Let’s start with his voice! (Part 1 – What are our voice options?)
Looking around on the “inter-webs,” I’ve found there’s a selection of voice options. There are both hardware and software synthesis options, and the Raspberry Pi would be more than adequate for a software-based approach.
Some of the options out there:
- SparkFun VoiceBox Shield
- SP0256-AL2 Speech IC
- eSpeak: Speech Synthesizer
- MaryTTS
The problem with these is that they would violate the prime directive – I want to keep as much of HERO 1’s core essence intact as possible, and changing his voice if I don’t need to would definitely change his core essence. That said, it’s great to know there are alternative solutions out there if/when I manage to blow up HERO 1’s speech chip. Fortunately, I actually started tinkering with this at the end of December, and have made some decent progress.
HERO 1 uses an SC-01-A speech chip that was made by a company called Votrax in the early ’80s. Apparently, this is the same speech chip that gave Q*bert hist voice! I found a great writeup about the chip and its history on redcedar.com. To quote from their page:
What happened to SSI?
I’m a little unsure, but it sounds like Texas Instruments acquired a lot of SSI’s assets in 1996, according to this press release: http://www.ti.com/corp/docs/press/company/1998/98005.shtml
So some SSI elements became part of TI’s Storage Products Group (http://www.ti.com/sc/docs/products/storage/index.htm).
However, I was in touch (April 2006) with that TI group, and they did not have any information on the 263 (or other chips). They thought that Teridian Semiconductor Corporation (http://www.tsc.tdk.com/) might have retained the speech products. However, my email to them remains unanswered. Anyone have additional information?
Additionally, they had the datasheet for the SC-01A as well!
