Omnitrend's Universe

[ Table of Contents ]

This Omnitrend's Universe ad appeared on page 92 of issue 13 of ANALOG Computing magazine in November 1983. 

Universe, designed and programmed by Thomas R. Carbone and William G.M. Leslie III with ATARI 3D Graphics routines by William Volk, is an immersive and complex spaceship simulator and science fiction role playing game. The original version was created on an ATARI 800 in valForth. In addition to the ATARI 8-bit release, there were also versions for the Apple II and the IBM PC. It was Omnitrend's first published game.  

While ads for Universe began appearing in the fall of 1983, reviews didn't start to emerge until the summer of 1984. There are two reviews of Universe starting on page 14 of the June 1984 issue of Computer Gaming World magazine. ANALOG Computing magazine had a review beginning on page 33 of Issue 20 in July 1984. Antic magazine had a review beginning on page 81, in Vol. 3, No. 5 in September 1984, though they did announce it as a new product on page 114 in the April 1984 issue. Even BYTE magazine had a review in Vol. 10, No. 5 on page 311 in May, 1985.   

For more details on the ATARI version, Chris Edgar maintains a Universe FAQ which contains a wealth of information on the game including versions, bug reports and possible workarounds.

Foundation
by
Isaac Asimov

What is Universe? Great question. Have you ever read the phenomenal Foundation series of books starting with 1951's Foundation by Russian-American author Isaac Asimov? Did you ever play (and hack) Mike Mayfield's text-based BASIC computer game Star Trek or Dave Kaufman's text-based BASIC computer game Star Trader. Have you ever played the 1977 Traveller table-top role playing game by Game Developer's Workshop? Did you ever wonder what Han Solo was doing BEFORE he met Luke? Have you ever watched the amazing, but short lived (with possible reboot in the works) TV series Firefly? Imagine combining all of these and you begin to get the idea. Universe is a highly detailed spaceship simulator were you get to design your ship and then take it out for adventure and profit (legal or otherwise).

Traveller
Role Playing Game
by Game Developer's Workshop

Universe is a very involving game. It requires the player to calculate hyper jump coordinates for intermediate jumps between known stellar systems for the navigation computer, calculate minimum orbits for planets in order to launch shuttles and analyze nearby contacts to determine if it is time for flight or fight! It is so immersive and complex, with a detailed manual approaching 100 pages, you could spend an inordinate amount of time outside of the game just planning the design and layout of the equipment aboard your spaceship for optimal energy usage and defense or planning your next Axia to Zeath trade run for maximum profit.

Omnitrend's Universe
High Definition Scan Of Near By Contact
"Too Close For Missiles, Switching To Laser Projectors"

At $89.95, Universe was by far the most that I ever paid for a computer game, then or since. I also purchased the optional Complete Product Guide for another $15 or so. Add in a box of 5 1/4 floppy disks for the player disk and player disk backups, a package of loose leaf paper for notes and some loose leaf hole reinforcements for the well-used manual pages, and I was in for well over $100.00 on one game. This may have been the most expensive (and most complex) game released for the ATARI 8-bit line. It was for me anyway.

If you know of a more expensive or more complex game for the ATARI 8-bit, please leave a comment below and let me know.

Calculating Planetary Orbits!

The Complete Product Guide was helpful when playing Universe as a trader. It helped to avoid bringing contraband items to planets where they were banned, saving you violations, fines or worse! To be honest, for the price of this game, these few extra pages should have been included as part of the manual.

Omnitrend's Universe
Successfully Clearing Customs

Universe was one of my top three favorite games/series for the ATARI 8-bit computers. The others are Richard Garriott's Ultima series (Ultima I, Ultima II, Ultima III and Ultima IV) and the Infocom's Enchanter interactive fiction series (Enchanter, Sorcerer and Spellbreaker).

To learn more about Interactive Fiction, check out Jason Scott's amazing documentary Get Lamp, Nick Montfort's Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction and/or Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform 7 by Aaron Reed. These are three great sources on the subject.

Other than Universe, to date, I have not played any of Omnitrend's other computer games such as Universe II, Universe III, Breach, Breach 2, Breach 3, Paladin, Paladin II, Rules of Engagement or Rules of Engagement 2, none of which were released for the ATARI 8-bit.

