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Speak & Spell Hacking For Fun And Profit

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the good-thing-it's-pre-drm dept.

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."

4 of 214 comments (clear)

  1. More interesting examples... by agent+oranje · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
  2. Also known as Circuit Bending by mediahacker · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Common in the electronic music community - very fun stuff... Google for "circuit bending" and check out some of the sites.

  3. Re:Speak and Spell? WTF? by ncc74656 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Just for those of you who are not old enough or, like me, not American enough to immediately understand what exactly is an Speak and Spell...

    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

    S&S: Please spell "color."
    Kid: [punches in C-O-L-O-R]
    S&S: That is incorrect...try again.
    Kid: [punches in C-O-L-O-U-R]
    S&S: That is correct.

    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.
  4. I made some sounds like this by Squiffy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.