[DECtalk] Speak windows older than 4.3

Jayson Smith ratguy at insightbb.com
Wed May 18 13:26:32 EDT 2011


Hi,

Thanks for this. So when was the first Speak program created? For what 
platform? Was 4.3 the first version of DECtalk with a Speak window running 
under Windows?
Thanks.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "ebruckert Bruckert" <edbruckert at gmail.com>
To: "DECtalk Discussions" <dectalk at bluegrasspals.com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 18, 2011 10:01 AM
Subject: Re: [DECtalk] Speak windows older than 4.3


>A short DECtalk history lesson of sorts. The commercial availability of the
> first signal processing chip by TI finally made the large compute
> requirements of the vocal track model possible. It was specifically 
> designed
> to do difference equations which is what the filters need doing lots of
> multiplies. So DECtalk was confined to hardware only solutions until the
> power of the PC got sufficient to be able to do the computes in real time.
> Back in the days the Dennis and I worked on DECtalk took 30 min. of 
> computer
> time on a VAX to generate one minute of speech. That's why the first PC
> product was a hardware product because it had to have the signal 
> processing
> chip.
> The speak program has never really changed I've used the same one 
> basically
> forever. It uses simple calls to the dapi which is the DECtalk application
> interface. All programs had their own application interface until the 
> advent
> of SAPI. SAPI simply converts a standardized set of synthesizer calls in 
> to
> dapi calls to perform the same function. That is why the speak source code
> has always been public domain and hasn't changed much, I can't remember if
> any versions of speak only work with a certain version of DECtalk but if
> that occurred it was a long time ago and I can't remember.
>
> On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 6:52 PM, Jayson Smith <ratguy at insightbb.com> 
> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> Corine, Snoopi or Ed are probably the only ones who would even know if 
>> such
>> a thing ever existed. Were there ever Windows-based Speak windows for any
>> DECtalk version older than 4.3? Also, back before Windows Speak windows,
>> was
>> DECtalk marketed as a software product for Vax and/or other platforms, or
>> just as a hardware product like the DTC01, DECtalk PC and PC2, and the
>> DECtalk Express?
>> Thanks.
>> Jayson
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> DECtalk mailing list
>> DECtalk at bluegrasspals.com
>> http://bluegrasspals.com/mailman/listinfo/dectalk
>>
>


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