AmigaNarrator

Commodore Amiga narrator.device emulator

Background

The narrator.device is a speech synthesizer for the Commodore Amiga written by Mark Barton and Joseph Katz. From what I understand, Mark Barton was responsible for the speech synthesis, while Joseph Katz handled the systems integration. This was more or less the same speech synthesizer as the original MacinTalk on the very first Macs. It was the successor to SAM (Software Automatic Mouth) for the Apple II, Commodore 64, and Atari 8-bit computers.

For details, listen to an interview with Mark Barton on ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Podcast.

https://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-385-software-automatic-mouth-mark-barton

Overview

Similar to vamos (Virtual AmigaOS runtime), this is a tool that will run the code from the narrator.device and translator.library. The actual code is emulated using the Musashi 680x0 CPU emulator, while just enough of the OS is simulated by trapping the exec.library calls.

Example

Cover of Robots (The Humans Are Dead) - Flight of the Conchords

Performed by Amiga narrator.device (and YM2413)

Listen on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kT68O6jtOVY

Or audio only:

https://fmamp.com/AmigaNarrator/robots.m4a

How to compile and run

$ sh build.sh

This results in two binaries, 'narrator' and 'translator'.

First, use 'translator' to convert English text to phonetic text.

Then, use 'narrator' to convert phonetic text to PCM samples.

The PCM samples are S8 (mono signed 8-bit) at 22200 Hz.

Don't forget to end your sentences with a period.

Run 'translator' and 'narrator' with no arguments for a list of options, such as pitch, rate, and so forth.

The 'say.sh' script is an example for Linux, and will run 'translator', 'narrator', and then play the PCM samples with ALSA using 'aplay'.

$ sh say.sh "Hello world."

To run separately:

$ ./translator "Hello world." >hello_world.txt

The file 'hello_world.txt' should contain:

/HEH4LOW WER4LD.

$ cat hello_world.txt | ./narrator - >hello_world.s8

It will run faster if stderr is redirected to /dev/null:

$ cat hello_world.txt | ./narrator - 2>/dev/null >hello_world.s8

On Linux, 'aplay' can be used to play the file:

$ aplay -f S8 -r 22200 hello_world.s8

For OS X, a program such as Audacity or SoX will need to be used to convert the raw samples to a playable format like WAV. This has been tested on OS X 10.12 Sierra and seems to work fine.

narrator.device

This file will be loaded from the current directory when 'narrator' is run. An alternative file can be specified using the '-d' flag on 'narrator', but the flag does not work on 'say.sh'.

It has been tested with the narrator.device from:

• Workbench 1.0
• Workbench 1.1
• Workbench 1.2
• Workbench 1.3 (same as 1.2)
• Workbench 2.04
• Workbench 2.05 (same as 2.04)

This file is not supplied.

translator.library

This file will be loaded from the current directory when 'translator' is run. An alternative file can be specified using the '-l' flag on 'translator', but the flag does not work on 'say.sh'.

It has been tested with the translator.library from:

• Workbench 1.0
• Workbench 1.1
• Workbench 1.2
• Workbench 1.3 (same as 1.2)
• Workbench 1.3.3
• Workbench 2.04
• Workbench 2.05 (same as 2.04)

This file is not supplied.

Resources

Markus Wandel's Amiga Exec disassembly

https://wandel.ca/homepage/execdis/index.html

Amiga Developer Docs

http://amigadev.elowar.com/

Hunk File Format

http://amiga-dev.wikidot.com/file-format:hunk

vamos and hunktool from amitools by Christian Vogelgsang

https://github.com/cnvogelg/amitools

Musashi 680x0 CPU emulator by Karl Stenerud

https://github.com/kstenerud/Musashi

Legal

Copyright (c) 2023 Arthur Choung. All rights reserved.

Email: arthur -at- fmamp.com

Released under the GNU General Public License, version 3.

For details on the license, refer to the LICENSE file.