Expert: Octane - 3/30/2009

Question

Hello octane:

yes its me again this is my final problem

  I have played the scott adams text games for years now and have always wanted them to talk, the manual with these games says it supports the votrax type n talk speech synsithizer.   after years of serching on ebay i finally got one. after many attempts and troubleshooting i found out i needed an rs232 adaptor which i also found.   when i power up the vic 20 the votrax says "system ready" i then start the game by typing sys32592 and the game starts, according to the game manual by typing "v" during the game the votrax should work, however it does not, the game continues but with no sound.   acording to the manual with these games the votrax should be set at 1200 baud, yet it is my understanding that the vic 20 is only capable of 300 baud, i have tried both settings however with still no luck..... the votrax type n talk manual can be found online, second hit when you google it..... as well as the scott adams adventure manual.... please help me play these adventures with voice, anything i need to do i will...... Thanks for any help you can give me.
Regards: Aaron...

Answer
Gday Arron,

Apologies for the lateness in replying to this (I could not for the life of me find a Vic 20 reference book I though had something about this in it) Then the question disappeared from my queue.

The Vic 20 baud rate I believe can go up to 2400 so that is not the problem.

What you need to do is test this Votrax unit by it self independently from the game to see if it is functioning would be your first starting point.  (Because without know if the Votrax works then you will never know if it is the game that is causing the problem)

Make sure you have just one switch set for your baud rate.  Maybe set it to a lower baud rate probably 300 if you are getting the unit to say a work rather than full line of dialog.  I would then go into a basic.  Now straining my brain for basic...mmmmmmm.

Your command sting would look something like it looks in the manual.

You only need a simple program or just type in the syntax one line at a time.

100 OPEN #2 (Opens the connection port on your Vic 20)
200 PRINT #2,'hello' (send words to votrax)
300 CLOSE #2 (Closes port)

The syntax could be alittle off as you might have to define the port number and that you are opening if for (Output instead of input) maybe even a baud rate (Stretching the old memory back 30 years).  Print and close are fairly standard.

If it works in basic then it should work in you game.  But the trick is to get it working in basic mode.

The sys32592 probably initializes or opens up the votrax.  Then typing V in the game switches the game from pushing text to the screen then routing it to the Votrex unit (and probably the screen as well).

Probably not much help but maybe a little more piece in the puzzle.

Octane