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Echo II speech card-need help
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gatewa...@yahoo.com
Aug 18, 2021, 10:24:00 PM8/18/21
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Hi,
I've had an Echo II speech synthesizer card installed in my Apple II+ for a while and until now it was working fine. It's been a while since I used it, and a couple of days ago I wanted to play around with it (make the computer say "Do you want to play a game?" like in the movie "Wargames", HA!). But when I tried to run the Textalker program on the disk, the computer keeps freezing up on the copyright screen. It doesn't respond to any keys or even the reset button. I have to turn off the computer and restart it.
The disk is not an original that came with the card. I bought the card on eBay a couple of years ago and it came with a disk that looks like someone just copied at some point. But it was working fine until now. I also made a backup copy of the disk. The disk reads fine, but the card itself doesn't seem to be doing anything.
I've opened the computer and cleaned it, and added cards, etc since I last used the Echo II. I was always very careful and I don't THINK I could have damaged it. All the other cards are working fine. Is it possible the ECHO II has to be in a specific slot to work? Or could it be having some kind of conflict with another card or something? I've tried moving it to a different slot but still can't get it to work. The card itself looks in perfect condition, no bad traces or contacts,etc.
Here are the cards I have installed:
Slot 0: Language Card
Slot 1: Super Serial Card
Slot 2: Grappler printer card (installed but not connects to a printer)
Slot 3: "Wizard-80" 80 column card
Slot 4: empty
Slot 5: ECHO II card
Slot 6: disk drive controller card
I feel like I'm missing something. It seems like when I first got the card I had trouble getting it to work at first then too, but I don't remember.
I'd greatly appreciate any help!
-Chris
I've had an Echo II speech synthesizer card installed in my Apple II+ for a while and until now it was working fine. It's been a while since I used it, and a couple of days ago I wanted to play around with it (make the computer say "Do you want to play a game?" like in the movie "Wargames", HA!). But when I tried to run the Textalker program on the disk, the computer keeps freezing up on the copyright screen. It doesn't respond to any keys or even the reset button. I have to turn off the computer and restart it.
The disk is not an original that came with the card. I bought the card on eBay a couple of years ago and it came with a disk that looks like someone just copied at some point. But it was working fine until now. I also made a backup copy of the disk. The disk reads fine, but the card itself doesn't seem to be doing anything.
I've opened the computer and cleaned it, and added cards, etc since I last used the Echo II. I was always very careful and I don't THINK I could have damaged it. All the other cards are working fine. Is it possible the ECHO II has to be in a specific slot to work? Or could it be having some kind of conflict with another card or something? I've tried moving it to a different slot but still can't get it to work. The card itself looks in perfect condition, no bad traces or contacts,etc.
Here are the cards I have installed:
Slot 0: Language Card
Slot 1: Super Serial Card
Slot 2: Grappler printer card (installed but not connects to a printer)
Slot 3: "Wizard-80" 80 column card
Slot 4: empty
Slot 5: ECHO II card
Slot 6: disk drive controller card
I feel like I'm missing something. It seems like when I first got the card I had trouble getting it to work at first then too, but I don't remember.
I'd greatly appreciate any help!
-Chris
Jayson Smith
Oct 5, 2021, 3:24:22 PM10/5/21
to
Hi,
Sorry for the long delay in replying, just saw this!
The Echo doesn't need to be in a specific slot for Textalker to find it.
Somewhere there's a list of the slots Textalker tries, in order. I know
the first slot it looks in is slot 4, so you might try moving the Echo
to slot 4 and see if that fixes it. BTW I'm blind, so I've used an Echo
for my entire life of using Apple II computers.
Jayson
--
Remove all qxz from my Email address to reply privately.
Sorry for the long delay in replying, just saw this!
The Echo doesn't need to be in a specific slot for Textalker to find it.
Somewhere there's a list of the slots Textalker tries, in order. I know
the first slot it looks in is slot 4, so you might try moving the Echo
to slot 4 and see if that fixes it. BTW I'm blind, so I've used an Echo
for my entire life of using Apple II computers.
Jayson
Remove all qxz from my Email address to reply privately.
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