[stella] hardware speech synth for the 2600

[Glenn Saunders <cybpunks2@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

For those of you who don't know, Richard Hutchinson is finishing off a 
little PCB that interfaces the same speech chip that was in the 
Intellivoice to the Vectrex.  He's doing this via the 2nd joystick port, 
implementing a serial protocol.

The cool thing about this is that it should be possible for the Atari 2600, 
7800, and 8-bits to use this device also.

Details here.

http://www.ric.dial.pipex.com/new_page_2.htm

I'm attaching the Vectrex driver software for people to look at to help 
determine the feasibility of using this on the 2600.  I'm sure the main 
issue will be how many cycles of VBLANK it takes to drive it.

There are, of course, numerous advantages of hardware speech synthesis over 
software.  Imagine games like the new voice-enabled Berzerk but where you 
DON'T have to blank the screen.

It could become a more integral part of the gameplay.

Attachment: VecVoice.zip
Description: Zip archive