Computalker - History This was the board that launched the
Computalker company.
The COMPUTALKER Model CT-1 Speech
Synthesizer was a high quality voice generator unit designed for the standard
S-100 bus. The synthesizer was controlled by acoustic-phonetic parameters
transmitted to the board on the S-100 data bus. These parameters controlled the
perceptually and physiologically fundamental aspects of speech as determined by
contemporary phonetic research of the time (late 70's). With the COMPUTALKER
Model CT-1, sound were defined in real time under software control. Parameters
which represent the phonetic structure of human speech were transmitted to the
CT-1 at a rate of 500 to 900 bytes per second, depending on the data compression
techniques used. This allowed the production of highly intelligible and quite
natural sounding speech output. Speaker characteristics and language or dialect
variations were retained in the output.
The board however did require a large block of I/O ports. Sixteen in total which
could be placed on any 16 byte boundary using a 4 bit selector switch on the
board.
An extensive manual was supplied with the board. A summary version can be
obtained
here.
Apparently there were Newsletters as well called "The Word".
Here is the first issue.
Lloyd Rice presented a paper at the First West Coast Computer Faire in
1977 regarding Speech by Rules and used the CT-1 as an example. It can be
seen
here.
A program called CSR1 was supplied with the board that allowed one to
generate speech using phoneme input. The documentation for this program can
be seen
here.
