[Coco] Speech Systems Symphony 12 & Piano attachment

[Brian Blake]

Hi Rob, thanks for sharing this info.

Is there any way you could take some pic of the cartridge PCB - top &
bottom? I'd like to get it documented and maybe try to reproduce it. I have
a feeling items like these weren't sold in great numbers, and the
documentation is non-existent.

The irony here is, now that I know what some of these items are, I'm about
90% convinced I had the cartridge at one point, and sold it along with all
of my CoCo stuff in 2017. I had a long white Speech Systems cartridge with
a single DIN port on it - I think it was 5 pins. I had no idea what it was
for then...



On Tue, Aug 12, 2025 at 11:22 AM Rob Rosenbrock via Coco <
coco at maltedmedia.com> wrote:

> On 2025-08-11 10:55 pm, Brian Blake via Coco wrote:
> > Greetings CoCoNutz,
> >
> > This one may be testing some brain cells, as I've never seen this
> > device in
> > the wild - only in Rainbow ads...
> >
> > I recently bought and assembled the Philharmonic 12 (Speech System
> > Symphony
> > 12 repro), and am really wanting to test it's 12 voices. Currently, no
> > Symphony files exist in the CoCo archive. The Musica files play fine
> > (mostly), but are only 4 voice compositions. The Speech Systems ads
> > from
> > BITD show a 61 key keyboard attached, that uses a CZ-101  cartridge(?)
> > to
> > connect to the CoCo.
> >
> > Does anyone know anything about these devices? I'm wondering if a MIDI
> > keyboard and adapter would act similarly in the Symphony XII software.
> > In
> > my reading so far, this isn't mentioned, though Speech Systems also
> > sold a
> > CoCoMIDI program and cartridge...
> >
> >
> > If anyone has any info on these Speech Systems products (beyond what is
> > in
> > the CoCo Archive) I'd love to arrange to get a copy uploaded to the
> > archive. I'd really like to test the Philharmonic out to 12 voices
> >
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Brian
> >
> >
> > --
> > Ohioan by birth, Floridian by the grace of U-Haul and a bad economy...
> > --------
> > Sarcasm is the body's natural defense to stupidity.
>
> I have the keyboard. If I remember right, the cartridge I have is just a
> PIA to interface the keybed to the buss. $FF64
>
> I bought my keyboard as part of Synther 77. It's been a long time, but I
> do remember the program having some sort of sequencer.
>
> --
> Coco mailing list
> Coco at maltedmedia.com
> https://pairlist5.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/coco
>


-- 
Ohioan by birth, Floridian by the grace of U-Haul and a bad economy...
--------
Sarcasm is the body's natural defense to stupidity.