The Best Votrax Text-To-Speech Synthesizer: Aicom Accent Votrax SC-02 8-bit ISA PC Card

I've played with a lot of other text to speech systems, including the Votrax Type-N-Talk, various CTS256/SPO256 solutions, etc. This Votrax SC-02 based speech synthesizer, the Aicom Accent has phenomenally good text to speech technology for the time. Part of this is due to the increased capabilities of the SC-02, which offers more parameters than the SC-01 (and certainly more than the SP0256A-AL2). However, I think the real reason for the quality is the text to speech algorithm in the rom. Whereas most TTS systems might have an algorithm that runs in 4KB or 8KB of ROM, the Aicom Accent has 128 KB of ROM. It's really a text-to-speech coprocessor more than it is just a speech synthesizer, completely offloading all text-to-speech duties from the PC. This card appeared to have originally been installed in a phone response system at a municipal library. Using some software called SpeakUp as a basis, and talking to the developer of that software, Kirk Reiser, I was able to write my own DOS utility to communicate with the card. In this video, I demonstrate configuring many parameters of the Votrax SC-02 via the Aicom board, I have it speak many phrases and even read a few files, Let me know if you have any other good speech synthesizer stories. For more vintage computer videos, see www.smbaker.com/

[@SusanAmberBruce]

I keep thinking, "Shall we play a game"

[@JanEringa8k]

"How about a nice game of chess?"
or
"Greetings Professor Falken"

[@SusanAmberBruce]

@@JanEringa8k yes exactly haha

[@blackopsrocks]

Thank you for bringing this card back to life, great to see history at work.

[@AnotherMaker]

This is wild. I just obtained a few cards that are very similar but not exactly the same. They're both called SpeechPlus. I can't find squat online about them. This at least gives me hope that there may be info out there somewhere.

[@smbakeryt]

Do you have any pictures? If so please send them to [e-mail] and I'll have a look when I get a chance.

[@corneleousworthington4566]

@smbakeryt you had me at votrax 😂 so cool!!! I keep waiting for people to reproduce these great old speech chips in FPGA

[@douro20]

Votrax synthesizers are difficult to emulate properly as they use an analog vocal tract.

[@smbakeryt]

I know that Scott Savage is currently working on a Votrax SC-01 clone expected to be released this spring, and I think he once told me if he does that he could do an SC-02 also. I don't know much about it thought. He has a pre-sale listing up on eBay.

[@douro20]

I have a Type 'n Speak, and it uses an SSI-263 along with a Zilog Z180 and a very deep dictionary. It has very limited prosody so it's very robotic sounding, with almost no inflection. It can be controlled over the serial port, however. The UI is quite nice, with plenty of keyboard shortcuts and floppy disk support. It can also be used with a video display terminal.

[@smbakeryt]

Interesting, I'm going to have to keep an eye out for one of those!

[@JacGoudsmit]

Pretty impressive!
I think it would be cool to convert your program to a DOS device driver so you can just copy a text file to the device, or pipe command output to it. That must be how their printer driver worked too.

[@wa4aos]

Was there ever a speech card for the Heathkit H8?Seems like I vaguely remember discussion of one in the Heath REMark magazine; great rag back in the day. I have the color and prototype boards as well as memory, floppy controller etc.
Maybe Scott will design a decent sound card for the H8 Hope, hope !!

[@smbakeryt]

Well... actually... www.smbaker.com/speech-synthesizer-for-the-heathkit-h8-computer :) Norberto Collado has also designed a digitalker-based card for the H8, and there are at least a few sound cards floating around. I'm not sure if there were any vintage H8 speech synthesizers, but I wouldn't be surprised.

[@wa4aos]

Thank you !! @@smbakeryt

[@microhobbyist]

Is there any relatively "modern", and still available, speech synthesizer I can hook up to my 8-bit homebrew computer? I got some fake SPO256, and I can no longer find the real deal.

[@TalesofWeirdStuff]

I also have quite a collection of speech synth items, and somehow... my eBay searches missed this card. I have a couple SC-01 devices, but I don't have any with SC-02. That is an amazing find. I'm green with envy.

[@kevtris]

this is pretty interesting; I have a few of the aicom accent synthesizers, but they are standalone with serial input instead. It seems to be very similar hardware wise, 128K of EPROMs, RAM, and a Z80 to run the show. Interestingly this one has an 8085 on it instead of the Z80, though. I have not been able to find any documentation for it, but if you feed it text it will speak it. I know there's all sorts of control options you can send but I don't know how they work. Also it has provisions for a foot pedal, I assume to pause/change the speed of the speech (and maybe rewind?) As you said the T2S quality is extremely good, especially for the time. I fed mine wikipedia articles and it didn't fail once, even on tricky words like "wind" (the wind blows) and "wind" (wind up the clock) so it must have some basic tests for which pronunciation to use. The accent also has some decent inflection control and it doesn't sound as monotone as a lot of the other votrax based synthesizers of the day.

[@ayan.debnath]

Is PCB Clone availale?

[@pikadroo]

Are you aiming to clone this thing? I’d surely be interested.

[@smbakeryt]

I will have to seriously consider it -- it is a pretty cool card. Would make not only a good ISA card, but also a good standalone speech synthesizer.

[@memadmax69]

Thats cool and all but...
Can it say Crysis???
^.^