I came across Votrax at University of Illinois, where they attached Votrax
boxes with that chip in it to the PLATO terminals. You could write programs
("lessons") that would talk to you, and the software would generate the correct
data stream. It couldn't handle straight English because of the spelling
complications, but there was a semi-phonetic English notation that would work.
It did handle German, Esperanto, Spanish, and IPA. For a test case, someone
fed it the German sentence "Auf den Autobahnen gibt es keine
Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzungen" and it handled that fine. :-)
paul
> On Jul 26, 2018, at 4:07 PM, Henk Gooijen <henk.gooi...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Ahhh yes, I remember the Votrax, SC-01.
> There was an other chip that you programmed with phonemes,
> the SP0256-AL1 (IIRC). I must have it somewhere, forgot the manufacturer.
>
>
> Van: cctalk <cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org> namens Paul Koning via cctalk
> <cctalk@classiccmp.org>
> Verzonden: Thursday, July 26, 2018 7:48:36 PM
> Aan: Anders Nelson; General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
> Onderwerp: Re: Epson DECTalk IC
>
> If you want even older technology (that actually worked rather well) there's
> Votrax, which apparently is still available occasionally.
>
> paul
>
>
> > On Jul 26, 2018, at 1:38 PM, Anders Nelson via cctalk
> > <cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:
> >
> > It takes 9600 (8N1) serial input, and I found a forum thread:
> >
> > http://www.vcfed.org/forum/archive/index.php/t-34754.html
> >
> > "The DECTalk was a speech synthesizer (actually there were a few models).
> > The DTC01 and 03 can do text to speech when fed ascii text over RS232."
