The GRiD Compass is a legendary transportable laptop — a style of an early-80s future with bubble reminiscence, powerful sufficient for NASA to take them into area, and one of many machines which outlined the beginnings of the shape issue we all know at present as a laptop computer. They’re not straightforward to return by, however [Scott M. Baker] bought his fingers on one. In addition to nursing it again to well being, he’s made an uncommon peripheral, a GPIB speech synthesizer.
The GRiD arrived in a single piece regardless of sketchy packaging, and after slightly confusion over its line voltage it ran in addition to the day it was made. It was designed to make use of GPIB as its interface for big peripherals akin to printers or disk drives, so it was that interface picked for the speech synthesizer. It emulates a GPIB printer, and bytes are despatched to the synthesizer chip by printing to LPT1, making driving it a straightforward course of.
The synth itself is a intelligent design that enables using all the assorted speech chips of the day. It achieves this utilizing a GPIB service board holding the interfacing, and a set of plug-in modules, one for every completely different chip. It’s definitely an uncommon peripheral.
You’ll be able to see extra particulars within the video under the break, in the meantime in case you can’t get the true factor there’s a cyberdeck tribute you can also make.
Restoring a GRiD Compass and Constructing the World’s First GPIB Speech Synthesizer
