Got some Atari hardware in an old computer store...

[daliaga]

Hi Folks,

 

 

Yep...got some Atari hardware (pictures below) in an old computer store and I'm not 100% sure

what they are...it seems that one is a voice/speech box (blue) and the other

some sort of controller... any one can help?

 

Thanks,

 

 

DA

[JamesD]

The ROM board might be a home brew Action programming language cart.

Or it could just be missing it's case.

 

I have no idea what the thing on the right is. Looks like someone is using the joystick ports to control or monitor something

Is there a D/A converter on the board in the blue box?

Edited June 25, 2013 by JamesD

[daliaga]

Hi,

 

I opened the blue box and I found a "Cheep Talk Board' with a SPO256A-AL2 on it

so it is a Speech Synthesizer!

 

The ROM board as you said must be the action programming cartridge as it looks

professionally done. It has labels on the top of the chips and one said left Action

and the other right Action. Anyone who has that Action cartridge could you please

check if it is the same ROM board.

 

Thank you,

 

 

DA

Edited June 25, 2013 by daliaga

[adam242]

Nice find!

 

There was an article in Radio Electronics magazine back in '86 or '85 with plans for a speech synthesizer for a C64 utilizing that chip. I adapted it for my 130xe and built one. Had a lot of fun using it to call mail order houses and friends (as well as a few prank calls).

 

Wonder if it's the same circuit... And I should dig mine out and see if my 13-year-old soldering has held up.

[russg]

Hi,

 

I opened the blue box and I found a "Cheep Talk Board' with a SPO256A-AL2 on it

so it is a Speech Synthesizer!

 

The ROM board as you said must be the action programming cartridge as it looks

professionally done. It has labels on the top of the chips and one said left Action

and the other right Action. Anyone who has that Action cartridge could you please

check if it is the same ROM board.

 

Thank you,

 

 

DA

The cart has yellow label that goes over the top. You can't open it without cutting the label.

[ALaMothe]

@Daliaga,

 

This is going to seem crazy, but I am an old Atari 800 game programmer, and I was scanning the forums looking for an old friend of mine Eric Small from the 80's, he did Surf's Up. Anyway, I came upon your post for some reason, and I saw you blue box - WHERE did you get this from, what city? I think I made this!!! I used to work for San Jose Computer in 1983-1985, they were the #1 Atari dealer in San Jose, CA. I was their tech that fixed all the Atari's, Drives, Androbots, and whatever else the owner bought along with another tech that didn't speak English So, I got really good at charades trying to use gesters to explain things like "where are the 6502's?" -- Anyway, I used to make all kinds of projects there and one of them I made a few for was the blue box SP256 speach chip, I used DB9 connectors to connect to the 400/800 and control the chip over the joy ports, flat ribbon, ear phone, wired it up and put it in a blue box, EXACTLY like this -- I am 90% sure this is mine. Can you open the blue box up and show me what's inside? IF the board is a wire wrapped design on a brown/orange perfboard, then I am 99% sure its mine, and if you show me the underside, it will be very clean and organized.

 

Anyway, I was like 16-17 years old at the time, so its been a LONG time, but I saw the post, and I was like what the hell, that's my speech box I made at San Jose Computer! If its my box, how crazy would that be, if not, it definitely brings back memories either way

 

Andre'

[kenjennings]

The blue box looks like a standard project box from Radio Shack. I used the exact same box when I built my Cheap talk from the plans in Analog magazine (April 1985). Mine was done as a horribly ugly breadboard. I think it broadcast RFI that reached the moon.

[ALaMothe]

Yup, I think I got the box from radio shack as well, of course in california silicon valley we had the best stores for electronics development - quement electronics, halted, excess solutions, weird stuff, and the list goes on and on, but I remember, I liked the blue boxes from radio shack and not the black ones -- boring color. Of course, "radio shack" was RADIO SHACK then

 

Andre'

[+Allan]

Any interesting stories you remember while working at San Jose computer?

 

Allan

Surfs Up alt.atr

[ALaMothe]

Yes, lots But, hard to remember. There was a girl they hired to work there, she was kinda a hippie -- rode a bike with tassles, she introduced herself - "hi, you can call me STAR CHILD" That set the tone for our working relationship

 

Steve Jobs came in once, didn't say much, he asked me some questions about the Atari ST vs Amiga graphics and processing power, I was the only one there that programmed graphics and 68000 ASM, so I knew both machines inside and out, thus I gave the truthful answer that the Amiga was a far better machine and more like an Atari 800 and Intuition was years ahead of GEM. The ST was more a conventional machine. And I think he liked my candor, all he did was smile like a chesire cat, stared at the machine for a bit as if he was plotting something, not saying a word, then noded and left.

 

And of course, the owner was always bringing in truck loads of dumped Atari hardware, we literally had a "moutain" of junk to the ceiling in the tech lab that we would dive into to find parts. I was always amazed how rough Mark Dalldorf (the owner) was with the hardware, he would just pick things up throw them down on the ground -- I was like "dude, they are sensitive electronics!". Another funny thing about Mark, he had a BA in Math, he could recite Pi to 50 or more digits, maybe 200, I can't remember, but it was a neat trick

 

I remember we got 100's of Androbots, for like pennies per pound, I fixed damn near ALL of them. And they sold them for $150 a piece if I recall. And I think all they did was plug into the DB9, and then you could control the motors and LEDs, but in the 80's that was like WOW!

