From: Glenn Ervin at home <GlennErvin_at_cableone.net>
Date: Sun, 21 Sep 2003 18:47:28 -0500

Hi Fred,
That is likely right, as I have forgotten exactly just what the vGreet
program does, I only know it is read through the PC speaker.
There was a program out there once that you would type the phrase into the
command line after the name of the program, and a switch, and it read the
words out of the PC speaker.
I was thinking that was the vGreet program.
I wish I could remember the name of the program that did this.
Glenn.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Fred Maxwell" <rockbox_at_anti-spam.org>
To: <rockbox_at_cool.haxx.se>
Sent: Sunday, September 21, 2003 5:48 PM
Subject: RE: an idea/suggestion


That program was released in 1989 and it simply played back (poorly)
prerecorded greetings. It did not generate the speech on the fly, convert
it to MP3, etc. It just said good morning/afternoon/evening. There is no
doubt that the Archos devices could play back prerecorded speech (as long as
the MP3 hardware was not otherwise engaged). But that's a lot different
than text-to-speech conversion and speech synthesis.

Regards,
  Fred Maxwell


> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-rockbox_at_cool.haxx.se
> [mailto:owner-rockbox_at_cool.haxx.se] On Behalf Of Glenn Ervin at home
> Sent: September 21, 2003 4:07 PM
> To: rockbox_at_cool.haxx.se
> Subject: Re: an idea/suggestion
>
>
> Hey Fred,
> I sent a message regarding a program called vGreet earlier,
> which you may not have seen. How was this utility able to
> send synthetic speech through the PC speaker in DOS? I might
> still have this utility. Glenn.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Fred Maxwell" <rockbox_at_anti-spam.org>
> To: <rockbox_at_cool.haxx.se>
> Sent: Sunday, September 21, 2003 2:19 PM
> Subject: RE: an idea/suggestion
>
>
> In almost all of those cases, the speech synthesis was done
> by dedicated speech synthesis hardware -- such as the General
> Instruments SPO256 speech synthesis chip that I mentioned in
> an earlier post. Old video games of the 1980s often ran on
> Z80 chips at 4mhz, but they did it with special hardware for
> the sound and graphics. You could not just take a random
> 4mhz CP/M system and make it run Asteroids. Most TiVos use
> ~50mhz CPUs running Linux, but you cannot duplicate the
> functionality of a TiVo with a generic 50mhz 486 PC and a
> copy of RedHat. Even modern systems rely on coprocessor
> cards/chips for 3D video and sound.
>
> By the way, I've been an embedded systems firmware/software
> engineer since 1980, so you can bet that I'm not just making
> this stuff up.
>
> Regards,
> Fred Maxwell
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: owner-rockbox_at_cool.haxx.se
> [mailto:owner-rockbox_at_cool.haxx.se]
> > On Behalf Of Kevin R.
> Jones
> > Sent: September 21, 2003 1:20 PM
> > To: rockbox_at_cool.haxx.se
> > Subject: RE: an idea/suggestion
> >
> >
> > I can remember synthetic speech on the apple 2e, or even on
> one of the
> > old ataris.
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
Received on 2003-09-22