Ask HN: Tips for getting the ROM for an old speech synthesizer?

3 points by ctoth ↗ HN
I'm building an emulator for the Braille 'N Speak, a Z180-based notetaker for blind users from the early 90s. One component is the SSI-263 (SC-02) speech synthesizer from Votrax/Silicon Systems.

The SC-01 was decapped and its ROM extracted back in 2007, but the SC-02 has different phoneme data. MAME and AppleWin both just map SC-02 phonemes to SC-01, which doesn't produce accurate speech.

There's a high-res die shot of the SSI-263P on visual6502.org (Greg James / Christian Sattler): http://www.visual6502.org/images/pages/Silicon_Systems_SSI_263P_die_shots.html

I don't know enough about ROM extraction to tell whether that image is sufficient or if delayering would be needed. Looking for anyone who's done this kind of work or can point me in the right direction. I have chips and can cover costs.

2 comments

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excuse my ignorance... wouldn't it be enough to just plug the chip and read its contents?
This is a speech synthesizer chip. The contents of the ROM are not exposed directly for reading like that. You could play all the phonemes one by one and capture them with an ADC, though.