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FS: GENUINE GI SP0256-AL2 Speech Synthesizer IC Chips

W

WimWalther

Experienced Member
Joined
Jan 12, 2019
Messages
449
Location
St. Paul, MN
I have received a small batch of 1980s vintage General Instrument SP0256-AL2 Speech Synth ICs. This is the very desirable AL2 version that can speak arbitrary words and phrases.

A custom version of this chip was the voice of the Mattel Intellivision game system

eBay and Ali are flooded with Chinese fakes, so don't even waste your time. I got tired of buying fakes, so when I came across these I bought a batch.

Price is $27.00/ea including USPS 1st Class shipping to the USA. Please contact me off-site drlegendre@gmail.com for fast response. IMG_20211028_163822190_HDR~2.jpg
 
Some speech synth chips can be hard to get. My Hero JR. Robots and the VOTRAX Type-N-Talk use the Votrax SC-01A, that is now very difficult to get. I really like the way this chip sounds.

One SC-01A failed in my Robot and it started talking very much like a person does who has had a CVA in the speech center of the brain and has an expressive dysphasia. I kept the faulty chip so that at some stage I could make a recording of it, as it was a really interesting failure. Before the SC-01A's became unobtainium I stocked up on them.

So far nobody has cloned the SC-01A chip.....yet, but it may happen in the future. Then the market could, like your speech IC, get flooded with fakes which is really disappointing. It is great you found a stack of genuine chips.
 
Yes, the SC-01 is a real classic. It's sad that they have effectively disappeared from the supply chain. About eight years ago I bought a C64 lot that had one of the Alien Group boxes with it. Like a fool I sold it, but money was tight and this is how it goes sometimes.

I'd like to buy a Type 'N Talk, but haven't seen one recently. If anyone has a unit they'd part with, do get in touch.
 
I don't have a spare Type N talk but I found them so hard to get that I made a type & talk replica (clone).

The pcb's I had made were based on jpeg images I created by tracing over images of the board that I found on the net in the vintage drawing program Microsoft Picture It.

A lot of pcb manufacturers now can make pcb's from .jpg images like this. It is a very oddball and non-standard way to end up with a pcb, but one strange advantage is, the pcb tracks match the original nearly exactly. For example when the Apple1 pcb got cloned, the initial versions of this had tracks that didn't resemble the original board, so it was not much of a "clone".

Here is the Votrax TNT article:

https://www.worldphaco.com/uploads/VOTRAX_TYPE___TALK_MEETS_HERO_JR.pdf

I'm not selling any of the SC-01A chips I collected for now as I am keeping them as spares for my clone Votrax TNT units and Hero Jr. Robots.

Oddly, there were other very rare IC's in the Heathkit Hero Jr. Robot.

When I went to assemble a spare "IC kit" for the Robot (I do this with all my vintage gear with IC's or odd parts, because I have a "spare parts disease" where I have to have spare parts or I cannot sleep at night) I found that these IC's were very hard to get.

They were IC's once used in radio remote control encoder & decoder systems. These IC's had their origin in very early remote control systems like those for garage doors. I wrote an article about this; the R7411 IC's are mentioned from about page 6 on. These IC's are nearly as difficult to get as the SC-01A's so I stocked up on these too.


https://www.worldphaco.com/uploads/...d_REVERSE_POLARITY___Hero_Jr_Radio_Board..pdf
 
Oooh, I built a synth for my BBC micro using one of those back in the late 80's

Redirected the vector for the display to read out anything on the screen too, worked quite well with castle of riddles etc. Shame I gave it away.
 
ALL CHIPS ARE SOLD - THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO SHOWED INTEREST!

If there is still interest in these chips, please post a comment here or contact me off-site drlegendre@gmail.com and I'll consider ordering another batch.
 
Another batch? Where have you been finding these? There was a guy selling them by the tube on eBay a few years ago, but I haven't seen them in a while.

A few sp0256 projects up on my website for anyone who interested in speech synthesis -- an ISA card, a QX-10 card, a cts256 text-to-speech board. I also have a standalone arduino-based board that I have yet to publish because I don't yet have a text-to-speech implementation for it (have one for the votrax, but not one for the sp0256).

Also, if you happen to have a line on SC-01-A or SSI-263, I'm always looking to stock up on either of those. The sp0256 is nice, but it takes a votrax to sing "daisy" properly.

Scott
 
I'm going to keep my source to myself for now, as I'm concerned some greedy type will get wind of it and buy out the whole stock. In fact, I've debated doing just that myself to prevent them ending up in SC-01 territory.

FWIW, my selling price is essentially the same as you would pay buying them in single lots from my source.. they're not cheap, but fair.
 
There is probably lots of documentation already but I have a NOS GI SP0256-AL2 still in it's original unopened packaging from Radio Shack. Id be happy to open it up and archive the booklet if needed.

SP0256-AL2.jpg
 
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