The Sinclair QL Forum

Does anyone possess (or have [had] seen) the (I'm not sure, if the following name is correct, must have a look into the advertises of QL World) QTalk Device (and its speech synthesizing software)?

It was connected to a SER port and has an own (virtual?) device driver for this SER port, so you simply can put out speech commands with print commands:

open#3,qtalk
print#3,'hello world'
close#3

to SPEAK "hello world".

BTW: I am interessted to buy it (for a good price) if someone is willing to sell it.

Here it is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5slnMemLtgs

Would seem that something like this could easily be created with a Pi or something similar.

Qtalk replicated on Pico?.

ones' complement wrote: Tue May 30, 2023 1:45 pm Qtalk replicated on Pico?.

Looks great, the Pico does not have a serial port, how do I connect it to the QL?

The Pico has UART. The useful part (with all hard work done) is whether the QL device/software is available.

ones' complement wrote: Tue May 30, 2023 2:29 pm The Pico has UART. The useful part (with all hard work done) is whether the QL device/software is available.

OK, UART to SERial easy ?

I was bidding for a QTALK on Ebay, a while back, but someone bid a ridiculous amount, which is a pity, as I was doing try and reproduce it.

We just need to know the serial protocol, the Pico just needs to emulate it, so the QTalk hardware may not be required, only the software. Is there a list of games etc that supported it?

Hi ones' complement,

ones' complement wrote: Tue May 30, 2023 2:48 pm We just need to know the serial protocol, the Pico just needs to emulate it, so the QTalk hardware may not be required, only the software. Is there a list of games etc that supported it?

one's complement wrote:

oc> ..., only the software. ...

Does anyone have this software? Then it should even be possible to implement it on QPC and perhaps even Q68, as they both support hardware (stereo?) sound.

I have never used QTalk, but if I were to implement a speech synthesizer that hooks to the serial port, then really, all I'd require is a baud setting (maybe flow control) and a set of commands you'd sent it (similar to AT Hayes commands). So if very little support was created by QTalk in the 80's/90's with regard to other software, then perhaps creating a simple serial-based device using the Pico that takes input in a form like this to output speech, would be ideal:

Derek,
I guess UART to the QL's serial port would be a MAX232.