DecTalk synths

[Adam Myrow]

The Dectalk External is a rather old synthesizer.  It is a huge box with a
rocker switch on the front.  When it is powered up, a fan comes on, then
it makes touch-tone noises.  Finally, it says something like "Dectalk
version 2.8 is running."  I don't remember the version number, but it's
something like that.  I haven't ran across one of those in years.  The
speech sounds somewhat different from modern Dectalk synthesizers.  It's
also extremely sluggish, taking several seconds to respond to a flush
command.  The bottom line is that very few people probably have that old
beast and yours is likely a Dectalk Express.  There were a few other
external Dectalk models, but I don't think they ever saw much circulation.