🚀 go-pugleaf

    Review and Information on B.G Micro Text to Speech Board.
    ------ --- ----------- -- --------- ---- -- ------ ------

                COMPUTALKER SPEECH SYNTHESIZER
                ----------- ------ -----------

        from  B.G. MICRO  (214) 271-5546  (Dallas TX)

I purchased the B.G. MICRO  COMPUTALKER board for  $89.95  (price
is  lower  now).  It  can be inserted into a PC, or operated in a
stand-alone mode.  I have it set-up in stand-alone  operation.  I
have it propped-up between books on my book shelf. I built my own
+5,+12,-12 power supply that  doubles  as  a  book-end.  A  power
supply is available from B. G.  Micro. I use a ribbon modem cable
to connect it to one of several different computers.

This Board uses the General Instruments SPO256-AL2 and CTS256-AL2
chip  set. These are the same chips that Radio Shack sells. These
chips have been mentioned in several  books  on  voice  synthesis
("Chip Talk").

The board uses one slot (for power only) and requires one  serial
COM  port  connection.  The  board can except ASCII TEXT from any
computer (or terminal) with RS-232 port. There  is  a  1700  byte
input  buffer  with  hardware  handshake  signals.  The  board is
shipped with a (IBMPC)  Demonstration  Disk,  documentation,  and
Schematics. The board has a speaker and a RCA type phono jack for
external speaker.

The serial port on the board can be set  to  one  of  seven  baud
rates  up  to  9600  baud.  The  COMPUTALKER  begins speaking the
received TEXT after it receives a CR (0x0d) character.

The TEXT to SPEECH program within the COMPUTALKER is limited  but
is  fairly  good  for  the  price.  It  has trouble with speaking
numerical text. Everything must be spelled out.  Such  as  "$104"
must be sent to the COMPUTALKER as "1 hundred and 4 dollars".

The voice quality is good compared to some voice synthesizers. It
sounds  a  bit  "nasal",  and take some time to get use to. It is
best  if  there  are  spaces  between  words  and  difficult   to
understand  words  are  spelled  "phonetically".  This  take some
experimenting.

I have read material on phonetic  speech  with  PHONEMES  and  on
using/constructing  ALLOPHONE  speech  with the SPO256-AL2, but I
haven't found a way to by-pass  the  text  to  speech  conversion
program.  From  my  reading,  the  Votracs(tm) system has control
character sequences  to  alter  tonal  voice  qualities  and  set
control  modes.  This is something like what a good printer would
allow.  I spoke with the guy that designed the COMPUTALKER for B.
G.  MICRO,  He  says  that there are NO special control sequences
that the voice synthesizer responds to, such to alter  the  modes
of  operation  or  alter  the  speaking  tone, etc.




Ted G. Kekatos
UUCP: ..!att!ihuxv!tedk                     (312) 979-0804
AT&T Bell Laboratories, Indian Hill South, IX-1F-460
Naperville & Wheaton Roads - Naperville, Illinois. 60566 USA