[Coco] Speech & Sound Pack alternatives or emulation?

[Robert Gault]

Steve Strowbridge wrote:
> As I am going through the journey of rediscovering my favorite CoCo games
> and putting them on YouTube, I'm running into several games that supported
> the Speech Sound Pack that I can't fully demonstrate.
>
> I'm wondering, in all the years, and with all the brilliant minds out
> there, has no one either cloned or emulated this device?
>
> It seems to me, the only way I can demo these games is going to be to find
> a multi-pack interface and sound pack both off eBay (which I haven't seen
> in my 2+ month obsession) and this is going to be a costly, and bulky
> solution.
>
> Has anybody emulated the board? I don't know how to make emulators, but it
> seems just about any hardware can be emulated these days.
>
> Has anybody made, or considered making a hardware clone? Again, being as an
> MPI would be required to use it, my great idea/suggestion would be to make
> something like a CoCo SDC with built in sound card to negate the need for
> an MPI.
>
> I would also say that I'd gladly pay $100 for such a device plus shipping,
> since buying an MPI and sound pack (if I could find one) would easily cost
> $200 off "the bay"
>
> That being said, if I can come across a real MPI and sound pack, I'll
> certainly pick them up to have in my collection, but I'd love to have a
> single product that would allow me to play real CoCo games to their full
> potential, love to hear what other people's thoughts on this are.
>
> Happy New Year and long live the CoCo!
>
> Steve Strowbridge, aka
> The Original Gamer Stevie Strow
> http://ogsteviestrow.com
> ogsteviestrow at gmail.com
>

Steve,

I've found that Tim Lindner was working on emulation of the pack and had hoped 
to have MAME/MESS code. You will have to contact Tim to see what, if anything, 
resulted from his efforts.

http://www.coco3.com/community/2008/12/does-a-rom-image-of-he-tandy-speech-pak-exist/
"tlindner December 6, 2008 6:45 PM
The ROM in the PIC7040 has been dumped. The process was explained here: 
[url]http://groups.google.com/group/bit.listserv.coco/msg/091b018c65b82e8d?hl=en[/url]. 
You can find all of the information I have on the device here: 
[url]http://tlindner.macmess.org/?page_id=96[/url].

The current status of the project is this. I wrote a TMS7000 core for MESS/MAME. 
I put together a sample driver to bring all of the parts together. It mostly 
worked. I was able to issue sound commands involving the PSG. I also got it to 
respond to phoneme commands to the voice chip. But the text-to-speach commands 
kept locking up the program running on the PIC7040. Like all CPUs it’s a complex 
device so I prolly have a bug in there somewhere. Frankly I have not looked into 
the code for a while.

I am currently waiting for dynamic hardware additions to be added to MAME/MESS. 
Progress is slow but steady on that front. When that project is complete, I’ll 
take another crack and finishing up the emulation."

Robert