DATAMATH CALCULATOR MUSEUM |
Texas Instruments Speak & Spell (British Voice Type 3)
Date of introduction: | 1986 | Display technology: | Fluorescent |
New price: | Display size: | 9 alphanumeric | |
Size: | 10.0" x 7.0" x 1.3" 254 x 177 x 34 mm3 |
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Weight: | 16.7 ounces, 474 grams | Serial No: | |
Batteries: | 4*C cells | Date of manufacture: | wk 14 year 1991 |
AC-Adapter: | AC9199 | Origin of manufacture: | USA |
Precision: | Integrated circuits: | TMC0271, CD2801, CD62175 | |
Memories: | |||
Program steps: | Courtesy of: | Joerg Woerner | |
Download manual: | (US: 1.8M Bytes) |
This Speak & Spell (British Voice) model introduced in 1986 got a slightly changed keyboard design. View the previous design here.
The
pictured Speak & Spell was manufactured in April 1991 in the United States
for the British market and
represents the last design iteration of the Speak & Spell family. The printed circuit board (PCB) itself is
much smaller than the
original Speak & Spell design but sports an almost
identical design.
The
main components on the PCB are:
Microcontoller: The microcontroller is derived from the TMS1000 series and adopted to control both the keyboard, the display and to feed the speech synthesizer. This Speak & Spell uses a TMC0271 which interprets as TMC0270, ROM-Code 1.
Speech Synthesizer: The Speak & Spell series uses with the TMC0280 the first one-chip LPC speech synthesizer. Later refinements to the Speak & Spell chips resulted in the TMS5100, 5200 and 5220 Voice Synthesis Processors for commercial products. This Speak & Spell uses a CD2801 which interprets as TMC0280, Version 1.
Speech ROM: Speech data is stored in a 128k ROM chip with the designation TMC0350. This Speak & Spell uses a CD62175 which is actually an identical VSM (Voice Speech Memory) from a more recent manufacturing process.
There are a lot of differences between American English and British English, therefore Texas Instruments had to change the Speech-ROMs of the original Speak & Spell to sell it on the United Kingdom market.
In 1986 we knew a total of 10 different plug-in modules for
the Speak & Spell, a comprehensive overview including the wordlists could be
found here.
If you have additions to the above article please email: joerg@datamath.org.
© Joerg Woerner, December 3, 2007. No reprints without written permission.