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Finally built a CheepTalk


cbelcher

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So FujiNet is awesome with built in SAM, but I have had a project on the back burner for the last 30 years or so.  To build the CheepTalk by Lee Brilliant, that I saw in ANALOG back in the day. 

I think it attracted me because computer speech is fun, but as it turns out, Dr. Brilliant lived in the same city I did, and we are both MD's...  Never met him though.

I've had the SPO256 from Radio Shack the entire time, and decided to finally put it to use.

 

The original article:

Analog Computing 29, April 1985 vol 4 page 59

 

With follow up articles and others using the same hardware:

Analog Computing 32, July 1985 vol 7 page 7 (Correction)

Analog Computing 34, September 1985 vol 9 page 94 (Correction)

Analog Computing 56, July 1987 vol 7 page 54 (Talker by Anthony Nogas)

Antic, January1987 vol 5 n 9 p13 (Talking Typewriter by Bill Marquardt)

Atari Classics,  April 1993 vol2 n 2 page 19 (Cheep Talk Type 'n' Talk by Louis Marcotte)

 

So I rounded up the software I could find and have attached them.

I built a PCB in KiCAD from Dr. Brilliant's schematic and made the ports the same width as my 800xl (Gerbers attached).

 

Overall it has been fun - the board seems a little glitchy and needs to be reset at times, but does put out speech to an amplified speaker.

If you build it - do NOT buy cheap knockoff SPO256-AL2 chips from China - anything less than 20-30 dollars at this point is likely to be a non-working counterfeit.

I do have a few PCB left if anyone has a chip sitting around they would like to use. 

 

Pictures and video attached.

 

 

 

 

 

CheapTalk2.jpg

CheapTalk3.jpg

CheepTalk Disk.zip CheepTalkGerbers.zip

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Fierodoug5, I like the cases - and yes my next project was going to be Talk is Cheap as well.  We both used the same schematic I presume, but the 800xl it's hooked up to can be a little wonky anyway, so that may be the source of glitching.

 

Crc_Error, for a bare board - $5 plus postage.  I need to find the cheapest way to send a small bare board - probably bubble mailer.  You can PM me.  

 

Another option for sound output, as noted in the article is to feed the audio back to the SIO port - I labeled it on the silkscreen.  But yep, I've had the cheesy speaker from  the article for a long time too.

 

 

 

 

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My friend and I also built one back in the day.  Had the board inside the bottom half of an Atari joystick case with a piece of clear plastic glued across the top. Wrote a little program to let you type in a sentence and have cheep talk speak it.  Then wrote a short text adventure that would speak the location descriptions and such.   Wish I still had my Cheep Talk,  but somewhere along the way I guess I must have thrown it out because I've never come across it since getting back into Atari a dozen or so years ago. 

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