[Coco] Radio Shack Speech-Sound Pak

[Bill Loguidice]

An internal Speech-Sound Pak in the CoCo 3 would have hardly overshadowed
the Tandy 1000 series. Tandy just didn't want to add extra manufacturing
costs to the CoCo 3, something that plagued the CoCo line from day one. By
the time the CoCo 3 was released, it would be hard to blame them for the
strategy since there was only so much life left in 8-bit computers by that
time, particularly in the US.

It IS a pity that the Speech-Sound Pak didn't receive more overall support,
though, but then that's to be expected with something like that. As a point
of comparison, the similar-in-concept Mockingboard (and compatibles) on the
Apple II received support from less than two dozen games and
utilities/productivity software.

-Bill

========================================================
Bill Loguidice, Managing Director; Armchair Arcade, Inc.
<http://www.armchairarcade.com>
========================================================
Authored Books
<http://www.amazon.com/Bill-Loguidice/e/B001U7W3YS/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_1> and
Film <http://www.armchairarcade.com/film>; About me and other ways to get
in touch <http://about.me/billloguidice>
========================================================

On Mon, Aug 21, 2017 at 10:47 PM, Andrew <keeper63 at cox.net> wrote:

> Ray, don't forget about the other half of that hardware!
>
> It has some pretty amazing sound capabilities as well, though I don't
> think there were many (or any?) commercial software (games etc) that used
> it. Honestly, the chip that was in that thing should have been incorporated
> into the CoCo 3 (but Tandy didn't want to overshadow the Tandy 1000, which
> is a pity).
>
> Still, it's a fun piece to experiment and play with!
>
> If you get a multi-pak for it, I seem to recall that you were supposed to
> put the floppy-drive pak in either slot 1 or slot 4 (?) and set the switch
> to that (for bootup), but other cartridges could be put in the other slots
> (at one time, I had the floppy controller, the SS pak, the RS-232 pak, and
> a DS-69B all connected on mine as a kid). My memory may be faulty tho...
>
> Have fun!
>
> --
> Andrew L. Ayers
> Glendale, Arizona
> https://github.com/andrew-ayers
> http://www.phoenixgarage.org/