Other Contemporary Science Fiction Role Playing Games

It was a great time to be an armchair star ship captain, within a few months of each other, Omnitrend's Universe (September 1983) came out for the ATARI 8-bit computers, SunDog: Frozen Legacy (March 1984) by FTL Games came out for the Apple II series of computers and Elite (September 1984) came out for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron computers. At the same time, Trade Wars by Chris Sherrick, a cross between the board game Risk created by Albert Lamorisse, Gregory Yob's Hunt the Wumpus and Dave Kaufman's Star Trader, began to appear on computer bulletin board systems (BBS). Trade Wars and its offspring would go on to be one of the premier BBS door games of BBS era, 1978-ish to 1995-ish. What is a BBS? Check out Jason Scott's BBS The Documentary. 

SunDog: Frozen Legacy

Maury Markowitz had an amazing website that he eventually moved to a Wordpress site were he detailed the history of Mike Mayfield's Star Trek, Omnitrend's Universe and SunDog: Frozen Legacy as well as other space-themed games that shouldn't be forgotten. Additional Elite history and information can be found on co-developer Ian Bell's website and in the The Making of Elite documentary.

Playing Omnitrend's Universe Today

Playing Universe when it was first released on the ATARI 8-bit was very frustrating. The game required five diskettes: Construction, Flight I, Flight II, Starport and the player disk. The original release, version 1.1, only supported one disk drive during game play. This version required so much disk swapping, it would grind your ATARI 810 disk drive into a pile of melted plastic and metal shavings! One minor mistake, like pressing the START key instead of the SELECT key at the wrong time, could cause you a quick death in the dark and lonely void of space and the game would format your player disk just to keep you honest! If you didn't have a good back up with detailed notes on where you were and what you were doing at the time, you would have to start all over again, a very lengthy process.

Also, on native ATARI hardware, the speed of the game tended to creep along in areas were graphics, 3D or otherwise, were drawn or when the game performed highly complex calculations such as orbital mechanics or planet generation.

Playing Universe is even better today. Using an ATARI 8-bit emulator such as Altirra (I've had success with Altirra 2.4, but had issues with newer releases of the emulator when playing this game), you can use one of the versions of Universe that supports multiple drive (versions 1.2 or 1.3). This significantly cuts down on disk swapping. Upgrading to a better in-game computer and mass storage device cuts down on even more disk swapping. You can also use the emulator's warp or turbo mode to speed up the slow parts of the games such a planetary scans, hyperjumps, shuttle launches and the like. Finally, if you have multiple monitors, you can have Google docs open on one screen to keep notes and view trading spreadsheets.

If you are interested in playing Universe, I suggest that you:

• Download and peruse the Universe manual (or here)
• Download and skim the optional Complete Product Guide
• Download Altirra 2.4
• Download the Universe 1.3 disk images
• Along with the Getting Started/Sample Game in the manual, David Milsop created a Quick Start Guide
• Start playing

Keep judicious notes and back up your player disk often. Using an emulator makes it easy to keep a running back up of player diskettes so your can recover from a player mistake or a game bug (read the FAQ).

Start out as a trader and passenger ferryer. Create profitable trade routes and acquire some wealth. Explore the galaxy. Upgrade your ship's equipment. Try your hand at mining. When your ship is fully equipped with the best hardware, you've explored the galaxy from one end to the other and you understand how all the systems on your ship work, try your hand at piracy and ship to ship fighting.

If you really want to go all out, hack your spare ATARI 400 into a Mission Control Desk and Spacecraft! OK, maybe that is a little much.

Want to try a more modern computer-based space simulator?  Check out EVE Online, Elite Dangerous from David Braben co-developer of the original Elite (and co-founder of the Raspberry Pi Foundation) or Star Citizen by Wing Commander developer Chris Roberts. Watch this video to find out more about Star Citizen. Or for the pen and paper crowd, check out the upcoming release of the Starfinder role playing game by Paizo, the publisher of the Pathfinder fantasy role playing game. There is also (possibly) a pen and paper Elite:Dangerous Role Playing Game in the works.

One additional note, Omnitrend is still around today. While they are no longer in the computer game business, they still have a small and dwindling supply of New Old Stock computer games, if you are interested.

