cbelcher Posted December 23, 2020 Share Posted December 23, 2020 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. CheapTalk1.MOV CheepTalk Disk.zip CheepTalkGerbers.zip 8 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fierodoug5 Posted December 23, 2020 Share Posted December 23, 2020 Nice. I made one last year, also designed my own PCB. Sounds really good, I am using the same archer speaker, same as in the article. I don't have any glitches with mine though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xrbrevin Posted December 23, 2020 Share Posted December 23, 2020 nice - very much like the berzerk speech! you even used the same 80s cheesy speaker shown in the article ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crc_Error Posted December 23, 2020 Share Posted December 23, 2020 I so love this. I made one for my Atari 664XL 30 years ago too. Don't know if I have it lieing around somewhere. Learned so much with this speech project. You have spare PCB's? How much? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cbelcher Posted December 23, 2020 Author Share Posted December 23, 2020 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mclaneinc Posted December 23, 2020 Share Posted December 23, 2020 We (at Maplin) has so many computers kits for various machines based around the SP0256, definitely had one for the Atari back in the day.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zzip Posted December 23, 2020 Share Posted December 23, 2020 I remember I had all the parts to build this BITD, but never completed the build. Never had good soldering skills. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Awch Posted December 23, 2020 Share Posted December 23, 2020 I built this back in the day. Wish I'd kept it. I still have the old Realistic speaker that I used. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eegad Posted December 27, 2020 Share Posted December 27, 2020 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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