Author Topic: My old PCs, Retro home made speech recognition system  (Read 24439 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline joeqsmithTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 11630
  • Country: us
My old PCs, Retro home made speech recognition system
« on: March 10, 2015, 02:23:31 am »
Re: EEVblog #713 - VCP200 Voice Recognition - 1980's Style

Thanks for the post!  I Really enjoyed this video.   

Many years ago, before the first sound blaster card, I was attempting to make my own speech recognition system.   I had seen speaker independent system at Western Electric/Bell Labs in the late 70's early 80s and became interested in it.   I still have my home made board laying around.   It may not work as good as the radio shack part.   

During my first job, we were making those LCP encoded speech modules for cars.  I still have some old audio tapes from back then as companies were trying to come up with more natural sounds.
« Last Edit: April 19, 2015, 11:37:40 pm by joeqsmith »
 

Offline joeqsmithTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 11630
  • Country: us
Re: Retro home made speech recognition system
« Reply #1 on: March 10, 2015, 02:27:29 am »
Here is my original IBM AT 6MHz PC.

Offline joeqsmithTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 11630
  • Country: us
Re: Retro home made speech recognition system
« Reply #2 on: March 10, 2015, 02:31:07 am »
4096 Meg of RAM, coprocessor, original 32Meg full height drive and 80Meg HH.   A work horse  in the day....

Offline joeqsmithTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 11630
  • Country: us
Re: Retro home made speech recognition system
« Reply #3 on: March 10, 2015, 02:35:07 am »
I was very much interested in sound.  It is pretty complex stuff to try and analyze.  The Sound Blaster was not even though of yet.  You had a speaker hooked to a timer channel.   But IBM released the technical reference manual for the AT so you could make what ever hardware you wanted...



Offline joeqsmithTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 11630
  • Country: us
Re: Retro home made speech recognition system
« Reply #4 on: March 10, 2015, 02:38:01 am »
Back in those days, we didn't have fancy terms like Joule Thief.  We just called them switching power supplies.   Shown here is small home made E core.


Offline joeqsmithTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 11630
  • Country: us
Re: Retro home made speech recognition system
« Reply #5 on: March 10, 2015, 02:45:10 am »
This board has several features.  It has ROM that I would boot into that had a security system in it.  There was no boot up passwords in those days and this may have been the first time it was done on an AT.     There was a PROM and MC68701 programmer.  An 8-bit DAC and a TI TMS5220 LPC speech chip, both connected to a mixer and a audio amplifier.   The PCs speaker plugs into the board and the timer ties into the mixer so I didn't loose my beeps.   



Offline joeqsmithTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 11630
  • Country: us
Re: Retro home made speech recognition system
« Reply #6 on: March 10, 2015, 02:55:51 am »
In order to digitize the speech, I have two different ADCs.  One was a National ADC0809 and the other an AD7523. 

My plan, assuming the PC still runs, is to make a short video showing some of the speech software I wrote for fun.   Mostly was using assembler back then with a little C mixed in.     I suspect is was no better than what was shown in the EEVBlog.   

Offline joeqsmithTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 11630
  • Country: us
Re: Retro home made speech recognition system
« Reply #7 on: March 10, 2015, 04:12:33 am »
Turned it on after looking it over.  Ran a few seconds and died.   Power supply was dead shorted.  Looks like the 80Meg hard drive failed.  Stupid Tant cap is my guess.   Not going to be a simple demo.....

Offline joeqsmithTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 11630
  • Country: us
Re: Retro home made speech recognition system
« Reply #8 on: March 10, 2015, 04:32:40 am »
Stupid Tant caps...  Always such a nice smell.      Of course there appears to be a memory fault too.     All the DIP switches, no BIOS setups, SLOW, yea we have it so nice now!   :-DD


Offline miguelvp

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 5550
  • Country: us
Re: Retro home made speech recognition system
« Reply #9 on: March 10, 2015, 04:34:20 am »
That's too new for me, I would rather had the original one with the cassette din on the back.

I made a program that will read ZX Spectrum tapes into the PC, mostly in assembly to respect the timings and C to for the DOS program that will ask you what to do. I still have it somewhere (the program not the pc)

But with the ZX Spectrum I recorded every Spanish phoneme and made a text to speach, never tried it the other way around because that is way harder :)
 

Offline joeqsmithTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 11630
  • Country: us
Re: Retro home made speech recognition system
« Reply #10 on: March 10, 2015, 05:53:41 am »
That's too new for me, I would rather had the original one with the cassette din on the back.

