[Coco] Radio Shack Speech-Sound Pak

[L. Curtis Boyle]

The only game that used the white noise generator to any extent that I know of is F-16
Assault by Diecom. And the Mockingboard, etc. is a good comparison, although the Coco
situation was even worse: at least the Apple II had built in slots for adding cards, so your
cost was just the cost of the card. To use the Sound Speech Pak on the Coco with either
a cartridge game or a disk game would ALSO require you buying a Multi-Pak… only a
cassette game could be used with the SSP without that additional expense.

L. Curtis Boyle
curtisboyle at sasktel.net

TRS-80 Color Computer Games website
http://www.lcurtisboyle.com/nitros9/coco_game_list.html



> On Aug 22, 2017, at 8:54 AM, Bill Loguidice <bill at armchairarcade.com> wrote:
> 
> An internal Speech-Sound Pak in the CoCo 3 would have hardly overshadowed
> the Tandy 1000 series. Tandy just didn't want to add extra manufacturing
> costs to the CoCo 3, something that plagued the CoCo line from day one. By
> the time the CoCo 3 was released, it would be hard to blame them for the
> strategy since there was only so much life left in 8-bit computers by that
> time, particularly in the US.
> 
> It IS a pity that the Speech-Sound Pak didn't receive more overall support,
> though, but then that's to be expected with something like that. As a point
> of comparison, the similar-in-concept Mockingboard (and compatibles) on the
> Apple II received support from less than two dozen games and
> utilities/productivity software.
> 
> -Bill
> 
> ========================================================
> Bill Loguidice, Managing Director; Armchair Arcade, Inc.
> <http://www.armchairarcade.com>
> ========================================================
> Authored Books
> <http://www.amazon.com/Bill-Loguidice/e/B001U7W3YS/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_1> and
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> ========================================================
> 
> On Mon, Aug 21, 2017 at 10:47 PM, Andrew <keeper63 at cox.net> wrote:
> 
>> Ray, don't forget about the other half of that hardware!
>> 
>> It has some pretty amazing sound capabilities as well, though I don't
>> think there were many (or any?) commercial software (games etc) that used
>> it. Honestly, the chip that was in that thing should have been incorporated
>> into the CoCo 3 (but Tandy didn't want to overshadow the Tandy 1000, which
>> is a pity).
>> 
>> Still, it's a fun piece to experiment and play with!
>> 
>> If you get a multi-pak for it, I seem to recall that you were supposed to
>> put the floppy-drive pak in either slot 1 or slot 4 (?) and set the switch
>> to that (for bootup), but other cartridges could be put in the other slots
>> (at one time, I had the floppy controller, the SS pak, the RS-232 pak, and
>> a DS-69B all connected on mine as a kid). My memory may be faulty tho...
>> 
>> Have fun!
>> 
>> --
>> Andrew L. Ayers
>> Glendale, Arizona
>> https://github.com/andrew-ayers
>> http://www.phoenixgarage.org/
> 
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