Mike's PCjr Page

Ok....I have been kinda working, mostly in my head a new design for a Speech board for the JR.
I know there is an original add-on that, from what I know, was not too popular, that is not many exist anymore....

So my thought's on this design are as follows:

First:
I've asked some of the experts here in private, and while we all have very busy lives and family, rather than burden them directly I would also like to open this up to the actual folks that might use this or even want to play with and develop some programs for fun...

Second:
I would like to use this design with the side add-on connector as Alan did with the JR-IDE design, So I need to know if these connectors are still available and if so where to buy them. The other design is to use the Modem slot and have an internal board.

Third:
I thought that making the New board, it might benefit from being able to work with the Old original software that was released with the JR for the original speech board.
BUT! this depends on the Quality of the software and how much was actually developed for the original speech adapter.
If only a few software items were actually supporting the speech adapter and they (for example) were mostly educational, then I am hard pressed to justify the work it would take to make the new board backwards compatible.

Forth:
Is there any real interest to have a 'speech' adapter to play with ? I am not sure how many of the JR folks actually use the JR and write software 'for fun', as I do.

Lastly:
I believe the cost looks to be between $50-$100, and as I mentioned with my other items, this is just my cost, I'm not into the 'sales' profit angle, I just want to keep the JR fun for us.

I have two Voice chips from which to choose, one is a very high end with Male/Female (only one voice when programed not changeable) this is a very good Text To Voice interpreter. The second is a good chip with programmable voices upto 6 If memory serves me, both male/female, but also allows you to switch to two versions of Spanish. But this chip has a more Stephen Hawkin's type voice, which I find kinda fun, and the High End Chip is like areal person talking, not mechanical at all..

Any input is appreciated on this and feel free to offer insight, if this is a good idea or a colossal waste of time.

thanks
Chuck

While I hope your project is successful, any interest I would have in speech on the PCjr would be to try to figure out how to use the PCjr Speech sidecar. On my distant to-do list is to encode LPC speech and have it play through the card, which is not trivial since TI LPC compression programs were never standard. There is the old qbox, and there is a new open-source program I've been meaning to try.

Another Speech sidecar project: Write a .wav to CVSD converter such that the speech sidecar can play back the result.

the design is intended to take simple text and push to speech.

BUT.....this is not 'all' hardware, as the on board micro can do whatever is desired.....
SO: if the wav to CSVD convertor does simple 'to text' conversion the speech card will work just fine..
but this is a good thought ! thanks Jim..

Software support for the PCjr speech adapter was limited at best. And the adapter had some serious shortcomings; the fixed vocabulary of 200 words was a serious bummer. There should have been phoneme support so that arbitrary words could have been spoken, even if that approach is clumsy at times. The ability to record and playback samples was kind of fun; I've experimented with it and I want to write my own code for that some day. (Unrelated note: who had the hi-res readable copy of the technical reference for the speech adapter? I can't find my electronic copy of it and I really should just post it.)

Any new hardware has a software problem, unless you can design it to be compatible. I think in this case that software support for the original adapter was so sparse that you really don't need or care about compatibility with it. For a new design I would be looking for the following:

• Phoneme support, to give it basically an unlimited vocabulary
• Sample playback and record.
• Integration with the PCjr audio subsystem. (Basically just using the audio line on the bus so you can pass anything generated through the system mixer and out the Audio port or Monitor speaker.)
• MIDI - this might be the killer app that solves the lack of software.
• Sufficient buffering so the poor machine isn't completely consumed trying to feed the adapter.

Phoneme support is a no-brainer, and it should work well on the machine. Sending tokens representing phonemes to an adapter is a fairly low bandwidth operation, so the machine can drive the card easily.

MIDI - I don't know a lot about the underlying protocol, but it seems like MIDI should work well on a Jr, and there was a home-brew MIDI card that the IBMers did way back when. (It was a function on the "combo card", which went in the modem slot.) With MIDI on board you might be able to coax a DOS player into running on the machine; if so, presto - no software to write! And a pretty versatile tool.

