[DECtalk] old synthesizers and baud rate?

joshknnd1982 at gmail.com joshknnd1982 at gmail.com
Fri Jan 27 20:35:17 EST 2023


Yesterday after making NVDA send a lot of punctuation directly to the
synthesizer, I went into notepad and wrote:

Left bracket colon dial space 284747464647 right bracket


And then when I made it read the line, decTalk just played touch tones as if
it were dialing a telephone. I thought that was quite fun!

DecTalk is amazing! If you wanted to you could make complete self-voiceing
applications with it! And just like ESpeak it will run on anything.
Eloquence on the other hand well its letter to sound rules and dictionary is
nearly 2 megabytes. Much much much bigger than decTalk and espeak. Espeak ng
is getting closer to decTalk all the time. Some of espeak's new formant
klatt-based voices sound excellent! And if I remember correctly espeak was
made back in the early to mid 1990s, designed to run on low-memory risc OS. 



-----Original Message-----
From: Dectalk <dectalk-bounces at bluegrasspals.com> On Behalf Of Aksel Leo
Christoffersen
Sent: Friday, January 27, 2023 20:29
To: 'DECtalk' <dectalk at bluegrasspals.com>
Subject: Re: [DECtalk] old synthesizers and baud rate?

The DECtalk DtC-01 from 1984 did cost about 4000, I think. Also, I can
confirm that the DECtalk Express uses 9600 baud.

-----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
Fra: Dectalk [mailto:dectalk-bounces at bluegrasspals.com] På vegne af
joshknnd1982 at gmail.com
Sendt: 28. januar 2023 02:23
Til: 'DECtalk'
Emne: Re: [DECtalk] old synthesizers and baud rate?

I may be wrong, but I think decTalk was most popular back then, even more
popular than the keynote stuff. It was probably up there with all the
different iterations or versions of voTrax stuff like accent, artic,
etcetera. The different decTalk products were also sold at varying
price-points. From $150 to $1300 to over $2000 or so I think. 



-----Original Message-----
From: Dectalk <dectalk-bounces at bluegrasspals.com> On Behalf Of Brandon Misch
Sent: Friday, January 27, 2023 20:15
To: DECtalk <dectalk at bluegrasspals.com>
Subject: Re: [DECtalk] old synthesizers and baud rate?

I used the echo synthesizers for apple computers but that was for talking
typer for the apple computers. I was only around 5-6 back in 91/92. I did
see a braille 'n speak around 92. I used my first one in
94 but it was the classic with the august 13 1993 revision. I did use an
acdcent synthesizer around 97/98 but that was for pc typer for windows. I
mostly had software speech like access 32 with jaws 3.0 in
1998 and have been using software speech ever since. I did have an express
that I got sometime in 2002-2003 but lost the cables and i don't know if
they even work anymore. These days, I do have a DECtalk usb that I got from
access solutions in 2012 that still works. that's my history with hardware
and software synthesizers. sorry for the long message but you asked for it
lol.


On 1/27/23, joshknnd1982 at gmail.com <joshknnd1982 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Brandon, did you use old hardware synths in 1990 1992 or so? If so 
> which ones?
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dectalk <dectalk-bounces at bluegrasspals.com> On Behalf Of Brandon 
> Misch
> Sent: Friday, January 27, 2023 19:53
> To: DECtalk <dectalk at bluegrasspals.com>
> Subject: Re: [DECtalk] old synthesizers and baud rate?
>
> probably had to do more with printing or embossing when it comes to 
> the braille 'n speak and other products.
>
> On 1/27/23, joshknnd1982 at gmail.com <joshknnd1982 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi
>>
>> You know I wonder why one or two old hardware synthesizers had such 
>> high baud rates? The old Keynote SA I had, used baud rate 38400. All 
>> the others, my braille 'n speak and braille lite used baud rate 9600.
>> Such a high baud rate of 38400 would give no advantage to screen 
>> reader or speech synthesizer. Unless they didn't want people copying 
>> text directly to the synthesizer through the serial port so they 
>> chose a very high baud rate? I think even decTalk only needed 9600 baud.
>>
>>
>>
>> Josh
>>
>>
>>
>>
> _______________________________________________
> Dectalk mailing list
> Dectalk at bluegrasspals.com
> https://bluegrasspals.com/mailman/listinfo/dectalk
>
> _______________________________________________
> Dectalk mailing list
> Dectalk at bluegrasspals.com
> https://bluegrasspals.com/mailman/listinfo/dectalk
>
_______________________________________________
Dectalk mailing list
Dectalk at bluegrasspals.com
https://bluegrasspals.com/mailman/listinfo/dectalk

_______________________________________________
Dectalk mailing list
Dectalk at bluegrasspals.com
https://bluegrasspals.com/mailman/listinfo/dectalk


_______________________________________________
Dectalk mailing list
Dectalk at bluegrasspals.com
https://bluegrasspals.com/mailman/listinfo/dectalk




More information about the Dectalk mailing list