MediaWiki:Sitenotice:
2025-12-29: I have restored the wiki to a backup from the end of November. Starting in September 2025, accesses went form the 800MB-1.2GB range per month to 26GB in September, 42GB in October, and 70GB in November with most accesses originating from China. As soon as I realized what was causing all the access problems in November, I shut it down (it had reached 36GB by then) behind a password/login screen. The database had gotten corrupted, and I tried a restore from just before the spike in access but that didn't work. Thus, end of November. I still have the other daily backups so if there were any important additions in December, let me know and maybe they can be recovered. - Allen H.
Speech/Sound Cartridge (26-3144A)
| WELCOME |
|---|
| Looking for CoCo help? If you are trying to do something with your old Color Computer, read this quick reference. Want to contribute to this wiki? Be sure to read this first. This CoCo wiki project was started on October 29, 2004. --OS-9 Al |
See Recent Changes. | About this site. | Join the E-Mail List or Facebook Group. | Contact me with updates/questions.
This page was last updated on 09/15/2024. Total Pages: 747. Total Files: 997.
Home / Hardware - Speech/Sound Cartridge (26-3144A)
The Speech/Sound Cartridge allows a Color Computer to produce monaural synthesized music, sound effects, and speech. It includes a PIC 7040 microcontroller that feeds data from the CoCo into an AY3-8913 Programmable Sound Generator and an SPO256-AL2 Speech Processor. It can produce speech from text, and music in 3 voices.
The sound is played on the Color Computer's monitor or TV through the SND pin on the CoCo's expansion port. The S/SC has a 2K RAM for storing sound effects or speech. There is no ROM-based program in the S/SC (except the ROM for the onboard microcontroller), but the 54 page manual contains complete programming information and many example Color BASIC programs demonstrating the capabilities of the interface.
The S/SC internally doubles the E clock provided on the CoCo's expansion port, and has problems when operated at the CoCo 3's high speed without modification.
Third Party Software
SoundMaster 2.0 by Jim McDowell is an OS-9 Level II program for the CoCo 3 with 512K of RAM. It is a BASIC09 program that provides a graphical interface for designing sounds to be played on the S/SC. It includes device drivers and descriptors for accessing the S/SC at both slow (unmodified) and fast (modified) speeds.
Games
The following games are known to produce sound effects and/or speech with the S/SC if present. Offsite links are to L. Curtis Boyle's list of Tandy (TRS-80) Color Computer Games:
- Adventure In Mythology
- F-16 Assault
- Galagon
- Gantlet
- Ghana Bwana
- Gold Runner
- Gold Runner II
- The Interbank Incident
- Keys of the Wizard
- Lansford Mansion
- Magic of Zanth
- Martian Crypt
- Module Man
- Omniverse by Scott Cabit. marketed by Computerware.
- Pegasus and the Phantom Riders
- Pitfall II
- Space Wrek Reportedly a B/W version has speech. Joel this version does Speak, I just played it the other night. It tells you what sector your entering, plus other words during and after game play. The version for speech is V1.0
- Treasure of the Aztecs by John Sandberg marketed by Computerware.
- Wild West
- Wizard's Castle