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Does anyone remember the Spectrum SE project?

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  Does anyone remember the Spectrum SE project? Andrew Owen <aowen10@mail.bbk.ac.uk> - 2014-06-01 12:28 +0100
    Re: Does anyone remember the Spectrum SE project? "Brian Gaff" <Briang1@blueyonder.co.uk> - 2014-06-01 12:33 +0100
      Re: Does anyone remember the Spectrum SE project? Andrew Owen <aowen10@mail.bbk.ac.uk> - 2014-06-01 22:19 +0100
        Re: Does anyone remember the Spectrum SE project? greenaum@gmail.com (greenaum) - 2014-06-08 21:48 +0000
          Re: Does anyone remember the Spectrum SE project? david <david.t.bastard@gmail.com> - 2014-08-09 07:30 -0700
      Re: Does anyone remember the Spectrum SE project? greenaum@gmail.com (greenaum) - 2014-08-14 15:20 +0000
        Re: Does anyone remember the Spectrum SE project? "Paul E Collins" <equi@cl4.invalid> - 2014-08-14 18:50 +0100
          Re: Does anyone remember the Spectrum SE project? greenaum@gmail.com (greenaum) - 2014-08-14 20:39 +0000
          Re: Does anyone remember the Spectrum SE project? korax1214@gmail.com - 2014-08-19 04:58 -0700

#2892 — Does anyone remember the Spectrum SE project?

Some Spanish guys are building an FPGA clone that will include Spectrum 
SE support (http://zxuno.speccy.org). Only it's called the Chloe 280SE 
now, for legal reasons, and includes ULAplus (the palette stuff that was 
talked about 14 years ago but not included in the prototype). The SE 
Basic project has been folded back in to the core project and SE Basic 
IV (4.0.7) includes an 80x24 character text mode (480x192 pixels), and 
support for esxDOS running on divMMC (a newer SD card based version of 
divIDE that is built into the clone). When, ok if, a production version 
of the zxuno is made avaialable I'll be publishing a custom template so 
folks can order an SE keyboard from WASD keyboards 
(http://www.wasdkeyboards.com). Not cheap, but Cherry MX blue mechanical 
keyswitch, so should be good for a couple of decades of heavy abuse.

I have one project on the back burner ... a custom ROM that uses Currah 
Microspeech to say everything that gets passed through the screen and 
keyboard channels. The idea is to make the majority of adventure games 
accessible to blind users.

I have one project under active development ... an advanced cRPG engine 
for the Spectrum +2A. More details here (and no FB account required): 
https://www.facebook.com/zxodus

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#2893

Sounds interesting. The one issue with the currah of course whas that all 
output had to be in the form of phonemes, ie regualr English would not work 
very well.

 Brian

-- 
Brian Gaff....Note, this account does not accept Bcc: email.
 graphics are great, but the blind can't hear them
Email: briang1@blueyonder.co.uk
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________


"Andrew Owen" <aowen10@mail.bbk.ac.uk> wrote in message 
news:lmf2nu$9qo$1@speranza.aioe.org...
> Some Spanish guys are building an FPGA clone that will include Spectrum SE 
> support (http://zxuno.speccy.org). Only it's called the Chloe 280SE now, 
> for legal reasons, and includes ULAplus (the palette stuff that was talked 
> about 14 years ago but not included in the prototype). The SE Basic 
> project has been folded back in to the core project and SE Basic IV 
> (4.0.7) includes an 80x24 character text mode (480x192 pixels), and 
> support for esxDOS running on divMMC (a newer SD card based version of 
> divIDE that is built into the clone). When, ok if, a production version of 
> the zxuno is made avaialable I'll be publishing a custom template so folks 
> can order an SE keyboard from WASD keyboards 
> (http://www.wasdkeyboards.com). Not cheap, but Cherry MX blue mechanical 
> keyswitch, so should be good for a couple of decades of heavy abuse.
>
> I have one project on the back burner ... a custom ROM that uses Currah 
> Microspeech to say everything that gets passed through the screen and 
> keyboard channels. The idea is to make the majority of adventure games 
> accessible to blind users.
>
> I have one project under active development ... an advanced cRPG engine 
> for the Spectrum +2A. More details here (and no FB account required): 
> https://www.facebook.com/zxodus 

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#2900

That's why the project is on the back burner. I've been trying to think 
of a way of making it sound better. The best I can come up with is to do 
some pre-processing on the words to remove double consonants and replace 
known problem mid-word phonems like o u g h with u f.

