DAMCO Enterprises
97 Bradley Ct, Fall River MA 02720
(617) 678-2110
DAMCO RAINBOW PLUS INTERFACE
$49.95 plus $2.00 S&H
While they are not the biggest supplier of products for Timex Sinclair market, DAMCO Enterprises has, over the months developed an impressive line hardware for the TS 2068. Most of these hardware products were developed and sold in England and the rest of the Sinclair-ized world for use with the ZX Spectrum and have been well-received there. An example of which is reviewed below, the DK’Tronics Speech Synthesizer. Of course all of these devices must be finagled to get them to work with a 2068.
That’s where DAMCO’s new Ranibow Plus interface in. It is DAMCO’s major non-imported product and their answer to the finegle problem.
The Rainbow Plus is an elegant and simple alternative to previous Spectrum emulators. It is actually two products in one. It does what other emulators do by switching in a Spectrum EPROM to “replace” the Timex ROM in your computer. This allows the 2068 to run any of thousands of programs available for the Spectrum. But the Rainbow Plus goes a step further.
It allows the 2068 to run Spectrum hardware, like the DK’Tronics Speech Synthesizer (see below).
The EPROM operating system of the Rainbow Plus actually an improvement over the Spectrum ROM in that many of the latter’s bugs have been corrected. The EPROM contains an expansion of the character set: 21 new symbols including the superscripts 0-9, some Greek letters and other symbols. The few Spectrum games I have loaded well on my Rainbow-ized 2068 even with my ancient tape player. Damco claims near 100% compatibility with Spectrum software.
A switch on rear of the Rainbow “toggles” your computer between the 2068 and Spectrum modes.
The Spectrum compatible expansion port completes the Spectrum emulator package. Timex users are already used to the concept of piggybacking peripherals, so the Spectrum Plus feels quite natural to me. As Damco’s advertising states, the Rainbow really does give the power of two computers at the flip of a switch.
DK’TRONICS SPEECH SYNTHESIZER
$34.95 plus $2.50 S&H
Except for an 8-1/2 x 11 sheet of instructions DAMCO provides to supplement the instruction booklet, the DK’Tronics Speech Synthesizer arrives just like you would find it if you got it off the shelf of an English computer store. There are three items on the box: a 4-inch speaker, an interface with front and rear connectors, and a cassette tape. The interface is black, small (roughly 4x2x1 inches) and has a volume control knob and a standard earphone jack to plug in the supplied speaker.
The interface contains an amplifier and the synthesizer chip. The chip is basically the same as the ones used in most inexpensive speech synthesizers for home computers. So if your friend has a speech synthesizer for his C-64 or TI-99 you’ve heard it before. It’s the electronic monotone that everybody expects a computer sound like.
The thing that makes the package fun and not just another toy for computer whizzes in your local user group is the text-to-speech software contained on the tape. Thanks to this software anyone can sit down at his computer and in fifteen minutes, make it talk. Using LPRINT statements in BASIC you just type in any word or sentence you want the computer to say to you, and it starts chattering away. Actually 3.5K of tape contains a table of English pronunciation rules. Using these rules the computer makes its best guess at what you are trying to say.
That’s where the fun part comes in. To get the most correct pronunciation possible it is often necessary to purposely mispell words. For example never enter a word like “caught” or it will come out “coggit.” A better way would be “cot” or “caut.” It’s easy once you get the hang of it. (Although I must admit I never could get it to say Carolyn right.)
In conclusion the DK’Tronics Speech Synthesizer is a very nice addition to anyone’s computer, if you have the right “connections.”
TSH