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Texas Instruments Speak & Spell (Japan)

Date of introduction:	1979	Display technology:	Fluorescent
New price:		Display size:	8 alphanumeric
Size:	10.0" x 7.0" x 1.3" 254 x 177 x 34 mm³
Weight:	18.5 ounces, 526 grams	Serial No:	J011797
Batteries:	4*C cells	Date of manufacture:	wk 08 year 1980
AC-Adapter:	?	Origin of manufacture:	Japan
Precision:		Integrated circuits:	TMC0271, TMC0281, CD2321, CD2322
Memories:
Program steps:		Courtesy of:	Joerg Woerner

At first glance this rare Speak & Spell manufactured in Japan could be mixed-up with the Speak & Math due to the grey housing.

Dismantling this rare educational toy manufactured in February 1980 by (or for) Texas Instruments in Japan reveals a printed circuit board (PCB) identical to the original US product but with some interesting modifications:

• The jack of the head phone is placed above the display.
• The position of the jack for the power supply is slightly shifted.
• The two TMC0351 and TMC0352 Speech ROMs are replaced with two
TMC0350/CD2321 and TMC0350/CD2322 chips storing much simpler English words.

The Integrated Circuits (ICs) of this Speak & Spell (Japan) use 0.4” wide 28-pin SPDIP (Shrink Plastic Dual In-line Package with a 0.07” / 1.778 mm lead pitch) and a 0.6” wide 40-pin SPDIP encapsulations to safe real estate on the very clean layout of the PCB.

The design of the featured Speak & Spell (Japan) is centered around four Integrated Circuits:

• TMC0271: 4-bit microcontroller with 2k*9 Bits ROM and 9*64 Bits RAM
• TMC0281: TMS5100 VSP (Voice Synthesis Processor)
• TMC0350/CD2321, TMC0350/CD2322: TMS6100 VSM (Voice Synthesis Memory) with 128k Bits, each

An inside view of some other dismantled Speak & Spell products could be found here.

If you have additions to the above article please email: joerg@datamath.org.