I made a program that will read ZX Spectrum tapes into the PC, mostly in assembly to respect the timings and C to for the DOS program that will ask you what to do. I still have it somewhere (the program not the pc)

But with the ZX Spectrum I recorded every Spanish phoneme and made a text to speach, never tried it the other way around because that is way harder :)

 :-+  I'm right there with you!  I have my original IBM PC that had it's black 40W power supply and tape drive interface.   Then they start to get really old.  Oldest dates to early 70s.   Magnetic core memory.  CPU is two large boards of TTL logic. 

Looks like it was just the one bad Tant.  Replaced it and put a new battery pack into the system.  No BIOS setup on this PC.  But at least it's not DIP switches like the PC was.    Fired up Speedstor and ran some more diagnostics.  Things are starting to look up for a demo.   

Video showing the first power on attempt...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ju96T2SPcMA&feature=youtu.be




Offline joeqsmithTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 11630
  • Country: us
Re: Retro home made speech recognition system
« Reply #11 on: March 10, 2015, 07:10:43 am »
Changed out the second battery for the security and can log in with the board installed now.    Looks like the old wire wrap board is still alright.   Next problem, no network, no USB, no CDR and no way to put the software on it except 5.25 disks or mag tape.    :palm:     

Now wheres the box of tapes....

Offline joeqsmithTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 11630
  • Country: us
Re: Retro home made speech recognition system
« Reply #12 on: March 11, 2015, 03:37:56 am »
I found all my old speech software but have not located the harness for the board yet that has the microphone.       

You forget how bad things were until you fire up an old PC.  After getting the PC running again, I went ahead and ran a low format and a media analysis before I start loading the software on.   It's been running at least 8 hours and is still not done.    On the bright side, it's been running about 8 hours!  :-+   

Offline T3sl4co1l

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 21606
  • Country: us
  • Expert, Analog Electronics, PCB Layout, EMC
    • Seven Transistor Labs
Re: Retro home made speech recognition system
« Reply #13 on: March 11, 2015, 05:14:18 am »
So far, looking like the PC held up better than your, I'm assuming much newer, monitor! :-DD

Damn, 80 megabytes on that sucker!  Not to mention the EMS cards!  This thing wasn't cheap to assemble, back in the day, was it?

Should boot up my 8086 (PC-XT, late model clone) one of these days... I basically never do anything embedded though, so I have no real reason.  Maybe I should put together a video and demonstrate some of the programs I wrote back then...

Tim
Seven Transistor Labs, LLC
Electronic design, from concept to prototype.
Bringing a project to life?  Send me a message!
 

Offline miguelvp

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 5550
  • Country: us
Re: Retro home made speech recognition system
« Reply #14 on: March 11, 2015, 05:44:24 am »
DosBox runs most of those old programs if you don't need to interface with anything like the OP has to.
 

Offline joeqsmithTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 11630
  • Country: us
Re: Retro home made speech recognition system
« Reply #15 on: March 11, 2015, 11:43:37 am »
DosBox runs most of those old programs if you don't need to interface with anything like the OP has to.

I use DOSBOX even for real work.  Between it and Oracle's VirtualBox, you can keep most of the old software running. 

It would be easier for me to rewrite the code to run on a modern PC with a modern sound card using Windows graphics than get this system working again. 

So far, looking like the PC held up better than your, I'm assuming much newer, monitor! :-DD

Should boot up my 8086 (PC-XT, late model clone) one of these days... I basically never do anything embedded though, so I have no real reason.  Maybe I should put together a video and demonstrate some of the programs I wrote back then...

Tim

I have both the original IBM CGA and monochrome boards and IBM CGA monitor.   The PC is fitted with a Triton VGA board now.   

The one board can support expanded or extended memory.  The other board only supports expanded and actually has a daughter board that doubles it's memory.   

If you wrote anything for an XT box, let's see it.   My PC is a first gen and does not have the hooks in the BIOS to support a hard drive.  You get two 360K floppy drives to compile your C programs.   


It finished scanning the media overnight and has completed the high level formatting.   Now how to get the software on it..... |O 

Offline Aaron D. Parks

  • Contributor
  • Posts: 22
  • Country: us
Re: Retro home made speech recognition system
« Reply #16 on: March 11, 2015, 05:07:25 pm »
Delightful! Thanks for sharing.