Alright, my shuttles are full of Ore IV, exotic trade goods and impatient passengers. Time is money and I got a hyperspace booster to find. 

"Axia Launch Control, this is Seeker Shuttle Two, ready to clear the surface and rendezvous with Spacecraft Seeker in orbit."  

"Seeker Shuttle Two, this is Axia Launch Control, you are clear for takeoff." 

"Roger that Launch Control, commencing boost sequence. Have a nice day. Seeker Shuttle Two out!"

2024-09-30 Update: The IBM PC version of Omnitrend's Universe is available on gog.com for a few dollars if you want to try the game on modern hardware.

Talk Is Cheap

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Talk Is Cheap Ad
ANTIC Magazine
October 1982

This Talk Is Cheap ad for S.A.M. (The Software Automatic Mouth), with the colorful S.A.M. character designed by Gunnar Kullenberg, appeared on page 55 in the Vol. 1, No. 4 issue of Antic magazine in October 1982. There is also another, less colorful S.A.M. ad on page 56 in the Vol. 1, No. 3 issue of Antic magazine in August 1982.

S.A.M., written by Mark Barton and published by Don't Ask Computer Software was a software-only, diskette-based speech synthesizer for the ATARI 8-bit home computers. It was also available for the Apple II, the Commodore 64 and other home computers of the era. As mentioned, S.A.M. was software based and it output speech directly to the TV or monitor speaker. For the ATARI 8-bit version, no additional hardware, speaker, amplifier, power supply, special interfaces or cables were needed.

S.A.M.'s best selling point was its Talk Is Cheap $59.95 (1982 dollars) price tag compared to hardware-based speech synthesizers which could cost in the hundreds of dollars.

The major drawback of the ATARI 8-bit version of S.A.M. was, however, that by default, it turned off the ATARI's ANTIC chip during speech output blanking the screen in the process. It can be configured to leave the ATARI's ANTIC chip on during speech output, but this severely degraded the already marginal speech quality.

There is a review of the S.A.M. speech synthesizer starting on page 50 of Vol. 1, No 4 of Antic magazine in October 1982.

There is another review of S.A.M. by John Scheurer on page 8 of the November/December 1982 issue, Vol. 1, No. 4, of Ad Astra - The Journal of the Atari Microcomputer Net Amateur Radio Operator Users' Group. In the review, Scheurer states: "... I am quite pleased with the package and recommend it to anyone who wishes to experiment with voice-synthesis at minimal cost ..."

Beginning on page 56 of the August 1984 issue of Family Computing magazine, there is an article by Louis R. Wallace titled "Buyer's Guide To Speech Synthesizers - Turn Your Computer Into A Talking Machine" that covers S.A.M. as well. Family Computing was a computer magazine published by Scholastic, Inc. It covered all of the major U.S. home computer platforms of the day. The first issue of the magazine appeared in September 1983. The final issue was published in April 2001.

While the output of S.A.M. (and other ATARI 8-bit speech synthesizers) would never have been mistaken for a human voice and the verbal quality is understandable at best, it was a fun and interesting addition to anyone’s home computer setup as shown in the 1983 movie Wargames (though Wargames is not using speech synthesizer technology but rather actor John Wood's recorded voice as the voice of Joshua/WOPR).

Jerry White's PokerSAM

A few other programs that made use of Don't Ask Computer Software's S.A.M. speech technology are PokerSAM and Chatterbee by prolific ATARI software developer Jerry White. Kevin Savetz, ATARI Archivist Extraordinaire, and co-host of the outstanding ANTIC The ATARI 8-bit Podcast interviewed Jerry White in January 2016.

PokerSAM
A.N.A.L.O.G. Computing
Issue #13. Page 37.

From Moby Games: "Chatterbee is an educational game that teaches spelling. It uses the speech synthesizer Software Automatic Mouth (SAM) to read out word and sentences. The program will read a word, then define it in a sentence before reading it out again. The player's task is simply to type the word and as the letters appear on the screen the synthesizer will repeat them. Spelling a word correctly leads to points being awarded and if wrong the player gets two more chances. The game consists of ten rounds each with either five or ten words. There are 25 levels and the player can start on any of them. If the player does well the level will automatically change to a higher one."

