2018-03-07 20:13:23

high,
I was looking through Emu Paradice for roms, and they have roms for 2 moddels of Dectalk synthesisers for mame.
This indecates that, at the very least, that work has begone on adding dectalk emulation to mame.
this gives dt the honer of being the second pc synthesiser to be emulated, after Votrax PSS.
I haven't tested it since I was mostly using mame to play arcade games (and to dick around with the tiger k28 emulation), so has anyone tested it?
also, would it be possible to rewrite the vbns driver to route the output to mame's personal speech system driver?

be a hero and stop Coppa now!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Dkm … DkWZ8/edit
-id software, 1995

2018-03-07 20:41:17

From reading the driver documentation on GitHub, which you can find at https://github.com/mamedev/mame/blob/ma … ectalk.cpp if one is interested, it seems that this driver was around for a long time. From what I could tell, I'm guessing the machine wasn't well emulated, and it was probably within MESS before it merged with MAME a few years later (don't know when as I haven't been keeping up with MAME as of recently).
I have tested it, and from what I could gather, the sample rate of the sound emulation is a bit too high, no doubt because MAME is running at either 44100 or 48000 kHz.
Also worth noting is that the machine takes over your entire keyboard, meaning that the Escape key won't work either. The only way I've found to exit it is to end MAME through Task Manager. Another thing worth noting is that you can't copy full songs into it. As far as I am aware, the machine will only accept a limited amount of entered characters at a time. Of course, you can't copy paste stuff into it, obviously.

2018-03-07 21:25:57

you could hit scrol lock (or fn+c) to pass the keyboard controls streight to mame. I learned that from the mame documentation, and used for 2 drivers (tiger k28 and votrax pss).

be a hero and stop Coppa now!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Dkm … DkWZ8/edit
-id software, 1995

2018-03-07 22:09:15

Didn't know that. Looks like you learn something new every day!
The voice quality between DECtalk 1.8 and 2.0 (which are the versions you can find on most ROM sites, vary slightly.
From what I could gather, DECtalk 1.8 did not have Dennis or Wendy as a predefined voice, evidenced by when I tried to type [:nd] or [:nw] in the text box. DECtalk 2.0 did add those, I believe, and from what I tested, Dennis sounded way too breathy. Now I'm tempted to try running these on my Raspberry Pi 3 running RetroPie through RetroArch MAME. We'll see how that goes.

2018-03-08 00:26:08

Hi,
Oh wow, so, what has happened to Mame these days? When did the start emulating synths? I always thought of Mame as an emulator for arcade games, so when did all this new stuff start?

2018-03-08 00:59:37

it all started in 2015, when mame and it sister project mess joined forces. since then, the aim changed from preserving just arcade games to preserving everything, from consoles, to computers, and even old handheld electronic games.
hell, they even added a driver for the speech +, the first ever talking calculator.

be a hero and stop Coppa now!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Dkm … DkWZ8/edit
-id software, 1995

2018-03-08 03:13:10

There's even, supposedly, a driver for the Speech+ Prose 2000. I say supposedly, because when I tried it on the latest version of MAME, 0.195, absolutely no sound came out of the emulated machine. I assume because since the real device is hard to come by these days, it would be hard to get it properly emulated at this point. If the name Prose 2000 sounds familiar, it's the same synthesizer used by Stephen Hawking.

2018-03-08 18:44:27

I did get speech+ (just speech+) to work and generate sound in 0.194

be a hero and stop Coppa now!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Dkm … DkWZ8/edit
-id software, 1995

2018-03-08 21:15:51

Hi,
Wow, this sounds very interesting. So is Mame still called Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator, or has the acronim changed as well?

2018-03-09 03:01:51

for consistency, the old acrinim is still used on most emulation sites, but it is unclear if it was officially deprecated.

be a hero and stop Coppa now!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Dkm … DkWZ8/edit
-id software, 1995

2018-03-09 03:10:52

I wonder if they could get a keynote gold emulator?

2018-03-09 15:06:02

Hi,
Oh my word now wouldn't that be something.

2018-03-10 00:37:42

or maybe an rc8650 (doubletalk) emulator. or Accent SA, or artic 215, or bns?

be a hero and stop Coppa now!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Dkm … DkWZ8/edit
-id software, 1995

2018-07-24 18:12:30

Hi,

I've downloaded the latest version of mame, but what version of MAME from the official MAME site, but what do I do to get the old DECtalk to work with it. Also, I want to try the Speech + Prose 2000, just to find out, if it could work for me or something, but again, what do I then?

Thanks in advance.

Best regards:
Aksel Christoffersen

2018-07-24 19:26:42

you put the rom in the roms folder, and launch mame with it, it will then work, you have to press enter twice on things to get them to speak though.

Facts with Tom MacDonald, Adam Calhoun, and Dax
End racism
End division
Become united

2018-07-24 19:53:43

Well, I found out. Boath Dectalk 1.8 and 2.0 works just fine, but all four of the Prose models don't work. I'm thinking of maybe trying on an older version of MAME.

2018-07-24 20:00:52

other synths that need to be added are the IBM ps2 and PES speech addaptors. they are both based on the same chip as the echo 2.

be a hero and stop Coppa now!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Dkm … DkWZ8/edit
-id software, 1995

2018-07-25 03:00:01

Hi.
@axe0435 the Prose 2000 hasn't been implemented in any version of MAME properly, as it is listed as "Not Working" regardless of what version of MAME you use.

2018-07-25 08:07:59

Ok, thanks. I haven't seen it was listed as not working.

2018-07-26 03:38:32

the same thing with dectalk, btw.

be a hero and stop Coppa now!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Dkm … DkWZ8/edit
-id software, 1995

2018-07-28 20:10:17

the DECtalk in mame is stuck in sentence mode, that's why the double enter thing. If you do period and then enter, it will read your thing. Also I haven't figured out if it supports phone on or tone or what have you, even though the 1.8 demo comes with dtmf. It seems to treat anything in brackets as phonemes and ignore my colon.

----------
An anomaly in the matrix. An error in existence. A being who cannot get inside the goddamn box! A.K.A. Me.

2018-07-29 04:06:07

ok so there is decTalk for mame. so why not keynote gold? Couldn't we have keynote gold for mame, next?

2018-07-29 08:35:22

Probably nobody's dumped a ROM for it, possibly because those responsible for finding new systems to emulate have never heard of it, don't have any units they're willing to sacrifice for the cause, or don't think it's a high enough priority to do it.

2018-07-29 08:58:51

Why do they need to sacrifice their unit? Just interested...

2018-07-29 13:11:41

Jaybird means that anyone that wants to try emulating the Keynote SA will have to rip the ROM from the unit, which could very well mean they permanently break it. Considering how rare Keynote SAs are now, they may not be willing to try it for fear of breaking what could be one of the last units available.

Oh no! Somebody released the h key! Everybody run and hide!