RE: Let Linux speak (LINUX JOURNAL Jan. 1997)

[David Sugar <dyfet tycho com>]

>In "Let Linux Speak" David Sugar describes a tool 
>which enables your Linux computer to speak. All 
>begins, when David finds an ad for a speech synthesizer 
>in one of these electronic magazines.

>It is a low cost serial-based text-to-speech synthesizer 
>using the SPO256-AL2 chip, probably the chip used in 
>the Mattel "Speak & Spell" toy. The cost of this chip 
>is about 50 USD. He orders one and after few weeks his 
>chip arrives.
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The cost of the entire board is approx. $50.00 USD.  The chip is presumably less.

>He builds a server which sits on a TCP socket accepting
>connections from user applications. The servers 
>pronounces any text received and is also able spelling 
>words and single digits when in a special escape mode. 
>The TCP connections makes sure, that only one connection 
>will be accepted by the server until closed by the client. 
>So speak can't be garbled together from multiple sources.
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A much newer and more portable source release for the SPO (though in some ways less complete, for the moment) was written by me a few days ago and posted to sunsite.unc.edu.  Look for speak-0.2pl1.tar.gz there.  I plan to put together a rpm package for it, and a newer
release that has more of the original WorldVU functionality seperately available.