• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Anyone have a Votrax Type'n talk handy?

smbaker

Experienced Member
Joined
Oct 21, 2016
Messages
416
Location
Oregon, USA
I'm working on a text-to-speech algorithm implementation and want to make sure it emits the same phonemes as a type'n talk would. The Type'N Talk has a "PSEND" mode where you can type text and it'll emit the phonemes back to the terminal.

Is there anyone out there who has one and wouldn't mind typing a few dozen words into the thing and sending me the phonetic conversions?

Thanks,
Scott
 
Hi Scott

After months of searching I am expecting arrival of a T n T in the next week or so. Assuming that it works (and for the price I paid, it had better work!), I'll be happy to help.

Bob
 
Hi Scott

After months of searching I am expecting arrival of a T n T in the next week or so. Assuming that it works (and for the price I paid, it had better work!), I'll be happy to help.

Bob

I wonder if you're the guy who paid exactly five dollars more than I bid Friday evening... :) If so, congrats and well played.

Anyhow, I was talking over my project with Hugo, who reverse engineered a T n T, and he did mention that if anyone does wish to help me that they will need to fabricate a custom serial cable in order to receive the phonemes. So it's a little harder than I had first anticipated.

Scott
 
You should be thankful you didn't get it - it arrived today and it doesn't work, only emits a continuous droning sound, though the volume and pitch control work. I didn't bother with a cable, just turned it on hoping to hear "system ready." No such luck. I had the Micro Mint version - the MicroVox - which I got from Ciarcia when I was a member of the CT Computer Club. I'm glad I didn't waste my time finding/adapting an old serial cable before turning it on. I am not technically proficient enough to do anything with it other than to return it and get a refund. 😥

Bob
 
You should be thankful you didn't get it - it arrived today and it doesn't work, only emits a continuous droning sound, though the volume and pitch control work. I didn't bother with a cable, just turned it on hoping to hear "system ready." No such luck. I had the Micro Mint version - the MicroVox - which I got from Ciarcia when I was a member of the CT Computer Club. I'm glad I didn't waste my time finding/adapting an old serial cable before turning it on. I am not technically proficient enough to do anything with it other than to return it and get a refund. ��

Bob

Ugh. That's unfortunate. It could be something simple, like the RC oscillator for the pitch or the power supply, but for that kind of price, it ought to work!

I wonder if the seller will want to sell a known-bad T n T at a substantial discount? ;)
 
Unfortunately I don't have the skill set to do much with it. I did open it up to see if it had socketed chips with thermal creep but without removing the circuit board it seems that they are soldered in. I am out of town for a few days so I don't have time to make up a cable and actually attach it to my terminal or Horizon. But IIRC, it didn't need to be connected if you just wanted to hear 'system ready' upon powering up. He has already indicated that if I want a refund, then I have to return everything he sent me - ??? If he is willing to send back all my money, I'm certainly willing to send back the unit, the PS and the manual!
 
But IIRC, it didn't need to be connected if you just wanted to hear 'system ready' upon powering up.

Hmm, according to the manual page 7, "The unit will say 'SYSTEM READY' when the power switch is pushed to the ON position ONLY if the RS-232 signals from the computer indicate that the computer is also ready. TNT may be powered up without the computer being READY, but there will be no audio feedback from TNT to indicate that it is operational".

I don't have one (and haven't ever had one) so I can't confirm, but perhaps your unit is good after all?

Regardless, paypal usually sides with the buyer in disputes, so if you did get a bum unit, then I would hope you're in good shape.

Scott
 
Problem solved! I hacked the simh SWTP6800 simulator to run the typentalk binary,

$ BIN/swtp6800mp-a

SWTP 6800, V2, MP-A CPU Board simulator V4.0-0 Current git commit id: 2f66e74c
sim> set bootrom 2732
attach bootrom typetalk.bin
set cpu hex
set cpu itrap
set cpu mtrap
reset
set mp-b2 bd0, bd1, bd2, bd3, bd4, bd5
gsim> sim> sim> sim> sim> sim> sim>
phoneme 3E
~_J_jBLCkB^iC
music
CLbvwRKIY
late
CXFaij

Those strings are the correct output; T n T prints each phoneme as a single ascii character. From this I ought to be able to construct a dictionary of common words to use in my set of test cases.
 
