Super Speak & Spell (the blue one)

[ne7]

Hiya all,
 I just found a super speak&spell in a skip! no kidding! and i bunged some batteries in and it worked fine (a few missing lines on the lcd but thats all!) haha...

Anyway - i heard these are quite different to bend than the other S&S - can anyone give me any pointers on what to avoid and/or whats groovy? -

Twould' be a shame to blow it up

ne7

[andy_wheels]

i have no experience of one myself but i think it might be a nonstarter for bending :
http://www.circuitbenders.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,180.0.html

"Super Speak&Spell 1991  and  Super Speak&Math 1991:  both are nearly unbendable. (catweazle)"

still, good skip find! why do people chuck stuff like this out?

[Circuitbenders]

hmmm, i've seen bent versions of the blue one, i tried one once but got sick of it as most of the bends were just glitches and weren't very reliable so never finished it.

I think that post on the unbendable machines refers to the other 'Super' models that come in a different kind of case. I've heard they are a waste of time. On the other hand i could be completely wrong.

[ne7]

yea i know its crazy someone would chuck this out
it sounds bloody fab even unbended

gonna have a poke around - if i find anything will post it here
i've seen like loads of pics of the blue one bent - the usa super speak and spell is a bastard apparently and quite a different beastie by all accounts.

[ne7]

i had a poke around inside it - i reckon part of the problem might be that it needs the voltage reduced to stop it crashing all the time (so i'm trying a battery drain pot on it =  this stopped one of my other toy bits (a Vtech Alphabet Desk) from crashing and opened up the bending possibilities... also i read somewhere theres an evil resistor (like the Vtech one) lurking on the board heh

will report back once i had more of a poke - work is so busy at the mo' i hardly have any time to get the soldering iron out hehe

[ne7]

saw another two Super Speak and Spells on Ebay both with 3 switches... seems odd theres no volt pot on any of em - prob just makes it quieter rather than loopy odd sounds eh?

Just got a big delivery of crocodile clip leads so am going to probe the supers guts and let you guys know what  i find

[ne7]

right i tried a volt drop - gonna need some super fine tuning at low volts it starts spitting out demented crap

i am hoping that the low voltage will allow some other bends to work better...

theres a HUGE - i mean HUGE resistor on the board
took some board pics too

[ne7]

board scan

[iqoruvuc]

Nice work - never even bohered looking at these becuase I didn't think they were in any way bendable!

[catweazle]

Oh I gave up to quickly 
I've tried to bend it a while ago, but every second bend-connection I've done resulted in a total crash, reset wait for startup was horrible for the nervous system... so I gave up after a few minutes.

THANK you for the voltage drain pot tip! I'll try again...

Did you got some cool stuff like loops or other usable bends?

[ne7]

not any loops - actually it sometimes gets stuck and you can hold the button down for a glitch loop - which is fab coz each button does a diff loop - i need some help investigating... i'm sure its actually quite hard to fry these as i really abused it

[catweazle]

Hi

To be shure we are talking about the same thing, I have a red Super Speak&Spell (1989)
I thought it was blue      But after I searched it in my mess I saw it was red 

The RED one:
http://www.datamath.org/Speech/SuperSpeaknSpell.htm


The BLUE one is from 1991 (the newer one):
http://www.datamath.org/Speech/SuperSpeaknSpell91.htm


Chips inside:
   Super Speak & Spell: TSP50C42/CSM42020, CMM18004
   Super Speak & Spell (91): TSP50C42/CSM42030, CMM19048

but the main DSP/Microcontroller is the same (TSP50C42) only the SpeechROM is different. So the bends should be the same.

Here is the "Design Manual" for the  TSP50xxx  from TexasInstruments, maybe help a bit
http://focus.ti.com/lit/ml/spss011d/spss011d.pdf

[catweazle]

Me again,
I took some pics of the RED Speak&Spell

(sorry the quality)

The Chips inside mine:
DSP:  CSM10087   (big label with 1991 on it)
ROM: CMM18004  (big label with 1989 on it)
Ohter:  74HC138   3-to-8 line decoder/demultiplexer, inverting (keyboard matrix scan I think)
           74HC165   8-bit parallel-in/serial-out shift register (for keyboard matrix scan I think)

In the Datasheet the minimum voltage is 4Volt

[ne7]

yes it is confusing isnt it
mine is the blue one - as we only had those in UK/Europe - the red one looks quite cool tho hehe - i did see someone had bent the red one with a LFO and stuff:
http://fire.prohosting.com/circuitm/superspeakandspell.html

[catweazle]

Yes very confusing   I live in Germany but I got one from eBay US ..,

The link is marvelous !!!!  This give me some new ideas, using  Analog Multiplexer 4051 or so for different bents,
maybe signal traces cuts and switches between like on the Yamaha FM bends could be a way to succeed (or the way to such eggs  

gtz and a lot of thanks!