bbking67 Posted September 13, 2014 Share Posted September 13, 2014 Great stuff! I was always interested in these things when I saw the ads in magazines. Do you have a working Alien voice unit? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Savetz Posted September 13, 2014 Author Share Posted September 13, 2014 Great stuff! I was always interested in these things when I saw the ads in magazines. Do you have a working Alien voice unit? I haven't gotten the Alien voice unit to work yet. I'm having problems with the software. I should RTFM, that might help. Doing it by intuition has not helped. Kevin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Savetz Posted September 23, 2014 Author Share Posted September 23, 2014 The Atari gods smiled upon me! I found the manual for the iTalk II, which includes the schematic. (The fellow who built the thing doesn't even have the manual anymore, so I sent him the scan too.) Here it is: https://archive.org/details/AtariITalkIIOwnersManual 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deadline Posted August 12, 2020 Share Posted August 12, 2020 Hi does anyone know if this iTalkII is available on modern machines implemented in software form? Aside from that is there any voice synthesis that is available that does not use the hardware box like this? Asking for a friend. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gunstar Posted August 12, 2020 Share Posted August 12, 2020 (edited) @Deadline Second question: Yes. The Atari's Pokey sound chip is capable of doing the voice synthesis of these devices all on it's own. The proof is S.A.M. (maybe just SAM) Which, IIRC, stands for Software Actuated Mouth. I'd have provided a link or the software here, but my internet is intermittent right now and I can't get Atarimania archive to load, but I believe they have it for download there, as well as half a dozen or more Atari archive sites. For your first question, have you tried Googling? Edited August 12, 2020 by Gunstar Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deadline Posted August 12, 2020 Share Posted August 12, 2020 @Gunstar, thanks. Yes I certainly will google search it. Please forgive me for wanting to interact with the community rather than look something up in a database. ? I wasn't aware that SAM was available for the Atari machines, and this is a good enough answer for me. So I appreciate it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gunstar Posted August 12, 2020 Share Posted August 12, 2020 (edited) @Deadline I ask a lot too, before searching. I just didn't have an answer to your first question. Modern voice synthesis just doesn't come up much, anywhere, that I've ever seen in the past 25 or so years, so not a clue about it. I don't think it's something many people use or care about these days beyond Alexa and Siri, etc.. The only stuff I hear about along these lines is voice-to-text programs like Dragon. By the same token, I wasn't aware that SAM was available for other machines myself, especially 8-bit. I thought it was a program exclusive to Atari 8-bits since they have the POKEY. I think the only other 8-bit with a sound chip good enough, without additional hardware, to do software-only synthesis on 8-bits might be the C64's SID. I'm guessing that's where you know it from? Edited August 12, 2020 by Gunstar Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deadline Posted August 12, 2020 Share Posted August 12, 2020 @Gunstar Correct, I was under the impression that SAM was exclusively made for C64. Wow, learn something new everyday! Thanks for your help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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