• Looking for a specific Echo Plus disk

    From Jayson Smith@21:1/5 to All on Fri Jan 28 01:46:13 2022
    Hi,

    When we first got our Apple IIe in 1987 we had a disk which probably
    came with our Echo II Plus card, though I'm not sure. It booted into
    ProDOS, and had a few programs on it, one of which used the Mockingboard support on the Echo to play four very short songs (Camptown Races,
    Sidewalks of New York, Oh! Susanna, and Way Down Upon the Swanee River).
    It also had a spelling game that used pre-recorded LPC speech samples
    and played some of those little jingles when you spelled a word correctly.

    At that time I was all of nine years old, and that disk didn't talk when
    it booted, so I naturally assumed ProDOS just wasn't designed to be used
    with the Echo speech. By the time I knew better, I'd somehow erased that
    disk, and have never been able to find it since. As far as I know, this
    disk is *not* in the collection of Echo software that was put together
    in around 2000. I think there's a demo of this disk on Soundcloud
    somewhere. Does anyone even know what I'm talking about, or perhaps have
    a copy?

    Thanks,

    Jayson

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  • From cybernesto@21:1/5 to Jayson Smith on Fri Jan 28 15:56:04 2022
    Jayson Smith wrote:
    Hi,

    When we first got our Apple IIe in 1987 we had a disk which probably
    came with our Echo II Plus card, though I'm not sure. It booted into
    ProDOS, and had a few programs on it, one of which used the Mockingboard support on the Echo to play four very short songs (Camptown Races,
    Sidewalks of New York, Oh! Susanna, and Way Down Upon the Swanee River).
    It also had a spelling game that used pre-recorded LPC speech samples
    and played some of those little jingles when you spelled a word correctly.


    Hi Jayson,

    I have the mono version of the Echo+. It came with two disks that included among others a sound program that could play tunes based on chords and notes written in an AppleSoft string. It only included two sample songs: Yesterday and Yankee Doodle (with a gunshot at the end)
    A friend has the stereo version and his card came with only one two-sided
    disk. There the SW was more graphics oriented, similar to the one that was
    used for the Cricket! and included the same functionalities except for the clock. The spelling test there has some short musical interludes. I think
    the songs are indeed the ones you mentioned.
    I uploaded the disk images some time ago to archive.org. See https://archive.org/details/StreetElectronicsEcho and check ECHO+_1.DSK

    best regards,

    cybernesto

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  • From Jayson Smith@21:1/5 to cybernesto on Fri Jan 28 13:06:01 2022
    Hi,

    That seems to be exactly the disk I'm looking for! Thanks!

    Now the only problem is, with the MAME emulation of the Echo II Plus,
    I'm only getting the main melody of the little musical jingles, and not
    the chords! I wonder why?

    Jayson

    On 1/28/2022 10:56 AM, cybernesto wrote:
    Jayson Smith wrote:
    Hi,

    When we first got our Apple IIe in 1987 we had a disk which probably
    came with our Echo II Plus card, though I'm not sure. It booted into
    ProDOS, and had a few programs on it, one of which used the Mockingboard
    support on the Echo to play four very short songs (Camptown Races,
    Sidewalks of New York, Oh! Susanna, and Way Down Upon the Swanee River).
    It also had a spelling game that used pre-recorded LPC speech samples
    and played some of those little jingles when you spelled a word correctly. >>

    Hi Jayson,

    I have the mono version of the Echo+. It came with two disks that included among others a sound program that could play tunes based on chords and notes written in an AppleSoft string. It only included two sample songs: Yesterday and Yankee Doodle (with a gunshot at the end)
    A friend has the stereo version and his card came with only one two-sided disk. There the SW was more graphics oriented, similar to the one that was used for the Cricket! and included the same functionalities except for the clock. The spelling test there has some short musical interludes. I think
    the songs are indeed the ones you mentioned.
    I uploaded the disk images some time ago to archive.org. See https://archive.org/details/StreetElectronicsEcho and check ECHO+_1.DSK

    best regards,

    cybernesto



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  • From cybernesto@21:1/5 to Jayson Smith on Sat Jan 29 09:54:34 2022
    Jayson Smith wrote:
    Now the only problem is, with the MAME emulation of the Echo II Plus,
    I'm only getting the main melody of the little musical jingles, and not
    the chords! I wonder why?
    Oh yes, the ECHO+ emulation in MAME is incorrect. They configured it like a Mockingboard with two 6522s instead of one. So the second AY8912 does not
    get addressed at all. I've been meaning to send a pull request with a fix
    for a long time, but the project is a moving target and I get intimidated
    each time I look at it.

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  • From Richter Belmont@21:1/5 to cybernesto on Fri Feb 18 19:42:43 2022
    On Saturday, January 29, 2022 at 4:54:36 AM UTC-5, cybernesto wrote:
    Oh yes, the ECHO+ emulation in MAME is incorrect. They configured it like a Mockingboard with two 6522s instead of one. So the second AY8912 does not
    get addressed at all. I've been meaning to send a pull request with a fix
    for a long time, but the project is a moving target and I get intimidated each time I look at it.

    Hi, can you clue me in as to how the second AY is addressed on the Echo+ so I can fix the issue? I haven't been able to find any decent technical documentation on the card.

    Cheers,
    -RB

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  • From cybernesto@21:1/5 to All on Tue Feb 22 17:14:32 2022
    Hi, can you clue me in as to how the second AY is addressed on the Echo+
    so
    I can fix the issue? I haven't been able to find any decent technical documentation on the card.

    Cheers,
    -RB


    Hi RB, the ECHO+ uses the BC2 line to enable one or the other PSG. BC2_1 is connected to PB3 and BC2_2 to PB4. I actually managed to build this change
    and it worked like a charm. I created a pull request. Let me know what you think or if you need any further info.
    I saw a TODO about finding a hi-res picture of an echo+ card. Was it for the reverse engineering or for documentation purposes? I can try to scan mine if it's still necessary. There were two versions of it. I have the mono version only.

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