Subj : Play audio from a serial port
To   : AKAcastor
From : Bob Worm
Date : Sun May 26 2024 09:53:45

  Re: Play audio from a serial port
  By: AKAcastor to Spectre on Sat May 25 2024 23:05:10

Hi, Chris.

 > Wolf3D did indeed support Disney Sound Source.  It looks like there's a
 > driver to allow a Covox Speech Thing to work with Wolf3D also (though it's
 > not supported by Wolf3D otherwise).

 > Interestingly, despite the fact that the Disney Sound Source is similar to
 > the Covox Speech Thing, Wolfenstein 3D only works with the Disney Sound
 > Source - it does not work with the Covox Speech Thing, Voice Master, or
 > Sound Master.

 > So that explains why Wolfenstein won't work with a DSS - it can't detect nor
 > enable the DSS.

Some really mixed messages here... might require a bit of experimentation :)

Of course, I don't have a Disney Sound Source, but I'm in that dangerous "how hard can it be?" mindset - if the protocol is documented somewhere then it would probably be possible to implement it using crap out of my cupboard - which is my favourite kind of implementation.

 > 1. It only switches on when the software tells it to (there's no physical
 > switch)

I wonder if it handshakes back for detection? Probably... which would make life harder.

 > 2. It can ONLY do 7 kHz

Probably a win for my purposes :)

 > 3. It doesn't need such extreme timing as a classic Covox, as it has its own
 > 16-sample FIFO buffer.

16 samples? As in 2ms? I suppose in true Disney Sound Source style, "barely anything" is better than "absolutely nothing"! Will have a mooch around and see if there's an off the shelf FIFO to fit that bill.

Hmm. My interest is piqued but I really want to finish writing my Acorn terminal emulator before I move onto something else. I've been meaning to do it for about a year now and once I finally started it came together really quickly. I just need to move the control flow into assembler (probably an afternoon's work) and then plumb it into the serial port (another hour?) - hopefully that will give me the ~ 20x speedup I need for it to run smoothly on the A3020 and I can succumb to other distractions...

BobW
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