Good luck getting it running  :-+
 

Offline joeqsmithTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 11630
  • Country: us
Re: Retro home made speech recognition system
« Reply #17 on: March 12, 2015, 05:49:08 am »
I kept hoping that the cable with the microphone would show up.   That's been two moves ago and I think it's gone for good.   I wanted to at least test some of the board out.

I connected my little HP signal generator to the boards input and tried to capture it.     This is what 8-bits or under sampled data looks like with CGA graphics all written in assembler.    I found my old Radio Shack microphone and now need to make up a cable for it. 

Offline joeqsmithTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 11630
  • Country: us
Re: Retro home made speech recognition system
« Reply #18 on: March 14, 2015, 04:48:20 am »
In this video, I state that the software is written in assembler.  This is correct for the first program.  The second is written in C.   I was attempting to get something working using zero crossing like Dave's demo but was unable to pull it off.   I switched to C and it appears put a strain on the system requirements....

http://youtu.be/N85dGIrcT5E

It won't be long now........




 






Offline joeqsmithTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 11630
  • Country: us
Re: Retro home made speech recognition system
« Reply #19 on: March 15, 2015, 12:27:43 am »
I had a few more problems getting the system working.  The ADC had a stuck bit and the supplies had too much noise.  I added some filters to the old wire wrap board and finally got it all to work.   The video is short but I explain how it works and show it in operation.   :phew:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnkUPFOw_Yo&feature=youtu.be
« Last Edit: March 15, 2015, 07:13:28 pm by joeqsmith »
 

Offline joeqsmithTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 11630
  • Country: us
Re: My old PCs, Retro home made speech recognition system
« Reply #20 on: April 19, 2015, 11:42:49 pm »
After seeing another member post about trying to get their IBM 5150 running, decided to pull mine out and see if it would still run.     

This one is a little unique.  It's an early version with the black supply, has an original IBM memory card and a Z80 processor allowing it to run CPM OS.   

Here's a few pictures of it.


Offline joeqsmithTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 11630
  • Country: us
Re: My old PCs, Retro home made speech recognition system
« Reply #21 on: April 20, 2015, 04:53:23 am »
Video of the system checkout and boot.  Was able to get CPM running on it.     


Offline IanJ

  • Supporter
  • ****
  • Posts: 1580
  • Country: scotland
  • Full time EE biz & Youtuber
    • IanJohnston.com
Re: My old PCs, Retro home made speech recognition system
« Reply #22 on: April 20, 2015, 10:47:25 am »
Great thread guys......loving the old photos and tales.

Back in the day at work I was tasked with migrating all the doc files from the companies old CPM system over to our new IBM PCAT system (non-networked).
Of course the floppies etc were incompatible, so I did it via a serial cable I made up and using some kind of SEND command on the CPM system and a terminal program on the AT. Took hours sending them one at a time. Lucky for me though they were readable directly in Wordstar 6.0 on the AT.
That was my introduction to IBM/MS DOS.


TeleVideo TS-803 terminal


Ian.
« Last Edit: April 20, 2015, 11:43:57 am by IanJ »
Ian Johnston - Manufacturer of the PDVS2mini & author of the free WinGPIB app.
Website & Online Shop: www.ianjohnston.com
YT Channel (electronics repairs & projects): www.youtube.com/user/IanScottJohnston, Twitter (X): https://twitter.com/IanSJohnston
 

Offline joeqsmithTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 11630
  • Country: us
Re: My old PCs, Retro home made speech recognition system
« Reply #23 on: April 20, 2015, 12:03:21 pm »
Nice Televideo!  Where would we be without Wordstar?  :-DD   I found a program years later that would move data between CPM and DOS. 


Here's the PC running the 8088MPH demo after I figured out I needed DOS 3 to run it.   The PC does not have all 640K installed and seems to run it fine.    I need to get it hooked to the composite output and try it. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QooSmcknY4&feature=youtu.be

Offline joeqsmithTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 11630
  • Country: us
Re: My old PCs, Retro home made speech recognition system
« Reply #24 on: April 21, 2015, 03:23:25 am »
Connected the IBM's composite output to my trash pick LCD projector.    Ran a few programs like the original Microsoft Flight Simulator 1.0 before running the 8088MPH demo.   The colors look very impressive.         

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RqZCWyjrfY&feature=youtu.be



Share me

Digg  Facebook  SlashDot  Delicious  Technorati  Twitter  Google  Yahoo
Smf