Slashdot Mirror
Speak & Spell Hacking For Fun And Profit
Bowie J. Poag writes "Pete Casper has created a number of truly bizarre Speak & Spell hacks, and case mods (!) suitable for live performances. The highly modified Speak & Spell can be controlled either by the membrane keypad or using an Atari joystick of all things. Tons of photographs and MP3 samples included.. I want one. Now."
Long ago, I came across Carrion Sound, which has been tweaking toys and instruments of today and yesterday into noise masterpieces. Mp3 examples are there, too. A bit more on the artistic-side, but many of his examples are quite impressive. And although many-a Speak-and-Spell were destroyed in this man's work, he destroyed many, many, many, many other things, too.
Anyone who can turn a Pikachu doll into something even more disturbing should get a medal.
-agent oranje.
Common in the electronic music community - very fun stuff... Google for "circuit bending" and check out some of the sites.
They were available outside the States. I remember seeing a TV commercial for it in England in the mid-80s. The funny part of the commercial was the word chosen...it went something like this
They localized it for that market...IIRC, it spoke with a somewhat Brit accent. I don't know if it was sold in any non-English-speaking countries, though I'd think that the type of speech synthesis employed ought to work at least for most Western languages.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
It should be noted that the S&S was the first consumer application of a Digital Signal Processor (DSP chip). The most common application of DSPs today is the digital cell phone. Who would have thought that the S&S would lead to wireless access to prOn? -- Jack
Anyone who's hung out on the Analogue Heaven or Synth-DIY mailing lists has known about these kind of mods for years (i'm talking mid-90s and earlier here).
It is SO MUCH FUN to play with old sound-making gear and randomly bypass resistors and short chips just to see what will happen. I've broken one synth doing this randomly, after that i always bought schematics :-) But with schematics you can do All Sort Of Cool Shit. It doesn't really work with newer, "System On A Chip" kind of gear, but who cares - it's only the late 70s and early 80s stuff that you get at garage sales for $10 anyway. Even if you're not musical and just an EE head it's a ball to go in and connect shit up and make it go "wheeeeeee" "waaaarrgggghhhh" "w00t".
I got a sig so you would remember me.
Go to my web page. I wanked a S&S and got several minutes of that kind of trippy stuff. I recorded it to hard drive using a nice DAC. It's in my "Work" page. In my "Links" page you'll find links to a couple more web sites that do stuff like this.