On handling samples:

The machine is generally weak and under powered which limits what you can do with sample playback and record, unless you give the adapter it's own private memory/buffer space to work with. In that model, instead of trying to feed everything to the chips in real time you could have the software move what it wants to be played into the buffer, fill the buffer, and then start playing it. That would give you the ability to make amazing noises that the machine can't do itself in real-time. (And the same goes for recording; let it fill a local buffer first, then have the host read that and commit to disk at a more leisurely speed.)

Even better; put a few megabytes of FLASH onboard so that those samples can be saved and used as a library. Then write software to manage the library from the host. Manipulating the library would take some time depending on how big the datasets are, but at least it would be in non-volatile storage.


The more I think about this project the more I like it.

I responded in private already, but for posterity - the connectors:

-Mike

Brutman wrote: (Unrelated note: who had the hi-res readable copy of the technical reference for the speech adapter? I can't find my electronic copy of it and I really should just post it.)

It's here: ftp://ftp.oldskool.org/pub/drivers/IBM/PCjr/speech/
Feel free to grab and repost somewhere. Warning: Needs page splitting (they didn't scan the pages properly)

I still hope someday to encode speech such that it can be played back with the TI chip on the board. You can fit over a minute of speech into 4K (IIRC 4K was the maximum buffer size you could give to the chip, or at least the chip as implemented on the speech adapter).

I took it upon myself to fix the Speech Adapter manual; it's now with split pages in the correct order, and it's also OCR'd for searching. Exact link here: ftp://ftp.oldskool.org/pub/drivers/IBM/ ... erence.pdf

I have not gotten a lot of feedback on a speech board, I suspect because most folks would have to send TEXT to the COM port
and use it for custom stuff....

BUT: I still think it will be a fun item to have in your JR..

My thoughts are to have scripts in the startup files that send voice 'comment's as the system starts up.. etc..

Hope to get back on this...

Now I stray a little...........................................................Sorry...

Also I have mentioned my 3FLOP board that allows you to hook up three floppies...
Not: the board had one 'woops' had to do a jumper wire..
Also excuse the video quality......first one I did....

The last pic shows my home JR I work with,,,,have gotten some 'looks' on the color, but it is my work unit and it looks better in person
also the top unit is just another JR main case that I cut drilled etc to fit on top.

Quick description...if you are interested...
there are basically 4 drives counting the USB unit.. using the 3FLOP board..
I get there buy just adding a DPST switch to the SELECT line on the floppy and choose which I want to deal with
I also have a second DPST sw to change 'who' is the boot floppy, it selects 5.25 drive of one of the 3.5 drives....
but usually I have the JRIDE (shown on side with LED Lamp) as C: drive boot up...of course..
Also is the typical Zip drive most folks have...
You cant see it but the top unit uses an internal switcher (Mouser Elect about $20 see pic), with 3 voltages that cable down to the main board for power and a single power cord connector on the back, NO MORE BRICKS...

NOW the last picture is my COLOR JR......
So you are not completely taken back by my painting the Classic JR...I have 3 pristine units in boxes that are untouched !
ON the BACK picture. you cans see some switches, the two sw in the box are the PCJRSPRINT ON/OFF/ RESET
and the bottom BLACK button is for the TANDY video ON/OFF Push button..


http://www.linearlogix.com/PCJR/3FLP2.jpg
http://www.linearlogix.com/PCJR/3FLP1.jpg
http://www.linearlogix.com/PCJR/3FLP.mp4
http://www.linearlogix.com/PCJR/PCJRSYS1.jpg
http://www.linearlogix.com/PCJR/PCJRFRONT.jpg
http://www.linearlogix.com/PCJR/PCJRBACK.jpg
http://www.linearlogix.com/PCJR/PCJRPOWERIN.jpg

I've been following your discussion on your 3flop board Chuck. (In this thread and others.)

Looking at the schematic, if I follow it right, you can use jumpers (or a switch) to change the assignments of up to three floppies. Do I have this right? For your Kings Quest copy, you did this without rebooting, right?