Chatterbee Ad
Antic
January 1984
Page 9

Chatterbee is interesting in that while S.A.M. blanks the screen as usual, the bee character is still visible during the screen blank. Nice trick Jerry! He explains it in this article. There is an ad for Chatterbee in the January 1984 issue of Antic on page 9.

Chatterbee
by
Jerry White and Randy Simon

There is a type-in BASIC program title Spelling.SAM by Ed Rybczyk starting on page 13 of issue #22 of the September 1984 issue of ANALOG COMPUTING magazine that used the S.A.M. speech technology.

The February 1985 issue of Antic magazine has a BASIC/Assembly Language article beginning on page 63 title S.A.M. Handler - Less typing for your ATARI's voice, which shows you how to set up S.A.M. to work using the BASIC OPEN command. Note that the assembly language listing has an error which is addressed in the Help! section of the June 1985 issue of Antic.

Another type-in BASIC program title Speech Editor - Menu-driven S.A.M. talk! by Mark Giambruno appears in the April 1985 issue of Antic magazine beginning on page 45. This program allows you to edit S.A.M. speech using a menus.

In 1983, Educational Software, Inc., also known as Santa Cruz Educational Software, released Tricky Tutorial #12, The SAM Tutorial.

I still have my original ATARI S.A.M. floppy diskette, which I purchased back in the day at The Program Store, a platform agnostic software retailer at the Monmouth Mall in nearby Eatontown, NJ, but unfortunately, the instruction manual and the box are nowhere to be found.

S.A.M. Atari Diskette

What to try experimenting with S.A.M.? Some interesting projects with S.A.M. could be to add a computerized voice to Mike Mayfield's text-based BASIC computer game Star Trek or Dave Kaufman's text-based BASIC computer game Star Trader. Star Trader appeared in the book What To Do After You Hit Return. It was one of the original space-trader themed computer games. This classic book really should be archived online somewhere. [2017-03-01 And now it is, here.]

If you want to hear S.A.M. sing, check out My Name is Sam by Timotheous Groove!

For more information on the various hardware-based speech synthesizers available for the ATARI 8-bit home computers, see section 6.7 (and 6.8) of the ATARI 8-bit FAQ maintained by Michael Current. S.A.M. is not included in the ATARI 8-bit FAQ as it is a software-based, not hardware-based speech synthesizer.

I also recently wrote a blog post on the hardware-based Voice Box speech synthesizer by The Alien Group.

The June 1982 issue of ANTIC, Vol. 1, No. 2, has a review of two additional hardware-based voice synthesizers for the ATARI 8-bit home computers beginning on page 18.

If your planning on attending the Vintage Computer Festival East XII in Wall, New Jersey during the weekend of March 31st though April 2nd, 2017, come and see my ATARI Says Its First Words exhibit where I'll be displaying a sample of the various speech synthesizers that were available for the ATARI 8-bit home computers.

2020-06-01 Update

On June 1st, 2020, Kay Savetz posted an interview (ANTIC Interview 385 - Software Automatic Mouth: Mark Barton) he conducted with S.A.M. creator Mark Barton. Give it a listen!

2020-12-23 Update

S.A.M. functionality has been incorporated into the Fujinet project.

Merry Christmas From Your Atari Computer

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Merry Christmas From Your Atari Computer
The Atari Connection
Winter 1981-1982

This Merry Christmas From Your Atari Computer ad is actually the cover of the Winter 1981-1982 issue of The Atari Connection magazine, volume 1 number 4, published in September 1981. The ad shows a family enjoying their Atari 400 (also known early on as The Basic Computer), Atari's The Entertainer starter kit and the TeleLink I cartridge, with some trimmings of the Christmas season in the background. This ad also states that there is a free Atari Pilot Calendar gift inside the magazine.

TeleLink I is a program cartridge for that Atari family of 8-bit computers that enables the user to communicate with another computer over standard telephone lines at a blazing speed of up to 300 baud when used with the Atari 830 Acoustic Modem.

The Entertainer
PAC-MAN & STAR RAIDERS Variant

Atari's The Entertainer starter kit came in various configurations over the life of the product. It came with a pair of iconic Atari CX40 joysticks, the first widely used cross-platform game controller, as well as two game cartridges.

