Bringing DECtalk Speech Synthesis to the Apple II
Speech synthesis hardware was available for home computers in the 1980s, but it generally produced something that was a long way from natural-sounding speech. DECtalk was far more sophisticated than most other hardware, but it was also very expensive and not intended for the typical home computer user. Michael Wessel’s Perfect Paul ][ project may be a few decades late to the game, but it finally brings an inexpensive DECtalk speech synthesis card to the Apple II.
Perfect Paul ][ is built around a Raspberry Pi Pico and the RP2040 microcontroller at its core. Rather than attempting to recreate DECtalk in hardware, the Pico runs DECtalkMini, an implementation of the speech synthesis system capable of producing recognizable DECtalk voices. The project takes its name from Perfect Paul, DECtalk’s default male voice.
An early prototype (📷: Michael Wessel)
To generate speech with the card, a user simply writes ASCII characters to...
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