You should be thankful you didn't get it - it arrived today and it doesn't work, only emits a continuous droning sound, though the volume and pitch control work. I didn't bother with a cable, just turned it on hoping to hear "system ready." No such luck. I had the Micro Mint version - the MicroVox - which I got from Ciarcia when I was a member of the CT Computer Club. I'm glad I didn't waste my time finding/adapting an old serial cable before turning it on. I am not technically proficient enough to do anything with it other than to return it and get a refund. ��

Bob

I had to wait so long to get a TNT that I made a replica as you know.

I am suspicious that the reason there are a few failed TNT units about is that they have been attempted to be powered from an incorrect power supply.

The original supply that came with it is relatively rare, though a TRS 80 supply works if I remember the number correctly.

I also have a dead TNT, the CPU is not working. When I can get the time I will remove the resin over it and replace it. There is an article done by Kevin Horton who did it when he "reverse engineered" this unit. But there might be more than one failed IC if the power rail was abused. At least my replica TNT is still working and is devoid of the resin.

Also, I have another thing that uses the Votrax SC01A speech IC, this is the Hero Jr Robot, I have two of these. One day , one of them suddenly started talking slurred speech gibberish. It was quite bizarre and very reminiscent of a person who has had a stroke and developed an expressive dysphasia. It was the SC-01A chip itself that had failed, just out of the blue.

One issue with these Robots is they were originally powered by two 6V gel cells, then somebody puts in two 12V cells and over-voltages them, or reverses the connections. A lot of chips in the Robot get damaged this way, some partially and it shows up later. So in my Hero Jr Robots I fitted a power Zener rectifier and fuse to protect them from this scenario.

It would pay to note that the SC-01A IC is a unique masterpiece of speech synthesizer history, it will ultimately become impossible to get, there is no substitute. So if you find any it is a wise idea to stock up on them if you have anything that uses them.
 
So in my Hero Jr Robots I fitted a power Zener rectifier and fuse to protect them from this scenario.

I've been doing similar on any vintage speech boards that I design. When the ICs are > $130 each (if you can even get them), it makes sense to take precautions. When I talked to Robert at robotworkshop a few months ago, he did fortunately say that he has seen very few failed SC-01A, and also suspected it happened when someone botched the power connection.

I wish I would have bought some of these a decade ago, when a person could still routinely find them here and there. Nowadays they are pretty rare.

Scott
 
I've been doing similar on any vintage speech boards that I design. When the ICs are > $130 each (if you can even get them), it makes sense to take precautions. When I talked to Robert at robotworkshop a few months ago, he did fortunately say that he has seen very few failed SC-01A, and also suspected it happened when someone botched the power connection.

I wish I would have bought some of these a decade ago, when a person could still routinely find them here and there. Nowadays they are pretty rare.

Scott

The largest supply of the SC-01A I came across was from this fellow Kevin Keinert:


http://www.gameroomrepair.com/ICparts/ICparts.htm

I bought a number of them for spares for the Votrax units and my Hero Jr. robots and for the TNT project in case one day I needed to make more replicas. This was a few years ago. Now if you look he has completely sold out. Not only that, Kevin is a master at finding rare IC's, he has all sorts of suppliers hiding many rare IC's, but he cannot get these. I saw the "writing was on the wall" for the SC-01A becoming unobtainium as a spare part. One thing that started this was modern projects appeared on the internet with folks using them with modern CPU's. Exactly the same thing happened when "scope clocks" started to appear, now it is very hard to get many replacement CRT's for vintage scopes as many types have sold out. The same thing has happened with many types of vintage Nixie tubes.

I seem to suffer from some sort of "spare parts disease" and have to have spare parts, IC's etc and rare items for my vintage computer and other vintage gear, its a weird obsession, but like some of these obsessive disorders, it comes in handy when something fails I can have it usually up and running in short order. It is like the guy with the OCD for lawn mowing, at least the garden and lawns are always tidy.

