BSRSteve Posted July 23, 2019 Share Posted July 23, 2019 A while back, we acquired several boxes of David Chandler (Papa Intellivision)'s stuff. In one of the boxes were these three computer boards, which seem to have something to do with voice. Anyone have any ideas? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+intvsteve Posted July 23, 2019 Share Posted July 23, 2019 Sweet stuff! Prototypes for the Intellivoice? The main speech synthesis chip (SP-0256) is on each one of them. That reminds me of something... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Lathe26 Posted July 23, 2019 Share Posted July 23, 2019 What's at the end of the ribbon cable? My guess is that these are speech ROM development boards. A developer would create speech ROM binary code that is intended to extend the standard SP0256-AL2 chip (close relative of the Intellivoice's SP0256-12 chip), burn that code onto an EPROM, and place it into the correct chip socket (each chip socket sits at a different address in the 64K address range of the SP0256). Later, the developer could sent the final version of the ROM code to GI who would burn it into a SPR0128-xxx chip (the 0128 varies by the size of the data, the xxx is a number that varies by the code contents). The SPR-X is a special chip that that adapts the SP0256's serial ROM bus into standard EPROM chip signals. The 74138 chip is a 3-to-8 decoder that translates 3 high-ish address lines into 8 chip selects (1 chip select per socket). 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Lathe26 Posted July 23, 2019 Share Posted July 23, 2019 These were probably not made by Mattel but rather is something that GI sold to various companies as a standard kit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mr_me Posted July 23, 2019 Share Posted July 23, 2019 (edited) Yes; SFD2000; GI Speech Field Development board. I found a data sheet here. https://www.datasheetarchive.com/pdf/download.php?id=5efea7b3db48b6db9e12c97529cb20942200cf&type=O&term=speech%20processor The date on the chips is Feb 1983. Not sure what they might have been working on. Edited July 23, 2019 by mr_me 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BSRSteve Posted July 23, 2019 Author Share Posted July 23, 2019 9 minutes ago, Lathe26 said: What's at the end of the ribbon cable? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+cmart604 Posted July 23, 2019 Share Posted July 23, 2019 Very cool. ?? Thanks for sharing these pics. Any other interesting stuff from Chandler? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kevtris Posted July 24, 2019 Share Posted July 24, 2019 That board lets you load it with EPROMs containing speech data, and the SPR-X emulates the SPR-016/SPR-128 speech ROMs. The former holds 2K of speech data, the latter holds 16K of speech data. The SPO256-012 chip used in the 'voice is custom programmed with the "mattel electronics presents", then numbers 0-9, "ten" "twenty" etc. All of that speech fits into its internal 2K of ROM. The chip on the board is an SPO256-AL2 which was a stock version of the chip loaded with allophones you could buy from places like Radio Shack. This board lets you develop your speech data that will be mask programmed into an SPO256, and then emulate it in circuit using that cable and plug. Interestingly, any SPO256 chip can be used to emulate any other by using the external ROM bus mode, so they took advantage of this. That board lets you stuff up to 32K bytes of data, which is far more than the chip can normally hold (2K), but I suspect it's designed to let you develop devices with more than 2K of ROM, like the Odyssey^2 "the voice". It has 16K of external speech ROMs to go with the 2K of internal ROM. The intv only has the 2K of built in ROM, though (I believe they called it "resrom"). Any other data had to be manually poked into a FIFO chip on the intellivoice to get it into the SPO256-012 that resides on it. I don't think you could do that with this dev board though; the serial speech ROM bus is being used by the FIFO. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BSRSteve Posted July 24, 2019 Author Share Posted July 24, 2019 6 hours ago, cmart604 said: Very cool. ?? Thanks for sharing these pics. Any other interesting stuff from Chandler? Mostly we have the papers that are posted on http://papaintellivision.com There are a few other small chips that I thought I had brought home, but I guess I didn't. And several boxes of business cards that I doubt have much general interest (though I have been wrong about things like that before) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+cmart604 Posted July 24, 2019 Share Posted July 24, 2019 3 minutes ago, BSRSteve said: Mostly we have the papers that are posted on http://papaintellivision.com There are a few other small chips that I thought I had brought home, but I guess I didn't. And several boxes of business cards that I doubt have much general interest (though I have been wrong about things like that before) Haha. Never underestimate the level of crazy amongst some collectors. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rev Posted July 24, 2019 Share Posted July 24, 2019 Pics of business cards please. ? 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+intvsteve Posted July 24, 2019 Share Posted July 24, 2019 Awesome! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
First Spear Posted July 24, 2019 Share Posted July 24, 2019 8 hours ago, BSRSteve said: Mostly we have the papers that are posted on http://papaintellivision.com There are a few other small chips that I thought I had brought home, but I guess I didn't. And several boxes of business cards that I doubt have much general interest (though I have been wrong about things like that before) If you have time, please share the business cards. It’s always interesting to know “who’s who in the zoo”. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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