CTS256A-AL2 Text-To-Speech Serial Speech Synthesizer

[@charleshoadley6882]

Wow what a blast from the past. I had a couple of these chips from Radio Shack, and built the thing on a perf board (all those wires!!) and it worked! I played with it for years. Now here's the kick: when Radio Shack started to add a ton of stuff to "clearance" (beginning to go out of bussiness) they had a bin in the store full of stuff. Including a bunch of the speech chips, marked down as a buck apiece! I freaked out and bought six of them (all they had). There were a couple of other stores in town (Lansing MI) who had some too. Over the years I kept them (think I had ten or so - no really) but during a move had to get rid of an entire workshop of parts, tools, Etc. You really can't take it with you scenario. That was more than 30 years ago (or so) and now they are very hard to find. I have seen a few on Ebay for - - $50.00 to 75.00 bucks. Oh if I had kept them. thanks for the very, very inspiring video!

[@xmaninma]

I had one of these when I was about 12 and was playing with the phonemes by using dip switches. I wasn't as seasoned in electronics then (59 now) and I made a wiring error, and when I put power to it, I swear, it went "ow ow ow ow ow" and died. I never forgot killing that poor thing 😂 Thanks for sharing this video. We've come a long way, but it's good to see folks keeping the good old retro hardware alive & doing their thing!

[@larrybud]

I was just getting back into electronics and I built one of these back in the 80s when I worked at radio shack. I still have a couple of sets of each.

[@d0ugk]

I came across a couple of these chips on ebay the other day while searching for the voice synth chips. Was going to comment on your previous SP0256 video if you had a chance to try one of them yet. For a second I had though they were counterfeits since they were bigger. I googled the part # and found it was a companion chip for the SP0256. They were purchased a few days back and are on the way :)

[@matthehat]

Great video as always. I've had one of those text to speech chips in my parts bin for years but have only used it on a breadboard once or twice. I might take your design and modify it slightly so that it can be mounted in an enclosure with its own speaker.

[@dugmeister65]

Quick question - did you implement the rom to allow extra words? For example it mispronounced bicycle.

[@TheVifino]

Very nice!

[@prehistoricBanana]

Just wondering what software you use to make your schematics? I've seen kicad and cadsoft but I'm unsure what an armature like me should use

[@Alphack3r]

At about 8:03 he says that he uses Autodesk EAGLE.