Date   : Sat, 11 Mar 2006 14:12:14 +0000
From   : Fragula <fragula@...>
Subject: Re: 101 uses for a speech system (number 35)

Sprow wrote:

> which describe the US dialect speech ROM
Well good heavens.. i'd more or less forgotten about this bit of the beeb!

Oooh! Anybody ever hear the fabled "Alan Alda" (from M.A.S.H.) PHROM?

There were four different U.S. ones. I have word listings for them
someplace.

Sure I've heared the "Technical General" one (which is what I think you
have the word list for on your web site) may even have a binary dump of
them someplace<tm> but only ever had a the standard "Kenneth Kendal"
PHROM, and of course I have the TI99/4A one (as an actual PHROM, not an
image, but I'll fix that at some point..)

> A little known fact is that the speech PHROM which normally holds speech
> data can also be used to hold RFS data, 
heh. I knew that. Wasn't actually that usefull a bit of info. Though one
day I got bored reading whatever paper it was with the info, and put
Jetset Willy in a (bootable) sideways ROM.

Does anyone know much about the internal format of the (original) 6100?
I mean as a speech rom, rather than RFS. I know it's something like
"waveform type, frequency and a bunch of (vocal tract) coefficients" per
 "chunk" (which could be sound primitives, or whole words, or a bunch of
"chained" primitives to make synthetic words. It was kinda complex, that
I do recall.

Very frustrating.. The first /meaningfull/ computer program I ever wrote
(in TI Extended BASIC) was on a 99/4a, and "ripped" the "phrases" from
the PHROM into strings, which I could then view, play, or edit. Several
20 hour days of hard (BASIC!) coding just to make the TI use rather
naughty language on Certain Persons who were foolhardy enough to tell me
that "It Can't Be Done".

Ahh.. I think I remember how. TI extended BASCI had a function to "read
PHROM" into strings, but used "logical" addresses (i.e. phrase numbers)
or somesuch.

Right.. Back to the bench with me for an hour. Must make some cabbage to
purchase beeb goodies (a reprogrammale PHROM emulator for starters!) with.

Cheers!

M.