My The Entertainer box has a big round yellow sticker firmly placed over the original content text that states "... New Contents: THE ENTERTAINER KIT now includes PAC-MAN, STAR RAIDERS and a pair of joysticks...". I can't make out the original content text on my box without destroying the sticker and probably the underlying box, but other sources show it to be Star Raiders and Missile Command. It also included a manual, advertising and other ephemera.

Atari Starter Kits
Circa 1982

I can image how the children in this Merry Christmas From Your Atari Computer ad might have felt on Christmas morning. I envisage that the girl could be a young Marissa Mayer, touching a computer for the first time, dreaming about the possibilities and the boy could be a young Marc Benioff, already thinking about designing the first of his games released for the Atari family of 8-bit home computers. While I never received an Atari home computer as a Christmas gift, I did receive some amazing peripherals as presents over the years, such as my first Hayes 300 Smart-modem and an SWP ATR8000 expansion interface.

Ah, Christmas ...

As a punk kid growing up in New Jersey, I can remember that the Christmas season didn't wait until December to start. Retailer Crazy Eddie had their Christmas in July and their Christmas in August radio and television commercials that would start blitzing the airwaves around mid summer. The Atari 400 even showed up in one of their Computer Crazy commercials. For those of you outside of the greater NYC area, Crazy Eddie was a New York based electronics retail chain with more than three dozen stores on the east coast at its height. It was best known for its prices and crazy television commercials. Crazy Eddie's prices were insane, and as it turns out, Crazy Eddie (Eddie Antar the businessman, not actor Jerry Carroll from the commercials) was a con man, and later, a convicted felon and now, dead.

Educational System Master Cartridge Running on an Atari 800
JC Penney 1980 Christmas Catalog
Front Cover and Page 354 

Around the middle of September, soon after the new school year started, the hot and humid summer weather at the Jersey Shore would quickly turn to the cooler days of autumn. It was around this time that the latest incarnations of the Sears Wish Book and the JC Penney Christmas Catalog would find their way into our home. Once I got my hands on one of these behemoths (this could take a while being the youngest in a family of seven), I'd start my personal Christmas Wish List, in pencil of course, as the list changed almost by the minute, and those first generation Papermate Erasermate pens just made a big mess!

Sears 1982 Wish Book
Front Cover, Pages 478, 479

From the Fisher-Price Little People Castle, to the Marx Navarone Playset, to Mattel Electronics series (Auto Race, Baseball and Football) of handheld games, to the Atari VCS, to the Milton Bradley Big Trak, to the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set (1981 revision), to the Atari home computers, I most likely first laid eyes on each of these cherished childhood treasures in one of these amazing catalogs.

Marx Navarone Playset

Sadly, neither Sears, nor JC Penney, publishes their ginormously-spectacular Christmas catalogs any longer. Like the Colossus of Rhodes, these Monuments of Capitalism are no more. Another fondly-remembered childhood tradition lost to the annals of history. Cracking open and browsing through these catalogs for the first time each year was almost as exciting as seeing what was under the Christmas tree on Christmas morning ... almost. 

Brunswick Aspen Home Pinball Machine Ad
Circa 1979

Our typical 1970's wood-paneling clad, ranch-style basement was a fun place to be during the deep-freeze of the cold north-east winter months, particularly around Christmas. While I never received everything on my Christmas Wish List, with five children in our house, there were plenty of new toys and games and stuff to tinker with. Our basement had an amazing Lionel train set-up ... a little nostalgia carried over from my father's own childhood growning up in Staten Island ... but fun all the same, a pool table and an Atari VCS with a short-stack of cartridges (Combat, Indy 500 and Breakout were early ones). Later, a Brunswick Aspen pinball machine was added to the mix when my oldest brother gifted it to the family for Christmas in 1979. 

Brunswick Aspen Pinball
Heathkit Christmas Catalog 1979

The Aspen pinball machine was ordered in kit form from Heathkit's 1979 Christmas Catalog. My dad and my oldest brother assembled it secretly in the garage over the few weeks before Christmas and moved it to the basement for Christmas morning.

Heathkit had some amazing products and kits, including computers and robots, and for my dad and oldest brother: ham radios. From time to time, some of the old Heathkit products turn up at the Vintage Computer Festival East, such as the HERO robot. Heathkit, the current incarnation of the company, has a website, but there doesn't seem to be anything there and they currently do not publish their once-famous catalogs.

