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Make Computer Talk
- Thread starter millelacs
- Start date
carlsson
Veteran Member
There are a couple of different methods. The easiest one is to locate a special software called S.A.M - The Software Automatic Mouth. It produces speech through phonemes, and is highly programmable. It doesn't require any additional hardware, and is very good.
Then, you have cartridges such as Currah uSpeech (or rather µSpeech). These contain special hardware and have a cable that goes from the video output to the cartridge and a through port. The speech may be of higher quality than the software solution, but it is less programmable. I think the speech chip is SP0256 or something like that. It was very popular in a wide range of products for different computers and handheld units.
There may be some more solutions, but all can be divided into software or hardware. The end user will need to have the right kind of speech synthesis, as these systems are not compatible with eachother. Theoretically it may be possible to detect from software if you have either program or cartridge loaded, and conditionally call different speech commands or none at all if no speech synthesis was found. A few games are said to contain such conditional speech, but I never saw it working myself.
Then, you have cartridges such as Currah uSpeech (or rather µSpeech). These contain special hardware and have a cable that goes from the video output to the cartridge and a through port. The speech may be of higher quality than the software solution, but it is less programmable. I think the speech chip is SP0256 or something like that. It was very popular in a wide range of products for different computers and handheld units.
There may be some more solutions, but all can be divided into software or hardware. The end user will need to have the right kind of speech synthesis, as these systems are not compatible with eachother. Theoretically it may be possible to detect from software if you have either program or cartridge loaded, and conditionally call different speech commands or none at all if no speech synthesis was found. A few games are said to contain such conditional speech, but I never saw it working myself.
I know I used to just type a word and the commodore 64 would say the word that I typed. I don't remember the name of the program.
Is there any command in the commodore 64 to type and have the computer say the word you typed.
Let me know,
Thanks,
Bret
Is there any command in the commodore 64 to type and have the computer say the word you typed.
Let me know,
Thanks,
Bret
tezza
Veteran Member
I know I used to just type a word and the commodore 64 would say the word that I typed. I don't remember the name of the program.
Is there any command in the commodore 64 to type and have the computer say the word you typed.
Let me know,
Thanks,
Bret
I know of no such command. I'm sure the Commodore would have been running specific speech synthesis software.
carlsson
Veteran Member
Err.. was I unclear in my response above? Neither of the 8-bit Commodores has built-in speech synthesis, with the exception of the ultra-rare V364 prototype, the top of the Plus/4 range only available in 1-2 copies.
It seems the people who wrote SAM still is in business. Back in the days they were called Don't Ask Software, now it is SoftVoice Inc.
Since this forum has a policy to stay out of the muddy waters of abandonware and worse, I'm not going to post any download links. You'll have to search yourself, or you could PM me for pointers where to look. In any case, you need some cables or other means to transfer software to a real C64 anyway if you want it to be useable.
It seems the people who wrote SAM still is in business. Back in the days they were called Don't Ask Software, now it is SoftVoice Inc.
Since this forum has a policy to stay out of the muddy waters of abandonware and worse, I'm not going to post any download links. You'll have to search yourself, or you could PM me for pointers where to look. In any case, you need some cables or other means to transfer software to a real C64 anyway if you want it to be useable.