TECH: GAUNLET no speech

[Stephen Beall]

Fired up my Gaunlet II today and the game has no speech. Running a speech chip test does
nothing.
Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Stephen Beall

[Gamester]

Stephen Beall <sbe...@ix.netcom.com> wrote in article
<3298CA...@ix.netcom.com>...

> Fired up my Gaunlet II today and the game has no speech. Running a speech
chip test does
> nothing.
> Any suggestions?

REPLY: I have athe same problem. You need the speech chip which is a
TMS5512 I think (there I go
again,thinking) Best part about it is it is in a socket.
If any one knows where to get this chip, let us know.

Gamester
>
> Thanks,
>
> Stephen Beall

>

[Glenn Mandelkern]

In article <3298CA...@ix.netcom.com>,

Stephen Beall <sbe...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>Fired up my Gaunlet II today and the game has no speech. Running a speech chip test does
>nothing.
>Any suggestions?
>

Minor nitpick -- the game's name is Gauntlet II!

(No wonder I could not find an article when I logged on to this newsgroup,
the first thing I always do is a case-insensitive search for Gauntlet!)

Anyway, back to the problem at hand.
Gauntlet's speech is a TMS-5220C chip. The C is important. Previous
games used a TMS-5220, so you cannot substitute a speech chip from a
game like Star Wars.

If you have a scope, try to have the speech chip active in some manner.
You may find it easier to put your Gauntlet II in play mode, loading
up your character with a lot of health. Then put the character in a
place that he keeps getting beaten up by demons or grunts, or any other
enemies besides ghosts that stay around beating up a hero. As you probably
know, the characters will keep saying things related to their being hurt,
like "Ouch!", "Oh!", "Yoww!" Finally, use your schematic to observe
activity on the pins of the speech

Alternately, try feeding a signal injector/frequency generator into
part of the mixer circuitry for Gauntlet. Choose a frequency you can
hear (of course). You'll need the schematic. I'm referring to various
LM324's and 4066's (I'm doing this from memory) that make up the audio
circuitry. If you can hear the signal through the amplifier from the
connection with the Audio Amp II board back to the output pin on the
speech chip, then the speech chip is bad. Otherwise, it is somewhere
in the speech amplifying circuitry.

You can always try reseating the TMS-5220C, i.e., take it out of the socket
and put it back in. If you have another Gauntlet available or other
Atari Games unit that has a speech chip, do a swap. A number of the
System II games like Paperboy, 720, APB had this chip for the speech.

Some of the above tips were for diagnosing audio problems in general.
In the case of Gauntlet, I seem to remember this one problem with
garbled speech that would be corrected by adding a small value capacitor.
I do not remember where this cap goes, I think the manufacturer
(Atari Games) sent out some sort of technical tip when this first
was reported as a problem. Perhaps contacting their customer service
would help.

--
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Glenn Mandelkern "Hee, hee, hee, hee!" -- Questor the Elf
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