 

But, the coolest part was Atari was the cutting edge of creativity, and everyone that worked with or around was unique and eclectic in a GOOD way -- I miss that. And San Jose Computer was like the center of it all, plus I got paid 3x as much as my friends working fast food. I think $7.50/hr, and min wage was $2.25 an hour at the time I was RICH compared to my friends, and I worked at an ATARI store in high school, hard to beat that

 

Andre'

[tjlazer]

Very cool to hear about Steve Jobs and the Atari ST and Amiga! I bet he had his eye on those machines for a bit in the mid 80's

[ALaMothe]

Yup, a lot of famous people came in the store. Nolan Bushnell of course came in, but I didn't recognize him at the time, he was tall, lanky, and very scrufy. The brother of the owner told me who is was, I was like really? Then in 2003 or so, we became friends, he's even been to my house, hired me to do a remake of XO football for his new company uWink, which imploded, and finally I got him to write a foreword for my Tricks of the 3D Game Programming Gurus book. But, I completely forgot about him coming in the store and when I meet him back in 2003 about developing some stuff for him, I was like, he looks the same, just more gray But, what I liked most is that he is a hardcore engineer and really knows his stuff, but at the same time he is very business savy and social. Not nerdy at all. Kinda like a hybrid of Woz and Jobs in one.

 

Andre'

[daliaga]

Hi Andre,

 

 

Glad that I found one of the many devices you built. I'm attaching a picture of the inside

of the blue box for your perusal. I got this piece in an old computer store in Vancouver,BC.

I just tested it and amazingly still works...great materials and workmanship!

 

Best

 

Daliaga

 

@Daliaga,

 

This is going to seem crazy, but I am an old Atari 800 game programmer, and I was scanning the forums looking for an old friend of mine Eric Small from the 80's, he did Surf's Up. Anyway, I came upon your post for some reason, and I saw you blue box - WHERE did you get this from, what city? I think I made this!!! I used to work for San Jose Computer in 1983-1985, they were the #1 Atari dealer in San Jose, CA. I was their tech that fixed all the Atari's, Drives, Androbots, and whatever else the owner bought along with another tech that didn't speak English So, I got really good at charades trying to use gesters to explain things like "where are the 6502's?" -- Anyway, I used to make all kinds of projects there and one of them I made a few for was the blue box SP256 speach chip, I used DB9 connectors to connect to the 400/800 and control the chip over the joy ports, flat ribbon, ear phone, wired it up and put it in a blue box, EXACTLY like this -- I am 90% sure this is mine. Can you open the blue box up and show me what's inside? IF the board is a wire wrapped design on a brown/orange perfboard, then I am 99% sure its mine, and if you show me the underside, it will be very clean and organized.

 

Anyway, I was like 16-17 years old at the time, so its been a LONG time, but I saw the post, and I was like what the hell, that's my speech box I made at San Jose Computer! If its my box, how crazy would that be, if not, it definitely brings back memories either way

 

Andre'

Edited June 26, 2013 by daliaga

[ALaMothe]

Hmmm -- VC, its possible it made its way up there, It looks like it! It's so long ago, but that's the right perfboard, the right box, cables, and I vaugely remember, the audio filter cap was changed to change the cutoff frequency, so I had to wire leads to it, and I like CLEAN design, so this looks like my work (when I was 15-16 years old)... maybe... But, if not, then its an exact clone of my boxes I made at San Jose Computer -- either way, very cool.

 

Thanks for taking the pic, hope it still works! If I recall, one of the cool things I did with it was to write a DLI that would read the text buffer from a simple editor I made (basically a straight scrollable text buffer), then try and say the words based on a limited phonem dictionary and parsing anything with white space surrounding it. The main problem with the IC was that you really had to tune words based on context, and I spent a LONG time trying to make words sound right, then you string them together of course, and it sounded horrific, so then you had to have the transitional rules to make it sound reasonable, too much work and switched to S.A.M.

 

Andre'

[re-atari]

Yep...got some Atari hardware (pictures below) in an old computer store and I'm not 100% sure

what they are...it seems that one is a voice/speech box (blue) and the other

some sort of controller... any one can help?

Around 1986/1987 both A8 magazine Page 6 and general electronics magazine Elektuur contained articles on how to build a speech synth using a SP-0256 and showed how to program it from Basic. These articles went a bit further in their electronic design, as they also contained a small inexpensive 1W amplifier (LM-386). That way you could directly connect a small 8Ohm loudspeaker.

I remember there were 2 versions of the SP-0256: the AL2 gave out allophones, the PH2 phonemes. When I bought a SP-0256 back then, it (naturellement) proved to be the wrong version (PH2). Luckily I could return it and got my money back, as these IC's were quite expensive. I'm sure they will still be these days.

 

re-atari

Edited June 28, 2013 by re-atari

[fibrewire]

Nice

Edited June 29, 2013 by fibrewire

[griz]

and finally I got him to write a foreword for my Tricks of the 3D Game Programming Gurus book

 

I knew I recognized your name. I read your book years ago. It's an honor to have you on Atariage. I think you'll like it around here.

[ALaMothe]

Thanks, I am REALLY impressed by the technical level of the posts. Everyone on here really knows their stuff, its been 20 years since I wrote games on the 800, so as I read the posts, I am like wow, this guy knows his stuff! What's interesting to me is how software techniques can leverage hardware more. For example, if you look at games for the original Playstation 1 and then look at games made just a few years ago when AAA companies finally stopped making them on the Playstation 1. Its like they had completely DIFFERENT hardware, but its just that programming, math, optimization, etc. got better, so they made the Playstation 1 look like a machine that did 10x more. So, as with the Atari, I need to start downloading some of the cutting edge games and demos and see what people from 2013 are able to do on a machine from 1978! Of course, back then, we made the machines do crazy things, I still look at games like Pitfall 1 and 2 and just blows my mind

 

Andre'