BeebEm - BBC Micro and Master Series Emulator

Speech System

The BBC Micro Speech System is a speech synthesizer based on the TMS5220 Speech Processor and TMS6100 Voice Synthesis Memory ICs (known as Phrase ROMs, or PHROMs).

BeebEm emulates the TMS5220 with support for up to 16 PHROMs. These are configured in Phroms.cfg.

PHROM Description
PHROMA PHROM A (Kenneth Kendall) Acorn Computers
VM61002.bin VM61002 (Industrial) Texas Instruments
VM61003.bin VM61003 (Weather) Texas Instruments
VM61004.bin VM61004 (Military) Texas Instruments
VM61005.bin VM61005 (Avionic) Texas Instruments
VM71003A.bin VM71003A (Female Clock) Texas Instruments

To enable the Speech System, enable the Sound → Speech On/Off menu option, then press Break for the change to take effect.

To test the Speech System, the following BASIC command should say the word "Acorn".

SOUND -1,160,0,0

Various games make use of the Speech System, including Deathstar (Superior Software), Overdrive (Superior Software), AstroBlaster (Retro Software), and Trek (Acorn User), as well as education software such as Hooked On Numbers (Acornsoft), and Happy Letters (Bourne Educational Software).

Refer to the Speech System User Guide for details on how to use the system.