Texas Instruments La Dictée Magique (Type 2)

This La Dictée Magique model introduced in 1986 got a slightly changed keyboard design. View the previous design here.

The pictured La Dictée Magique was manufactured in October 1987 and represents the last design iteration of the Speak & Spell family. The printed circuit board (PCB) itself is much smaller than the original Speak & Spell design but sports an almost identical design.

The main components on the PCB are:

Microcontoller: The microcontroller is derived from the TMS1000 series and adopted to control both the keyboard, the display and to feed the speech synthesizer. This La Dictée Magique uses a CD2702 which interprets as TMC0270, ROM-Code 2.

Speech Synthesizer: The Speak & Spell series uses with the TMC0280 the first one-chip LPC speech synthesizer. Later refinements to the Speak & Spell chips resulted in the TMS5100, 5200 and 5220 Voice Synthesis Processors for commercial products. This La Dictée Magique uses a CD2801 which interprets as TMC0280, Version 1.

Speech ROM: Speech data is stored in a 128k ROM chip with the designation TMC0350. This La Dictée Magique uses a CD2352 which is actually an identical VSM (Voice Speech Memory) from a more recent manufacturing process.

In addition to the ten different English speaking Speak & Spell Cartridge Libraries five French speaking "Module Magique" were introduced. A comprehensive overview including the wordlists could be found here. 

The La Dictée Magique is featured in the Texas Instruments France SA leaflet Magiques et Intelligents dated 1991.

If you have additions to the above article please email: joerg@datamath.org.

© Joerg Woerner, October 28, 2008. No reprints without written permission.