It wouldn't be until late winter, in March of 1982, when I would purchase my Atari 400. For the next three or four years, I would usually ask for and receive some sort of Atari home computer related item for Christmas. Then, unfortunately, I moved on to an Apple IIc, then to the PC. It would be many, many years before I received another Atari related item under the tree. 

This year, I found some cool new Christmas ornaments for our Christmas tree, though the CX40 ornament is a little oddly oriented.

New Christmas Ornaments
Christmas 2016  

Thanks to Kevin Savetz for supplying photos of the original Atari 400 and Atari 800 posters and Giann Velasquez M for brainstorming the Atari 8-bit calendar with me. 

Best wishes during this holiday season to you and your family.

The Atari 800 Home Computer Poster

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ATARI 800 Home Computer Poster

This Atari 800 Home Computer Poster is a marketing poster copyrighted and presumably printed by Atari in 1981 according to the information at the bottom of the page. The poster's part number is C060066. There also exists a very similar Atari 400 Home Computer Poster with part number C060065.    

Atari 400/800 Poster Part Numbers

The software packages shown on the Atari 800 Home Computer Poster include the following: Energy Czar, Atari Word Processor, Conversational Spanish, Conversational French, Personal Financial Management System, Computer Chess, Video Easel, Music Composer, Missile Command, Telelink I, Space Invaders, Graph It, State & Capitals, Caverns of Mars, Biorhythm, An Invitation to Programming 1, Touch Typing, The Dow Jones Investment Evaluator, Basketball, SCRAM, Mailing List, Bond Analysis, Star Raiders, Calculator, European Countries & Capitals, Asteroids, 3-D Tic-Tac-Toe, Pilot "With Turtle Graphics", Blackjack, Statistics I, Kingdom, Stock Analysis, Conversational Italian, Stock Charting, An Invitation to Programming 2, Mortgage & Loan Analysis, Super Breakout, An Invitation to Programming 3, Hangman and Conversational German.

Some of the software listed is ROM cartridge-based, some is audio cassette tape-based and some is 5 1/4 inch diskette-based, showing some of the various media types available to load software in to the versatile the Atari 400 and Atari 800 home computers.    

As you can see from the list, the software is heavy on small business/home finance and education packages. There are also a few BASIC cassette-based games that seem to have been directly ported from David Ahl's BASIC books including Blackjack, Hammurabi and Hangman. Maybe Atari's early home computer division needed software and had a David Ahl Book Porting Party, quickly converting Microsoft BASIC games to Atari BASIC, updating and enhancing, using the some of the graphics features of the Atari computer as they went.

Stock Charting Splash Screens
Atari / Control Data Corporation Co-branding

As noted at the bottom of the poster, many of Atari's early small business/home finance packages were created by Control Data Corporation and manufactured under license by Atari and co-branded as Atari and Control Data CYBERWARE Personal Computer Product software.

Controller Ports On The Atari 400/800
And Games That Can Use Them All

The list includes a few of the rare games that allowed four players to play at the same time: Asteroids and Basketball. And for even more frantic game play, an even rarer (only?) game that allows up to eight players to play at the same time: Super Breakout. Both the Atari 400 and Atari 800 home computers had four controller ports, allowing four joysticks or eight paddle controllers to be connected concurrently. The later 8-bit Atari computer models, sadly, only had two lonely controller ports.

In an effort to learn how to create large format posters, I spent some time attempting to re-create the look of this Atari 800 Home Computer Poster. I created a full 24 inch by 36 inch poster in Microsoft Publisher, trying to give it an updated, more modern look. Here is how my version of the poster turned out:  

A Modern Remake of the Atari 800 Poster

My version of the Atari 800 Home Computer Poster can be found here.

Atari Says Its First Word

[ Table of Contents ]

Atari Says Its First Word Ad
Antic Magazine
Volume 1, Number 3
August 1982
Page 37

This Atari Says Its First Word ad appeared in Volume 1, Number 3 issue of Antic magazine in August 1982. The ad tries to persuade readers to purchase the Voice Box speech synthesizer by The Alien Group for the Atari 400/800 home computers. The inverse of this ad appears on the pages of SoftSide magazine in Vol. 5, No. 10.

