target, or for two different targets. Wonder if it was ever used? Also specifically lists slots 5-7 as TM990. Also, http://bitsavers.org/components/ti/TMS7000/xds22/SPDU019_XDS_Breakpoint_Trace_Installation_And_Operation_Guide_198310.pdf, http://bitsavers.org/components/ti/TMS7000/xds22/SPDU020_XDS_TMS7000_Emulator_Hardware_198403.pdf, board photos, rom images, and schematics for the TMS7000 EVM, and a number of TMS7000 series datasheets and manuals, in http://bitsavers.org/components/ti/TMS7000 directory and the evm subdirectory there. Looks to be the material Fred J Kraan mentioned archiving, over on the vcfed forums. You can also find it on his site at https://electrickery.nl/comp/tms7k/doc/. Thanks, Fred! Thanks also, Jaak Bartok, the generous lender of the materials (see https://hackaday.io/project/19276-multi-t for a project they were used for.) And thanks once again, bitsavers!

When you've been around the block as many times as I have, you do tend not to trust a lot of things going on these days. I understand. I did check out her Wikipedia page. Somewhat unconventional background, but she does seem like a nice lady, and obviously smart. Perhaps she does have some ideological blinders, but don't we all? It'll be interesting to see what she has to say, anyway, even if it's not clear how much BBS experience she's had, as opposed to Usenet and IRC. Interesting, Driscoll seems to be an authority on Minitel. Ties in with the teletext stuff being discussed in other topics here. CHM is also hosting https://computerhistory.org/events/techfest-2 Maybe not of particular interest to enthusiasts working on vintage machines, but it helps keep the lights on and the preservation work going. If I was in the area, I'd want to check it out.

Woot!

Jason Scott's classic.

I get where you could see that, CS1, but I don't think it'll be a waste of time. Have a good 'un.

Could be of interest to BBS sysops and users, past and present. https://computerhistory.org/events/dialed-in/

Single points of failure. Whether my host, whtech, or whatever. That's why I'm going with federation and investigating integrating with IPFS. I do need to sound out Don on mirroring. Rsync access would be great. Would reduce the load on his server. I had a disk failure on the system I was mirroring bitsavers on a while back, but I got a nice FreeBSD raidz2 set up the other day and will be resume that and some other sites, pending a fiber connection locally or USPS backup.

I will keep an open mind about it, myself. Perhaps the museum would be, or is, interested in taking this on. Like I said, anything I can do to help, whichever way this goes. But we're probably past the point where further public discussion of this particular prospect will be helpful to anyone, for the time being. Regards, everyone, jbdigriz

Ok, don't need trusted servers for federation to work. That is only needed for exchanging user directories. Do need for users to be able to send and receive shares with other servers. That is enabled here. Group shares not, ATM. Still feeling my way around 🙂

Fixed. I'm just getting back into NC after some years. Federation should work fine though. May take some trust authorizations. I'll look into it and get back to you.

For a long time I've wanted to have some place to share files from, collaborate on vintage computer projects, and so forth, so I've added a Nextcloud (https://nextcloud.com/) instance to https://dragonsweb.org/nextcloud. Just a sandbox for now, but a production instance is forthcoming. Still configuring things and working out the kinks. It's on a smallish VPS, 100G, 2G RAM, single core. Been having OOM issues, so I've had to disable spamd and add more swap to keep kswapd from going nuts. Swap on SSD may not be the best idea, so the final production server will be on a bigger VPS with another core, that is not also a mail server. For now, the test instance will suffice to play around, get more familiar with Nextcloud, and test ideas. Nextcloud is federated, so you too can host your own instance if you wish, or just register on mine We'll be trying different integrations with other platforms as well, so I'm pretty excited about it all. Testers welcome. I've set registration up to require admin approval, to slow down the spammers. jbdigriz

Sorry, forgot to include that. My bad; Note to self: Beats chasing forum threads if you include these things. https://www.blunham.com/Radar/Teletext/index.html The Blanden 990, for anyone else interested: https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/11554/Texas-Instruments-TI-990-Computer-System/ Please give us a report when you do get to the museum. Or anyone else who knows it or has been there. Sorry if I've complicated things for Stuart, the seller, or anyone else with my comments here or in the TM990 boards topic in this sub-forum. It's just that this really is a quite rare and unique opportunity to thwart historical entropy. I stand ready to help any way I can either way, though. Please let me know, @Stuart.

He's a first-rate manager as well. Kinda looks like his plate is full at the moment, though, but maybe the Blanden 990 is important enough for him, or anyone else with the means and motivation, to consider devoting attention to. It is complete, with docs (some of which are not online), and likely has historically important TI and 3rd-party development software and sources installed, given Colin's account of it in his blog post. The Sacramento 990 I posted about earlier is in good hands. Haven't heard any more, but possible there is collaboration opportunity there. This seems particularly important to me considering the tranche of TI hardware that Stuart is handling in this thread, https://forums.atariage.com/topic/363242-tm990-boards-e-bus-boards-dx1012-wirewrap-board-for-sale/, much of which code for was likely developed on the Blanden 990. Some amazing items there, and yeah, I'd love to get some (all) of them, but I'm wondering if it wouldn't be best if they, and the 990, could be preserved and studied all together, for the most part. At least for now. Until the firmware and disks are imaged and archived, hi-res photos, documents scanned, duplicates determined, etc. Maybe I'm dreaming, but I think it's worth consideration. Especially in light of Colin's historical account. I would do it if I were able, but my means, and availability to travel for now, are very limited. Anyone have any ideas or suggestions to be passed along through Stuart?

You have to wonder if computinghistory.org.uk shouldn't send the Blanden 990 to him to get running again. Or, he has some knowledgeable and competent followers in the UK, and travels quite a bit himself. The exposure would be good for the museum as well. My understanding also is that some of the people involved there are also with the NMOC, which seems to need some help finding a home or homes for a couple of IBM 360's. Just saying... Think of it, President Usagi, you could be Sir David as well. 🙂

Yes, Colin's blog post and TI's forays into teletext have been referenced here in at least 3 topics now, which is good, because some good history and writing get more circulation. Glad to have you here, Colin!