On 01/06/2014 12:33, Brian Gaff wrote:
> Sounds interesting. The one issue with the currah of course whas that all
> output had to be in the form of phonemes, ie regualr English would not work
> very well.
>
>   Brian
>

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#2936

On Sun, 01 Jun 2014 22:19:26 +0100, Andrew Owen
<aowen10@mail.bbk.ac.uk> sprachen:

>That's why the project is on the back burner. I've been trying to think 
>of a way of making it sound better. The best I can come up with is to do 
>some pre-processing on the words to remove double consonants and replace 
>known problem mid-word phonems like o u g h with u f.

I think for the niche audience, it doesn't matter that much. We can
all figure out what it meant to say, and it's always cute and funny
when computers get their pidgin-English wrong. Like foreigners.

-- 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"There's nothing like eating hay when you're faint," the White King remarked to Alice, as he munched away. 
"I should think throwing cold water over you would be better," Alice suggested: "--or some sal-volatile." 
"I didn't say there was nothing better," the King replied. "I said there was nothing like it."
Which Alice did not venture to deny. 

                    

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#3098

The speech would be a great feature. 

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#3134

On Sun, 1 Jun 2014 12:33:27 +0100, "Brian Gaff"
<Briang1@blueyonder.co.uk> sprachen:

>Sounds interesting. The one issue with the currah of course whas that all 
>output had to be in the form of phonemes, ie regualr English would not work 
>very well.

Actually don't think that's completely true. Didn't you just type 

LET S$="I am great"

and then it'd speak it, as soon as the line was executed? I say S$,
might be some other letter $. 

The Currah patched into the ROM with it's own onboard ROM to check for
that, and from there ran it's own little routine that turned English
into phonemes. Same way the IF1 ROM patched in, or Multifaces, or the
million other things constantly abusing the address bus. 

---------------------------------------------------------------------

"hey let's educate the brutes, we know we are superior to them anyway,
just through genetics, we are gentically superior to the working
class. They are a shaved monkey. If we educate them, they will be able
to read instructions, turn up on time and man the conveyor belts,
sorted."     #     

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#3138

On Thu, 14 Aug 2014 16:20:02 +0100, greenaum <greenaum@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, 1 Jun 2014 12:33:27 +0100, "Brian Gaff"  
> <Briang1@blueyonder.co.uk> sprachen:
>> Sounds interesting. The one issue with the currah of course whas that  
> all output had to be in the form of phonemes, ie regualr English would  
> not work very well.
>
> Actually don't think that's completely true. Didn't you just type
> LET S$="I am great"
> and then it'd speak it, as soon as the line was executed? I say S$,  
> might be some other letter $.

Yep, but the value of S$ was meant to be spelled out in Currah's  
phonemes... lots of brackets and things... at least if you wanted to  
recognise what the heck it was saying.

Eq.

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#3143

On Thu, 14 Aug 2014 18:50:45 +0100, "Paul E Collins"
<equi@cl4.invalid> sprachen:

>Yep, but the value of S$ was meant to be spelled out in Currah's  
>phonemes... lots of brackets and things... at least if you wanted to  
>recognise what the heck it was saying.

Nope, you could feed it plain English. Worked very well, surprisingly
well by the standards we'd expect of it. You could feed it
daft-phoneme language if you wanted to. But you didn't have to. Maybe
useful in the odd case where it keeps getting a particular word wrong.

I know this cos I'm remembering using one. Somebody dig up the manual
if you don't believe me.


---------------------------------------------------------------------

"hey let's educate the brutes, we know we are superior to them anyway,
just through genetics, we are gentically superior to the working
class. They are a shaved monkey. If we educate them, they will be able
to read instructions, turn up on time and man the conveyor belts,
sorted."     #     

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#3160

On Thursday, 14 August 2014 18:50:45 UTC+1, Paul E Collins  wrote:
> Yep, but the value of S$ was meant to be spelled out in Currah's  
> phonemes... lots of brackets and things... at least if you wanted to  
> recognise what the heck it was saying.

There was also keyvoice mode, which was great fun[*], especially since one key pressed as the previous one was still being voiced interrupted it. Pressing "3 Q" in rapid succession gave an... interesting result. :-)

Wasn't the SE ROM the one which used the fast, integer version of the standard ROM's RND routine which was posted to c.s.s. many years ago?

[*]For about five minutes, anyway.

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