🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <18979@acorn.co.uk>, agodwin@acorn.co.uk (Adrian Godwin) writes:
> Rod Beckwith (rodb@slugo.corp.sgi.com) wrote:
> #  Hello Anybody,
> #  
> #  I was down at the  Sharper Image store yesterday & saw a device that I
> #  would like to know more about. I hope someone can help me.
> #  
> #  The device was a personal recording device. It is the size of a large pen
> #  or penlight flashlight. You can record your voice onto a chip on one of two
> #  20 second channels for playback later. I guess it is the same technology
> #  used on newer answering machines. The company that manufactures these
> #  things is Machina Inc. out of San Francisco.
> #  
> 
> It probably uses the UM5100 voice processor IC from United Microelectronics.
> This will digitise, compress and record speech into an attached SRAM, and
> subsequently play it back.
> It needs a certain amount of analogue support circuitry, mostly for recording
> - a playback-only unit is a lot simpler. The only additional digital device
> it needs is the SRAM.


It's more likely to be an ISD1020 chip which is an EEPROM that stores analog
samples of speech for replay. I've used one and its great. See QST (July1992?)
for an article using it.

David Tocher EI2AMB
Dept of Maths
University of Limerick
Ireland