
You can find a demo of COMPUTALKER in this previous post from back in 2008.
Here are some pics and additional info on the COMPUTALKER via this reddit thread where you'll find a dropbox link to additional docs including some source code. Note the poster on reddit is looking for help on gettig it going. If you can help, reach out there.
This one was spotted and sent in via
M Me who also found some addtional info here.
From the reddit thread:
"The Computalker CT-1 was one of the earliest commercially available speech synthesizers for personal computers. Introduced in late 1976 and shipped beginning in 1977, it was developed by D. Lloyd Rice and Jim Cooper in Santa Monica, California through their company, Computalker Consultants.
Unlike simpler speech devices that played back recorded sounds, the CT-1 was a 9-parameter formant speech synthesizer. A host computer generated control data describing pitch, formant frequencies, fricatives, aspiration, and other speech characteristics, while the CT-1 generated the actual voice waveform in hardware."
"My goal, (which I do think may end up being completely impossible) is to get this up and running and hear it speak. Among the photos, there are some shots of the inside. I understand that this was originally designed for the S-100 bus going as far back as the Altair 8800. Serial number inside and out is 7001 and I can see that a previous owner likely replaced the older capacitors already.
This variant however, In all my searching I cannot seem to find a single reference to anywhere. My best guess with the information I have is that this could be a prototype version that was meant for later computers and perhaps it's missing some type of interface card for maybe an Apple II or TRS-80?
Here is a dropbox link to all of the information I have collected so far. I have found the manual, the software manual (With source code?!) and all sorts of little information. Also there's a lot more photos....
https://www.dropbox.com...
Maybe someone out there has seen this before? I am super excited to keep collecting information on this! Thank you for checking this out!"
Some pics of the inside below.































