DATAMATH CALCULATOR MUSEUM |
Texas Instruments introduced in the year 1978 the famous Speak & Spell educational toy. Shortly after the invention of the synthesizer technology to reproduce human speech with tuned voices stored in ROM's the Speak & Spell took the world in a storm. Not counting the thousands and thousands of children using their red toy the Speak & Spell voice can be heard on countless electronic dance records like Kraftwerks 1981 Computer World album. Not satisfied with the stored voices the experimental composer and instrument maker Qubais Reed Ghazala took a Speak & Spell apart and rewired it. He calls this process circuit-bending, and the result of these accidental short-circuits and redirected signals make the Speak & Spell produce disturbingly twisted and nonsensical noises, the electronic equivalent of a machine speaking in tongues. The most famous appearance of the Speak & Spell is in the movie E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial, where E.T. phones home on a modified toy.
In our opinion enough reasons to discover the inside of a Speak & Spell.
The original version of the Speak & Spell could be easily recognized with the 40 round buttons keys instead the later flat membrane keyboard.
Inside a Speak & Spell produced between the years 1978 and 1980 you'll find 4 important components:
The huge printed circuit board (PCB) with the speech synthesizer technology The keyboard composed of two TI-1200 keyplates with 20 keys each The loudspeaker with a small transformer An last but not least 4 C-sized batteries |
From higher interest for most of us is the printed circuit board.
This is the first view of the PCB after removing it from the housing. In a next step we bend the two TI-1200 keyboards away. | |
This is the component side of the whole electronics. Clicking on the PCB will open a new page on your browser and you may switch between the description and the full screen picture. |
Please notice: The PCB above is not identical with the PCB of the left Speak
& Spell!
Later models of the Version 1 received two added jacks for an external power supply and head phone.
In Japan the jack for the head phone is accessible from the front and the connector of the external power supply placed slightly different to the standard model.
The later version of the Speak & Spell uses a flat membrane keyboard instead the button keys. The inside view is similar.
On a first glance the new Speak & Spell looks cheaper than its predecessor. The basic layout is identical but a lot of cost reduction optimization was done by the engineers of Texas Instruments:
The printed circuit board (PCB) is much
smaller |
This is the normal view of the PCB. Famous "Circuit-Bender" Qubais Reed Ghazala uses this view for the diagrams and pictures on his website. | |
This is the component side of the whole electronics. Clicking on the PCB will open a new page on your browser and you may switch between the description and the full screen picture. | |
This is the component side with the locations of the parts marked. Clicking on the PCB will open a new page on your browser and you may switch between the description and the full screen picture. |
The
Speak & Spell and its two siblings, the yellow Speak & Read and the grey
Speak
& Math use identical electronics with some
changes in the software and different solid
State Speech.
The blue Buddy on the right most position is
the rare German edition of the Speak & Spell.
Microcontoller: The microcontroller is derived from the
TMS1000 series and adopted to control both the keyboard, the display and to feed
the speech synthesizer. From a technical point of view the TMC0270 is very similar to the
TMS0980 best known from the
TI-30 calculator but optimized for 14-segment VF-Displays instead of 7-segment LED-displays.
Speak & Spell uses a TMC0271
which interprets as TMC0270, ROM-Code 1. La Dictιe Magique and Grillo Parlante uses a TMC0270/CD2702 which interprets as TMC0270, ROM-Code 2. Early Speak & Math uses a TMC0270/CD2704 which interprets as TMC0270, ROM-Code 4. Speak & Read uses a TMC0270/CD2705 which interprets as TMC0270, ROM-Code 5. |
Later Speak & Math uses a TMC0270/CD2708 which interprets as TMC0270, ROM-Code 8.
Speech Synthesizer: The Speak & Spell series uses with the TMS5100/TMC0280 the first one-chip LPC speech synthesizer. Later refinements to the Speak & Spell chips resulted in the TMS5110, TMS5200 and TMS5220 Voice Synthesis Processors for commercial products.
Speak & Spell, Read and Math uses a TMC0281
which interprets as TMC0280, Version 1. Sometimes it is called a TMC0280/CD2801 which interprets as TMC0280, Version 1. |
Speech ROM: Speech data is stored in a 128k Bits ROM chip with the designation TMC0350.
The original Speak & Spell introduced in the year 1978
and the first models of the new edition from 1980 uses TMC0351 and TMC0352
|
Additional Speech ROM: The Speak & Read populates the second Speech ROM to increase vocabulary.
Expansion Module: Plug-in modules increased vocabulary.
Printed Circuit Board: The PCB of the
different Speak & Spell, Read and Math got a lot of redesigns during the
production years. You'll locate a revision number on most PCB's near the
Expansion connector. The table below gives a first correlation between the
revision number and the date of manufacturing.
