Picked up a Gorgar that's almost all working, but has never talked the entire time the PO had it (25+ yrs). All of its boards are original EXCEPT the speech board is a Sys9 rev from a Space Shuttle. Interestingly, the sound board looks like it had jumper W1 installed at one time, so it might have been one of the few Gorgars built *without speech* originally!

The speech ROMs are unlabeled, and unfortunately Googling the various OEM codes isn't leading me anywhere. EA 8332A seems to be the only common link.

At any rate please ignore for the moment that the speech board's jumpers are obviously "suspect" because I'm trying to determine just what kind of ROMS are installed: 2532, or 2732? The Sys9 speech board is jumpered by default for 2732, but Gorgar's ROMs would have been 2532.

Obviously there are a few possible issues and paths when it comes to troubleshooting "no speech" but I don't even have a baseline: I have no idea what these ROMs are - what game they're from, what type, what order? Jumpering the card either way, still gives no speech.

ALSO does anyone know where I can download the speech rom images, to compare what's actually on these?

Thanks in advance...

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Ah I see ipdb combined all the roms into one zip; I thought they were individually listed before and thus "game rom" (singular) meant just the lone MPU rom

Well at least maybe I can try and read and ID which is which!

NVM I just found the ROMS listed in the manual:

5T4961, 5T4962, 5T4963 - these are the original Gorgar speech ROMs. Which I understand should be 2532... which means the default Sys9 Speech jumper is *incorrect* so mine as shown reconfigured above, should now be correct. And the ROMS are in the right place.

Unfortunately my ROM reader won't read 2532's (they aren't in its library) so I can't verify that they're good with that route. But now that I know what they are and where (which sockets) they go, I might pop them into my Firepower and see what happens.

As it happens, when I connect the speech card to Gorgar and run the sound test... it plays the sounds but doesn't even act like the speech card is connected. i.e. there's not even a "pause" where speech would be. It just loops sounds over and over. If I disconnect the speech card, you don't get sounds at all (which is the expected behavior). So the sound board is OK.

If I can confirm if these ROMs are good, that would point to sockets and/or maybe the op-amps on the speech card. But my understanding was that there would be a pause where speech "should be" during the test.

EDIT: popped 'em in Firepower and... sound test loops with no pause where speech should be. So that seems to indicate bad ROMs. Variable solved!

One last followup: I had the delayed bright idea to connect my jumpered Sys9 speech card (shown above) to my Firepower, with the Firepower speech roms. And it worked perfectly!

Which pretty much confirms those original Gorgar speech ROMs are indeed dead, and the card - while found incorrectly configured (I wonder if that might have fried the ROMs?) does work and is now set properly for Sys6. So really should just be down to a new set of Roms to help Gorgar find his words again

Yay for "simple" problems!