I wrote an article on protecting the Hero Jr power supply. And as the manual did not have the Radio system's schematic, so as I often have to, I traced the whole thing out by hand, and wouldn't you know it , it also contains very rare IC's in the radio boards, that had their origin in home automation systems, like garage door controllers:

http://worldphaco.com/uploads/SAVIN...d_REVERSE_POLARITY___Hero_Jr_Radio_Board..pdf
 
Last edited:
I had to wait so long to get a TNT that I made a replica as you know.

I am suspicious that the reason there are a few failed TNT units about is that they have been attempted to be powered from an incorrect power supply.

The original supply that came with it is relatively rare, though a TRS 80 supply works if I remember the number correctly.

It would pay to note that the SC-01A IC is a unique masterpiece of speech synthesizer history, it will ultimately become impossible to get, there is no substitute. So if you find any it is a wise idea to stock up on them if you have anything that uses them.


Apparently my problem was/is intermittent as it is now working, and it came with the original PS (though with a long crack on one side of the case. I'm not sure if that crack was there previously or occurred in shipping, as it was not well packed). A day later I powered it on again, but this time there was no continuous drone, just a soft click from the speaker. I found an old serial cable and connected it to my Wyse terminal, though not bothering to set baud rate, etc. at that point. By sheer luck when I turned it on I finally received the "system ready" I had been waiting to hear for the last 35 years! I haven't had an opportunity to play beyond that.

Hugo, given your knowledge and work with it, do you have any idea of what the initial symptom might relate to? It was an immediate drone though both the volume and rate control affected it.

As an aside, I have what appears to be a relatively rare S-100 P-SST card - a Programmable Sound Speech and Time card from LPSystems, Inc 'A Software Wizardry Product.' It uses the SC-01 and AY-3-8910. It is a relatively recent acquisition and I haven't tried it. The manual is quite extensive and I will make a PDF of it when I get a round tuit.


A further aside - GitHub has a 3 year old "bad software emulation" of the SC-01. Anybody know of a better, more recent attempt?
 
Hugo, given your knowledge and work with it, do you have any idea of what the initial symptom might relate to? It was an immediate drone though both the volume and rate control affected it.

Probably the most likely thing would be a bad connection on the power supply plug or the on of sliding switch contacts and perhaps bad electrolytic capacitors since the problem improved.
Likely though the SC-01A is fine and the CPU and other IC's in there are ok too, as they seldom go intermittent (they usually work or don't, but there are rare exceptions with intermittent IC's).

There is one oddity about the design, as I recall the designers forgot to put a filter capacitor directly on the output of the 12V regulator, so there is a very small chance that this regulator could burst into oscillation which would produce interesting effects and disable the unit. So it might pay to put a capacitor there, I think I used a 0.1uF but a good choice would be a 2.2uF 16V tant type.

So I would clean the connector & switch and replace the electros in the power supply unit first and then see what happens after that. If still troubles try replacing the 4.7uF capacitor on pin 14 of the 74123.
 
Bob,

Also if the problem reappeared after you were certain all the connections & electros were good, I would try replacing the two 2114 RAM IC's, these by far would be the most unreliable IC's on the board and at least they are not potted in resin and they are notorious for troubles, at least the ones I have had.
 
A further aside - GitHub has a 3 year old "bad software emulation" of the SC-01. Anybody know of a better, more recent attempt?

The MAME implementation at https://github.com/mamedev/mame/blob/master/src/devices/sound/votrax.cpp looks fairly mature. This was going to be my fallback position on my robot project had I not been able to source a votrax SC-01a. You would have to figure out how to rip the code out of MAME and use it, though I figure that's probably not all that difficult.

Robert at Robot Workshop is said to be planning a modern replacement, though I would suspect it would be a digital IC that emulates an SC-01a, not an analog IC.

Of course, there's also the SP0256A-AL2, which is reasonably plentiful, though IMO does not sound nearly as good as an SC-01a.

Scott
 
Managed to score myself a Type N Talk in "not working / parts" condition. Seller said that there was no indication of it powering up.

The problem turned out to be the included speaker.

tnt-speaker.JPG

The speaker arrived still plugged into the back of the TnT, but ...

1) ... has the wrong plug, and

2) ... is not a speaker

As fun as it was to build my own TnT, it's also fun to own the real thing!
 
Back
Top