Speak & | PCB Code | Revision | Manufacturing code | Est. date of manufacturing | Speech ROM's |
Spell (Original) | 1033303-3 | REV.G | MTA-0879 | year 1979 wk 08 | TMC0351, TMC0352 |
Spell (Original) | 1033303-3 | REV.J | RCI-4679 | year 1979 wk 46 | TMC0351, TMC0352 |
Spell (Original) | 1033303-3 | REV.J | MTA-1680 | year 1980 wk 16 | TMC0351, TMC0352 |
Spell (Original) | 1033303-3 | REV.J | PII-2780 Philippines |
year 1980 wk 27 | TMC0351, TMC0352 |
Spell (JP) (Original) | 1033303-3 | REV.J | Japan | TMC0351, TMC0352 | |
Spell (Original) | 1040672-1 | REV. | MTA-3180 | year 1980 wk 31 | TMC0351, TMC0352 |
Spell (Original) | 1040672-1 | REV.A | MTA-3580 | year 1980 wk 35 | TMC0351, TMC0352 |
Spell (UK) (Original) | RCI-3880 | year 1980 wk 38 | TMC0350 (CD2303), TMC0350 (CD2304) | ||
Spell | 1040675-2 | REV.D | MTA-4480 | year 1980 wk 44 | CD2394, CD2395 |
Read | 1040675-2 | REV.D | MTA-4480 | year 1980 wk 44 | CD2394, CD2395 |
Spell | 1040675-2 | REV.G | MTA-4680 | year 1980 wk 44 | TMC0351, TMC0352 |
Maths | 1040675-2 | REV.G(ET) | RCI-3481 | year 1981 wk 34 | CD2392, CD2393 |
Math | 1040675-3 | REV.J | LTA-3781 | year 1981 wk 37 | CD2392, CD2393 |
Spell | 1040675-4 | REV.L | ATA-4182 | year 1982 wk 41 | CD2350A |
Math | 1040675-4 | REV.L | ATA-3282 | year 1982 wk 32 | CD2392, CD2393 |
Spell (UK) | 1040675-9 | REV.AA | RCI-3284 | year 1984 wk 32 | CD62175A |
Spell | 1040675-9 | REV.AA | ATA-4883 | year 1983 wk 48 | CD2350A |
Spell | 1040675-9 | REV.AA | LTA-1184, LTA-3184 |
year 1984 wk 11 | CD2350A |
Spell (UK) | 1040675-9 | REV.AA | RCI-0285 | year 1985 wk 02 | CD62175A |
Spell | 1040675-10 | REV.AE | LTA-0685 | year 1985 wk 06 | CD2350A |
Grillo Parlante | 1040675-10 | REV.AE | RCI-1485 | year 1985 wk 14 | CD62190 |
Spell (UK) | 1040675-10 | REV.AE | RCI-2385 | year 1985 wk 23 | CD62175A |
Math | 1040675-10 | REV.AE | LTA-3985 | year 1985 wk 39 | CD2381, CD2614 |
Math | 1040675-12 | REV. AJ | LTA-0386 | year 1986 wk 03 | CD2392, CD2393 |
Read | 1040675-12 | REV. AJ | USA-166A | year 1986 wk 16 | CD2394, CD2395 |
Spell | 1040675-12 | REV. AJ | USA-166A | year 1986 wk 16 | CD2350 |
Read | 1040675-13 | REV. AK | USA-017A | year 1987 wk 01 | CD2394, CD2395 |
La dictee magique | 110358/2 | RCI-1687 | year 1987 wk 16 | CD2352 | |
Spell | 1040675-13 | REV. AK | USA-307A | year 1987 wk 30 | CD2350A |
Read | 1040675-13 | REV. AL | USA-107A | year 1987 wk 10 | CD2394, CD2395 |
Math | 1040675-13 | REV. AL | USA-107A | year 1987 wk 10 | CD2381, CD2614 |
Spell | 1040675-14 | REV. AN | USA-417A | year 1987 wk 41 | CD2350A |
Grillo Parlante | 110358-0012 | RCI-1188 | year 1988 wk 11 | CD62190 | |
La dictee magique | 110358-0012 | RCI-1188 | year 1988 wk 11 | CD2352 | |
Spell | 1040675-15 | USA-198A | year 1988 wk 19 | CD2350A | |
Spell | 1040675-15 | USA-198A | year 1988 wk 19 | CD2350A | |
Grillo Parlante | 1040675-15 | USA-398A | year 1988 wk 39 | CD62190 | |
Math | 1040675-15 | USA-268A | year 1988 wk 26 | CD2381, CD2614 | |
Maths | 1040675-15 | USA-358A | year 1988 wk 35 | CD2381, CD2614 | |
Maths | 1040675-18 | USA-2489 | year 1989 wk 24 | CD2381, CD2614 | |
Spell (UK) | 1040675-18 | USA-2889 | year 1989 wk 28 | CD62175A | |
Spell | 1040675-18 | USA-2989 | year 1989 wk 29 | CD2350A | |
Spell (UK) | 1040675-18 | USA-0990 | year 1990 wk 09 | CD62175A | |
Spell (UK) | 1040675-18 | USA-1491 | year 1991 wk 14 | CD62175A |
If you have additions to the above article please email: joerg@datamath.org.
© Joerg Woerner, January 27, 2002. No reprints without written permission.