The Voice Box was a simple to use speech synthesizer for the Atari home computers. It plugged directly into the Atari 400/800 computer's serial port and output speech directly to the TV or Monitor speaker. No additional speaker, amplifier, power supply, special interfaces, or cables were needed.

Voice Box
Speech Synthesizer
The Alien Group

There is a review of the Voice Box starting on page 50 of Volume 1, Number 4 of Antic magazine in October 1982. On the facing page of the Voice Box review, The Alien Group announced a contest for the best game program submitted for use with their Voice Box product.

Voice Box Contest

Antic Magazine

Volume 1, Number 4

October 1982

Page 51

The contest mentions:

"Win $5,000 price -- plus royalties -- for the best Atari 400/800 game using the VOICE BOX.  Deadline: May 30, 1983.  Write for contest details."

What did the the contest details state? Did anyone actually win this contest?  The following year when Voice Box II came out, it included a few sample programs. Maybe one of those was the winner.

There is also a quick blurb about the Voice Box written by Ed Picciuti on the front page of the October 1982 issue of the Jersey Atari Computer Group (JACG) Newsletter stating that "At the September meeting we listened to the voice synthesizers, but human they are not. The Voice Box from Alien Group worked the best in my opinion..."  In the following issue of the JACG Newsletter, in November 1982, there is a more detailed review of the Voice Box by columnist and JACG member Arthur Leyenberger which states in part "...Although the synthesized speech produced by the Voice Box will never be mistaken for a human voice, its quality and understandably are better than most synthesizers that currently exist..."

Beginning on page 56 of the August 1984 issue of Family Computing magazine, there is an article by Louis R. Wallace titled "Buyer's Guide To Speech Synthesizers - Turn Your Computer Into A Talking Machine" that covers the Alien Group Voice Box as well. Family Computing was a computer magazine published by Scholastic, Inc. It covered all of the major U.S. home computer platforms of the day. The first issue of the magazine appeared in September 1983. The final issue was published in April 2001.

In Germany, Atari distributed the Voice Box using its own packaging.

German Alien Group Voice Box
Distributed by Atari

The Technology

The Alien Group Voice Box uses the Votrax SC-01A Speech Synthesizer chip to produce speech. There is an ad for the Votrax SC-01A chip on page 32 of the November/December 1982 issue of Robotics Age magazine. You can find more information on the SC-01A Speech Synthesizer chip and Related ICs on this page.

For more detailed information on the Votrax SC-01A Speech Synthesizer chip and speech synthesizers in general including projects you can build, find a copy of the book Chip Talk: Projects In Speech Synthesis written by Dave Prochnow and published by TAB Books Inc.

Chip Talk: Projects In Speech Synthesis
Written By Dave Prochnow
Published by TAB Books, Inc.
1987

Years Later

For quite sometime, I was searching for The Alien Group Voice Box to add to my collection. They don't show up very often. In April 2014, I spotted a Voice Box that was listed for sale on eBay. The eBay listing described the item...

"Appears clean and intact. Stored in its original box with original papers and software. ... The Alien Group debuted the VOICEBOX Speech Synthesizer for the ATARI computers in 1982. The device plugs into the serial port of the ATARI 400/800 and produces sound through the from the TV/monitor. The Voicebox also features a knob which allows the user to control the speed and pitch of the generated speech. This vintage piece comes with original packaging, papers, and software and appears extremely well-preserved for a 32-year-old piece of classic computer technology."

Along with a photographs of The Alien Group Voice Box hardware in the eBay listing, there were also a few photographs of the accompanying documentation. What really caught my eye was the content and the dates on the documentation. One photograph, in particular, showed some handwritten instructions on a sheet of graph paper with the date of July 16, 1982 clearly visible. After some quick research, the earliest ad that I could find was the August 1982 Atari Says Its First Word ad in Antic magazine, and the earliest review that I could find was the aforementioned review by Benton J. Elkins staring on page 50 in the Volume 1, Number 4 issues of Antic magazine in October 1982.

Based on my research and the evidence at hand, I believed this to be a prototype or early production model that was sent from The Alien Groups offices in Manhattan, NY to a manufacturing/duplication facility in southern California to possibly produce cassette tape media of the Voice Box software.