I'm thinking about adding a Gotek emulator to my jr and would love to be able to swap A: and B: between the 5 1/4 and Gotek depending on need. What software do you need to enable this? jr config?

Chuckphd53 wrote: The last pic shows my home JR I work with,,,,have gotten some 'looks' on the color, but it is my work unit and it looks better in person
also the top unit is just another JR main case that I cut drilled etc to fit on top.

I am surprised I never thought of turning a main JR case into an expansion chassis. I have a spare PCjr that I accidentally fried the motherboard on and never got around to troubleshooting because someone here was kind enough to just send me another one when I mentioned that happening, and I've done a 2nd floppy drive mod on my machine, but just have the bare drive sitting outside the case. I can't believe I never thought to gut the case of the broken machine and stick that 2nd floppy in there. I might have to look into that soon.

Using COPYII pc, with a single 5.25 Drive I used the command

COPYIIJR A, A

but I also make copy to a 3.5" (my B drive)
COPYIIJR A, B
and I first had to format the 3.5" as a 360K floppy, no problem as it is just for saving an extra copy on 3.5" (my preference)
Be sure to boot with NO DEVICE =DRIVER telling your system that Drive B is a 3.5" 720K disk.
also JRCONFIG should be setup for two drives as you normally would !

take a look at the attachments on how to hook up a DPDT switch to toggle (Physical Drive A) and (Physical DRIVE B) as the boot drive (A)

I have plenty of the 3Flop boards but I do have to make a jumper as I goofed on the layout, but a couple jumpers fixes it.
(you can see a green wire in the pics) I conformal coat over the the jumpers to keep them in place.

WIth multiple DPDT switches you can make an elaborate BOOT DRIVE A scheme as I have, I can boot from 5.25, 3.5, USBGotek.
just makes things more convenient.

As for the Top case, If you look at the front, I cut the GRILL portion off and 3D printed a frame and an internal drive holder.
I will offer to print these pieces for the jr Folks, but please give me some time to get this done usually takes a day to print the parts...

Also I printed the holders for the DPDT switches ( this is where the CART's would normally be) I've attached the DPDT switch I bought from MOUSER.COM
These are just press fit and tight enough to say with no issues.

My next Task is to place another Jr Case on the top and include a Second 5.25 Drive, as I find it would be nice to have this as (Drive A-5.25, Drive B-5.25)
which back in the early days of the Jr would have been the normal setup we had, and easier to copy 5.25 Floppies...
I just need to find an ebay junker to tear down, seems lately they are a bit pricey....

Oh as a side note: I use Fabuloso cleaner from Home Depot to clean and de-grease the cases/ parts before painting, and it was a fantastic choice.
It removes the dirt and grease great !

NOW ! I KNOW, the color sucks, but if you saw it in person you would like it when I bought the paint it was eh ok I'll get this color can...
and I found it is such a nice neutral color, it was my favorite choice for this setup.....Heck my wife is a crafter / painter and she said one day
that 'that color was a good choice' got a crick in my neck when my head spun around to look at her ! she was serious ! wow ! but I digress...

Another item I am working on is the addition of the SPRINT ON/OFF and Reset switches to the front panel of the TOP case.
Getting the buttons from EBAY, will need both Latching and Momentary.
I will also put and ON/OFF for the TANDYMOD board,
Colors will be different,
BOTTOM SW BLACK (Latching) for Sprint ON/OFF
MIDDLE SW GREEN (Latching) for TANDYMOD ON/OFF
TOP SW RED (Momentary) for Sprint board RESET function.

As a last comment, I have JR2PS2 convertors boards coming in and also TANDYMOD boards I will be making...
Thanks to Alan and Mike for allowing me to use their code for these boards.
I wanted to make a more convenient JR2PS2 adapter, while the Electex is nice it is a bit bulky for me so I will put mine in a small 3D printed CUBE
with a 6" wire to plug into the Jr Keyboard back connector. Just a plain dongle on the back if you want to think of it that way..

I know I get VERBOSE in these messages, but hope the 'sharing' is not boring...

thanks
Chuck