From: skippsays@yahoo.com   
      
   : 	The manufacturing date stamped inside the one I have is May 22, 1979.   
   : The VoxBox didn't make the first 1980 Computer Catalog (RSC-2), but it made   
   : it into the second one (RSC-3).  It listed for $169.95.   
      
   Everything at 3 times the price it should have been.  Probably one of the   
   two or three voice products radio shack had for the model one. I have the   
   speech output synth that I've never tried.  Based on examples people have   
   told me about the sound of robot attack out the cass player port probably   
   sounded better.   
      
   : 	It *might* have made the 1981 catalog as well, but I'd be surprised if   
   : it showed up beyond that.  As I recall, this device didn't last very long   
   : -- it was interesting to experiment with, but its capabilities were   
   : somewhat limited and a bit impractical; it could only recognize a limited   
   : number of words, and was very picky about background noise and differences   
   : between speakers.  (Although as the saying goes about the talking dog, the   
   : wonder is not that it was done well, but that it was done at all. :) )  It   
      
   Very true... all the early voice stuff was problematic and good for   
   experimenting only.   
      
   : also didn't support the Model-III, if I recall correctly, and even getting   
   : it to work under Model-I Disk BASIC required some modification of the   
   : application programs due to differences between Level-II and Disk-BASIC   
   : implementations of the USR function.   
      
   To quote Clint Eastwood from one of his movies... t'was a cluster $%&* to   
   make it work right.   
      
   : 	The device itself is pretty simple; it just splits the incoming sound   
   : into "high" and "low" frequency bands, then feeds each one to a   
   : zero-crossing detector and an amplitude-averaging circuit and puts the   
   : sampled data onto the bus as a 4-bit nybble.  All the work is done in the   
   : driver, which is accessed from BASIC via the USR function; it repeatedly   
   : samples the VoxBox's I/O port and stuffs the data into memory, then   
   : compares it to see if it matches any of the 32 sample sets you previously   
   : trained it for.  If it did, then the USR call would return the number of   
   : whichever set matched.   
      
   Pretty cool, thanks for the inside operational view. A person with basie   
   electronic skills could almost make one based on the above description.   
      
   : 	Ira's got the manuals up on his TRS-80 Revived site if you want to read   
   : up on all the gory details. :)   
      
   I need to go look at IRA's web site...   it's been too long.   
      
   cheers,   
   skipp   
   www.radiowrench.com/sonic   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)