> "I'm trying to make a software version of Stephen's voice so that we don't have to rely on these old hardware cards," says Wood.
So back in 2010 we had someone help us extract the program ROM code from the SNES DSP-n coprocessors (used in games like Pilotwings and Mario Kart.) It turns out these chips were NEC uPD7725 DSPs. There was basically only one very terse document on how the chip worked, and no emulators for it, so I had to write one. Had a bit of help in fixing the overflow flag calculations from Cydrak.
A while later, I spoke briefly through a liaison with Sam Blackburn (who was then Stephen Hawking's assistant) back in 2011'ish. They were looking for permission to use my uPD7725 emulation code (which I said yes to, obviously.) Apparently the Speech Plus text synthesizer uses NEC uPD7720s. This is basically the same chip and ISA, but with less ROM/RAM. It's a neat little fact, but not too surprising. These DSPs are really versatile, and different programs can make them do very different things.
Reading this article, it sounds like the effort was as yet unsuccessful, though :(
(It's also important to note that the uPD7720 is probably an infinitesimal part of the overall system, so I suppose they ran into additional problems.)
> "I'm trying to make a software version of Stephen's voice so that we don't have to rely on these old hardware cards," says Wood.
So back in 2010 we had someone help us extract the program ROM code from the SNES DSP-n coprocessors (used in games like Pilotwings and Mario Kart.) It turns out these chips were NEC uPD7725 DSPs. There was basically only one very terse document on how the chip worked, and no emulators for it, so I had to write one. Had a bit of help in fixing the overflow flag calculations from Cydrak.
A while later, I spoke briefly through a liaison with Sam Blackburn (who was then Stephen Hawking's assistant) back in 2011'ish. They were looking for permission to use my uPD7725 emulation code (which I said yes to, obviously.) Apparently the Speech Plus text synthesizer uses NEC uPD7720s. This is basically the same chip and ISA, but with less ROM/RAM. It's a neat little fact, but not too surprising. These DSPs are really versatile, and different programs can make them do very different things.
Reading this article, it sounds like the effort was as yet unsuccessful, though :(
(It's also important to note that the uPD7720 is probably an infinitesimal part of the overall system, so I suppose they ran into additional problems.)