Your micro can answer you back. Nickie Robinson investigates with her Oric

The power of verbal communication is available to your computer with this versatile speech box. It works on an allophone (units of sound) system, rather than a digital system, with a total of 63 allophones available.

The module is a small, unassuming grey box, which is compact and light. The short connecting lead comes in a polythene bag and is bought separately since it is machine-specific.

The documentation is brief and comprises an eight-page manual, which comes with the unit, and a sheet which accompanies the connecting lead.

The manual contains little useful information besides a table of the 63 allophones, used to construct your words, and a list of sample words you can plug in when you find yours aren't too successful. It is, however, emphasised that the manual is meant only as a guide and that the detailed documentation for each machine is provided with its connecting lead. This detailed documentation turned out to be one side of a flimsy piece of A4 paper, which did, however, give clear instructions on how to set up.

There are only two short sample programs demonstrating how to build up words. The sheet accompanying the Oric 1 lead is also meant for the Atmos and the instructions are a little ambiguous as to which calls you should use for each machine.

Maybe the brevity of both guide and manual is an indication of how easy it is to use the Speakeasy unit, and in fact it can be set up and put into use with considerable speed and ease.

I connected the voice box on an Oric 1 via the printer lead and a flying lead which is firmly pushed into pin 33 of the expansion port. You know if you have got the right pin as there is a loud buzzing noise reminiscent of a cow box when you switch on.

Not surprisingly, as the connection is via the printer port, allophones are produced using the LPRINT command with a sequence of CHR$s. LPRINT must be preceded by a CALL to turn off the keyboard scan and another CALL to turn it back on when the output is completed.

Using one of the sample programs this rather egotistical baby's first words were not 'Da-Da' but 'I' and then 'I am'. Putting Descartes before the horse it was then programmed to say 'I am, therefore I think'. By this stage the voice did sound rather jumbled and, if the truth be known, you could only really understand it if you knew what it was supposed to be saying anyway - and even then you needed a bit of imagination.

Obviously it is a time-consuming venture getting sound-perfect words. But it is good fun trying and the sample words prove it is possible.

Quite often you find the sounds you want are not in the list of 63 allophones and you must make do with something similar. Sentences are created by stringing together the required allophones (you'd be surprised at the number of sounds that go into one little word). Having laboriously thought a sentence through, it was disappointing to find that when run it bore little resemblance to any form of English. But with a little patience...

A little more information on the various processes of speech is called for, if only for interest's sake. Voiceless fricatives - the blowing of air through a narrow space without vibrating the vocal chords (as if you didn't know already) are mentioned in the manual. They are FF, TH and SS (as in shirt). You are also told you need pauses before BB, DD, GG and JH. This produces the blocking of air flow and then sudden release involved when using these allophones. There are four different pause lengths from ten to 200 milliseconds, the latter being used between clauses and sentences.

The unit costs £29.95 and the lead a further £4.50, so it is a fairly average price. The voice could have been improved by a variable tone. As it stands it is very robot-like. Also, a little information on the use of memory and how to drive the module from machine code would have helped programmers wishing to produce compatible software.

It is, however, enjoyable trying to put your sentences together and, as the manual says, the machine could be put to useful purposes. It could also be very effective in adventure games.