The eBay auction ended on April 14th, 2014. As the winning bidder, I purchased this Voice Box from a seller located in Ojai, California. The selling price was $220 plus $10 shipping. Note that the original selling price of this item in 1982 dollars was $169.00. The listing had quite a bit of interest as the item had 30 bids. 

eBay Listing

I received the package a week or so later. The Voice Box came in its original packing box. In addition to the hardware, there were four pages of handwritten notes. There were also ten pages of typed documentation. I carefully removed the staples and scanned the sheets of yellowing paper to make them available to others in this thread on the AtariAge website and also archived them on archive.org. I then placed the individual sheets in sheet protectors. Also included in the package were four 5 1/4 floppy diskettes with The Alien Group Voice Box software.

Some Of The Handwritten Notes
(Contrast Adjusted And Cropped)

   

A few months later, I contacted the seller to see if he had any further knowledge on the history of this particular item. My email stated, in part:

2014-08-03 08:40 AM PDT 

I purchased the Alien Group Voice Box from you back in April, 2014.  As you may know, this appears to be an early production unit that was sent from the developer (Alien Group) in New York to a cassette software duplication company (Custom Dup?) in July, 1982, based upon the documentation and correspondence included with the hardware.
In the process of archiving this information and filling in any more of the story for the Atari community, can you tell me how you came in possession of the hardware and documentation?  Did you work for the software duplication company? Any bit of information that could help fill in the blank from 1982 to today would be great. Thanks for saving this little piece of Atari history.

The response from the seller, in part:

2014-08-03 09:13 AM PDT 

We mostly concentrate on books, so we visit estates and sales to get them in reasonable volume. This came in with a box that I put together from a sale on Calle Mayor here in the Hollywood Riviera section of Torrance (Redondo Beach mailing) CA. I thought the package looked interesting and inquired about it from the gentleman selling the books, but he could tell me absolutely nothing. Sorry that I can provide you no history other than location of acquisition. I remember the progress of that auction--still a little bit in awe that it commanded such interest!

Oh well, it was worth a try!

The Alien Group

The Voice Box was designed and manufactured in Manhattan, New York by a company calling itself The Alien Group. According to the handwritten notes that I received with the Voice Box, The Alien Group listed its address as the 5th Floor of 27 W. 23rd Street in Manhattan. The contact name listed was Mike Matthews.

The Alien Group Letter Head
And
Mike Matthews' Signature

The Alien Group and the Voice Box almost didn't happen. In January 1982, Mike Matthews and his company Electro-Harmonix was temporarily forced out of business due to union thuggery in Manhattan. An article, titled "Sign Up --- Or Else!" written by Randy Fitzgerald, about Mike's company and the union's tactics against it was published on page 111 in the August 1982 issue of Reader's Digest magazine.

The same "face" logo used in the Voice Box ad above is still visible all over the Electro-Harmonics website and products today.  

In January, 2006, Mike Matthews, as President and Founder of Electro-Harmonics, sat down for an interesting recorded interview with the National Association of Music Merchants.

Mike Matthews
Electro-Harmonix/The Alien Group
2006

Thanks to Atari Alumni Tim Boehlert for helping to fill in the blanks about Mike Matthews and The Alien Group!

Testing The Voice Box

When I finally got around to testing the Voice Box, I first tried it with an Atari 800XL, an Atari 1050 disk drive and a Commodore 1702 monitor. Following the instructions in the documentation, I was able to load the BASIC program from disk, but once the menu displayed, the computer would lock up.

I then tried using two different versions of Atari Translator, a piece of software that makes an Atari 800XL work more like an Atari 400/800, but it still didn't work.

Finally, to get it working, I switched out the Atari 800XL for an Atari 800 and that seem to do the trick.

If you're interested in experimenting with a product similar in functionality to the Voice Box, try the SpeakJet chip. The SpeakJet chip can be put on a breadboard and hooked up to an Ardunio, Raspberry PI or even, dare I say, an Atari Home Computer.

2018-04-16 Update: Kevin Savetz, one of the hosts of the ANTIC Atari 8-bit Podcast, interviewed Mike Matthews on November 13, 2017. The interview was released as ANTIC Interview 332 - Mike Matthews, Alien Group Voice Box on 2018-04-16.