Uploaded January 2024 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
I've played with a lot of other text to speech systems, including the Votrax Type-N-Talk, various CTS256/SPO256 solutions, etc. This Votrax SC-02 based speech synthesizer, the Aicom Accent has phenomenally good text to speech technology for the time. Part of this is due to the increased capabilities of the SC-02, which offers more parameters than the SC-01 (and certainly more than the SP0256A-AL2). However, I think the real reason for the quality is the text to speech algorithm in the rom. Whereas most TTS systems might have an algorithm that runs in 4KB or 8KB of ROM, the Aicom Accent has 128 KB of ROM. It's really a text-to-speech coprocessor more than it is just a speech synthesizer, completely offloading all text-to-speech duties from the PC. This card appeared to have originally been installed in a phone response system at a municipal library. Using some software called SpeakUp as a basis, and talking to the developer of that software, Kirk Reiser, I was able to write my own DOS utility to communicate with the card. In this video, I demonstrate configuring many parameters of the Votrax SC-02 via the Aicom board, I have it speak many phrases and even read a few files, Let me know if you have any other good speech synthesizer stories. For more vintage computer videos, see smbaker.com
I've played with a lot of other text to speech systems, including the Votrax Type-N-Talk, various CTS256/SPO256 solutions, etc. This Votrax SC-02 based speech synthesizer, the Aicom Accent has phenomenally good text to speech technology for the time. Part of this is due to the increased capabilities of the SC-02, which offers more parameters than the SC-01 (and certainly more than the SP0256A-AL2). However, I think the real reason for the quality is the text to speech algorithm in the rom. Whereas most TTS systems might have an algorithm that runs in 4KB or 8KB of ROM, the Aicom Accent has 128 KB of ROM. It's really a text-to-speech coprocessor more than it is just a speech synthesizer, completely offloading all text-to-speech duties from the PC. This card appeared to have originally been installed in a phone response system at a municipal library. Using some software called SpeakUp as a basis, and talking to the developer of that software, Kirk Reiser, I was able to write my own DOS utility to communicate with the card. In this video, I demonstrate configuring many parameters of the Votrax SC-02 via the Aicom board, I have it speak many phrases and even read a few files, Let me know if you have any other good speech synthesizer stories. For more vintage computer videos, see smbaker.com
