Texas Instruments My Own PlayPhone

This rare and unknown My Own PlayPhone was introduced in 1993 and seems to be together with the Discovery Depot the last speaking toy with the Texas Instruments brand.

Dismantling the toy reveals with the TSP50C11 speech synthesizers the most cost effective solution for these applications. The TSP50C0x/1x uses a revolutionary architecture to combine an 8-bit microprocessor, a speech synthesizer, ROM, RAM, and I/O in a low-cost single-chip system. The architecture uses the same ALU (Arithmetic Logic Unit) for the synthesizer and the microprocessor, thus reducing chip area and cost and enabling the microprocessor to do a multiply operation in 1.6us. Linear Predictive Coding (LPC) is used to synthesize high-quality speech at a low data rate.
The TSP50C0x/1x implements an LPC-12 speech synthesis algorithm using a 12-pole lattice filter. The internal microprocessor fetches speech data from the internal or external ROM (TSP60C18 or TSP60C81), decodes the speech data, and sends the decoded data to the synthesizer. The microprocessor also interpolates (smooths) the speech data between fetches. The output of the synthesizer can be used to drive transistor or integrated-circuit amplifiers. Some digital low-pass filtering is provided inside the TSP50C0x/1x. 
The TSP50C0x/1x  is manufactured in a 4-V to 6-V CMOS Technology for Low Power Dissipation and using 16 pin dual-inline (DIP) or 20-pin surface mountable (SO) plastic cases.

We noticed these integrated circuits already in some other speaking toys developed by Texas Instruments:

Other toys for toddlers are the Listen & Learn and the Magic Sorter.

© of the characters 1993 Warner Bros.

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

© Joerg Woerner and Melissa Merryman,  July 8, 2001. No reprints without written permission.