The device featured in the last entry is driving Malban nuts!
The actual HARDWARE of the device.
Malban has that AVox+ device lying around for a couple of weeks now but as of now has not connected it to a vectrex. It just does not FIT into the joystick port! The connector is suitable for Atari VCC 2600 but not for a vectrex – the plug of the device is not “deep” enough to fit directly. So Malban ordered an extension cable – which also did not fit. Than ordered another which also did not fit. Than ordered some connectors (to build a cable manually) – which also do not fit.
Tonight he will make one of the ordered extension cables FIT – using a saw, a knive, a rasp and/or brute force.
From a vectrex point of view the casing of the AVox+ device is a desaster, it looks like Richard on purpose wanted to cripple vectrex owners.
None the less, in his little bit of spare time Malban also did some programming on Vide. Within the vedi part of vide you can enter a new configuration screen (see image above). Here you can enter “free” speech and have it translated into vecVox’ish. And output it to your source code.
Within emulation limits you can listen to the sounds the settings will produce.
Since the VecVoice system is more or less depricated, the support mainly focuses on VecVox, although most of the below stated features also work for VecVoice.
Featured are following “helpers”:
- support of a “phrasealtor” dictionary (VecVox+ only)
- support of a translation from text to phonemes using the NRL Report 7948
“AUTOMATIC TRANSLATION OF ENGLISH TEXT TO PHONETICS
BY MEANS OF LETTER-TO-SOUND RULES”
(seperately implemented for SPL0256Al2 and SpeakJet) - on the fly switching between the chips
- switching the above “translations” on/off
- enter “free” text
- enter direct commands by “escaping” commands
- double click on the dictionary table adds commands
- (right) double click on dictionary table plays the underlying phoneme
- (thru emulation) on the fly listening to the entered data
- data and code generation ready to use for your vectrex assembly
- support of the “jetphones.inc” for better readability of your sources
Malban will try to further enhance VecVox support – if – he is able to connect the darn thing to a vectrex.
Vide
>it looks like Richard on purpose wanted to cripple vectrex owners.
No
Hehe, sorry Richard – I guess I was mad at the world at the time of writing. The official site of AVox+ does mention that it does not fit into vectrex directly. But getting two extension cables that also did not fit – was just frustrating…
Thank you for developing the device (and all other hardware). You were always very generous to other vectrex developers and me especially. I hope my comment didn’t hit you to hard…
Malban