Hi,

When we first got our Apple IIe in 1987 we had a disk which probably
came with our Echo II Plus card, though I'm not sure. It booted into
ProDOS, and had a few programs on it, one of which used the Mockingboard
support on the Echo to play four very short songs (Camptown Races,
Sidewalks of New York, Oh! Susanna, and Way Down Upon the Swanee River).
It also had a spelling game that used pre-recorded LPC speech samples
and played some of those little jingles when you spelled a word correctly.

At that time I was all of nine years old, and that disk didn't talk when
it booted, so I naturally assumed ProDOS just wasn't designed to be used
with the Echo speech. By the time I knew better, I'd somehow erased that
disk, and have never been able to find it since. As far as I know, this
disk is *not* in the collection of Echo software that was put together
in around 2000. I think there's a demo of this disk on Soundcloud
somewhere. Does anyone even know what I'm talking about, or perhaps have
a copy?

Thanks,

Jayson

Jayson Smith wrote:
> Hi,
>
> When we first got our Apple IIe in 1987 we had a disk which probably
> came with our Echo II Plus card, though I'm not sure. It booted into
> ProDOS, and had a few programs on it, one of which used the Mockingboard
> support on the Echo to play four very short songs (Camptown Races,
> Sidewalks of New York, Oh! Susanna, and Way Down Upon the Swanee River).
> It also had a spelling game that used pre-recorded LPC speech samples
> and played some of those little jingles when you spelled a word correctly.
>

Hi Jayson,

I have the mono version of the Echo+. It came with two disks that included
among others a sound program that could play tunes based on chords and notes
written in an AppleSoft string. It only included two sample songs: Yesterday
and Yankee Doodle (with a gunshot at the end)
A friend has the stereo version and his card came with only one two-sided
disk. There the SW was more graphics oriented, similar to the one that was
used for the Cricket! and included the same functionalities except for the
clock. The spelling test there has some short musical interludes. I think
the songs are indeed the ones you mentioned.
I uploaded the disk images some time ago to archive.org. See
https://archive.org/details/StreetElectronicsEcho and check ECHO+_1.DSK

best regards,

cybernesto

Hi,

That seems to be exactly the disk I'm looking for! Thanks!

Now the only problem is, with the MAME emulation of the Echo II Plus,
I'm only getting the main melody of the little musical jingles, and not
the chords! I wonder why?

Jayson

On 1/28/2022 10:56 AM, cybernesto wrote:
> Jayson Smith wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> When we first got our Apple IIe in 1987 we had a disk which probably
>> came with our Echo II Plus card, though I'm not sure. It booted into
>> ProDOS, and had a few programs on it, one of which used the Mockingboard
>> support on the Echo to play four very short songs (Camptown Races,
>> Sidewalks of New York, Oh! Susanna, and Way Down Upon the Swanee River).
>> It also had a spelling game that used pre-recorded LPC speech samples
>> and played some of those little jingles when you spelled a word correctly.
>>
>
> Hi Jayson,
>
> I have the mono version of the Echo+. It came with two disks that included
> among others a sound program that could play tunes based on chords and notes
> written in an AppleSoft string. It only included two sample songs: Yesterday
> and Yankee Doodle (with a gunshot at the end)
> A friend has the stereo version and his card came with only one two-sided
> disk. There the SW was more graphics oriented, similar to the one that was
> used for the Cricket! and included the same functionalities except for the
> clock. The spelling test there has some short musical interludes. I think
> the songs are indeed the ones you mentioned.
> I uploaded the disk images some time ago to archive.org. See
> https://archive.org/details/StreetElectronicsEcho and check ECHO+_1.DSK
>
> best regards,
>
> cybernesto
>

--
Remove all qxz from my Email address to reply privately.

Jayson Smith wrote:
> Now the only problem is, with the MAME emulation of the Echo II Plus,
> I'm only getting the main melody of the little musical jingles, and not
> the chords! I wonder why?
Oh yes, the ECHO+ emulation in MAME is incorrect. They configured it like a
Mockingboard with two 6522s instead of one. So the second AY8912 does not
get addressed at all. I've been meaning to send a pull request with a fix
for a long time, but the project is a moving target and I get intimidated
each time I look at it.

On Saturday, January 29, 2022 at 4:54:36 AM UTC-5, cybernesto wrote:
> Oh yes, the ECHO+ emulation in MAME is incorrect. They configured it like a
> Mockingboard with two 6522s instead of one. So the second AY8912 does not
> get addressed at all. I've been meaning to send a pull request with a fix
> for a long time, but the project is a moving target and I get intimidated
> each time I look at it.

Hi, can you clue me in as to how the second AY is addressed on the Echo+ so I can fix the issue? I haven't been able to find any decent technical documentation on the card.

Cheers,
-RB

> Hi, can you clue me in as to how the second AY is addressed on the Echo+
> so
> I can fix the issue? I haven't been able to find any decent technical
> documentation on the card.
>
> Cheers,
> -RB
>

Hi RB, the ECHO+ uses the BC2 line to enable one or the other PSG. BC2_1 is
connected to PB3 and BC2_2 to PB4. I actually managed to build this change
and it worked like a charm. I created a pull request. Let me know what you
think or if you need any further info.
I saw a TODO about finding a hi-res picture of an echo+ card. Was it for the
reverse engineering or for documentation purposes? I can try to scan mine if
it's still necessary. There were two versions of it. I have the mono version
only.