Software Automatic Mouth

Software Automatic Mouth

Software Automatic Mouth, or SAM, was a speech synthesis program for the early personal computers; developed and sold by Don’t Ask Software and a distant ancestor of PlainTalk found in Mac OS 9. The program was available for Apple computers (including the Apple II, and the Lisa), various Atari models and the Commodore 64. Prices ranged from about USD$50 to $200. The Apple version required additional hardware that contained DACs, although the Apple version could also use the computer's one-bit audio output (with the addition of much distortion) if the card was not present. The Atari made use of the embedded POKEY audio chip. Speech playback on the Atari normally disabled interrupt requests and shut down the ANTIC chip during vocal output. The audible output is extremely distorted speech when the screen is on. The Commodore 64 made use of the 64's embedded SID audio chip.

SAM, released in 1982, was the first commercial all software voice synthesis program.

SAM was featured in the recent online game Peasant's Quest, a parody of 1980s adventure games, where it was used to produce the speech of the ending boss Trogdor.

External links

* [http://www.text2speech.com/welcome.html SoftVoice, Inc.] — corporate web site.
* [http://web.inter.nl.net/hcc/davies/mvatappl.html Speech Synthesizers for Atari and Apple] — magazine review.
* [http://www.cyberroach.com/analog/an22/spelling_sam.htm Spelling.SAM] — A BASIC spelling program for Atari.
* [http://www.retrobits.net/atari/sam.shtml SAM manual] — reproduction of the manual for the Atari version.


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