I would venture to guess SC-01 emulator source code exists. I thought I recalled PinMame's version sounding pretty good.

If my collection included Black Hole or similar, I'd definitely be experimenting with some dev boards on it.

I own a volcano and fear the day the sco1 fails. I thought pascal had come out with a board for these?

Hmmm... This is an interesting challenge. I think the first step would be to get a logic analyzer plugged in between the sound board and the chip to see what kind of input the board is sending, and what the levels of the output are. The best solution would be to create a library that works with arduino that emulates the SC-01.

pascal sells it but i think you will find its a swemmer board (so you'll be able to get it locally in usa)

Ok, I took a look at these, and they appear to be very different. If I had a choice and was the project manager, I would adapt the MAME code. It uses the original vortax binary code, and emulates the rest of the chip mathematically. The issue is it is setup to work within the MAME environment. The output goes into MAME sound data stream. At first glance, this appears to be above my meger level of programming.

The Vortax speak code appears to be an attempt to emulate the chip using .wav files. The author even admits it has issues.

Has anyone figured out a work around for the Vortrax sc-01? I’m in need of two of these chips and need to figure something out.

I am in the same boat, as I need a SC-01 or SC-01A for a Volcano I am restoring from the dead .

I bought a Rocky a few months back and the speech wasn't working. I tried checking every possible thing that could lead to that and I ended up thinking it was the SC-01, also by others on the forum suggesting it was the main cause of missing speech.

I developed a board that emulates the chip and it's working incredibly great.
It plugs right where the SC-01 was.
I have materials to build a few more boards and I wanted to know if any of you is interested in getting one of them.
I'll make more if more people want them.
I'll also try to upload a video of the sound that it produces in the following days so that you can also hear it.

Note that, this revision of the board doesn't support changing the voice clock/pitch. This is not used by Rocky but some of the other models use this feature (it think Q'Bert Quest is among them).
I'll try to burn some ROMs for them and make a new revision of the board that also supports them.

SC-01.jpg

How are you handling the actual chip emulation/voice synthesis?

It's based on the PinMAME/MAME code that was linked in this thread before.

I'd be interested in one. I assume you've got the pinmame code just for the SC01 running on whatever that processor/microcontroller in the quad pack is, so it's not going to be game specific?

I would be interested in one or two
How much will they cost?

Possibly interested as well

I would want one as a back up for my Black Hole pin. Mine currently works, but a back up would be nice.

Interested in one also. I have a couple spare chips but really would rather move to something else to save the chips i have

Awesome! I'm in for one or two.

The board is powered by a STM32 microcontroller that emulates the chip by implementing its functionality. There are no recorded sounds.
It's not game specific but at the moment I haven't developed the circuit that handles voice pitch change. It's set to the default value suggested by the SC-01 datasheet.

I'm selling the first few units at the reduced price of 50€ (+ shipping) so that some of you early adopters get the chance to test the functionality on other models (I only have Rocky with this board).

I'm trying ROMs from other pinballs to see if the sounds feel right, however without the correct machine it's hard to tell. Newer system 80A that have sound tests similar to Rocky's are easier for me to test because they play all the sounds in sequence.

Q'Bert Quest tests fine although at the wrong pitch. I tried Mars God of War and Black Hole ROMs but the test only plays a tone.
Not sure what the test is supposed to do and if those ROMs are good or bad. Maybe some of you know or have a machine that works and can share the info.
Otherwise I guess I'll have to make a test fixture to trigger all the effects manually.

If anyone wants to try it on their machine, PM me saying which machine/s you have, your address and if it doesn't work I'll refund you the 50€.

Youtube demo video:

Nice work!
Are you using the Votrax core from MAME or PinMAME? MAME's will be the latest and had some fixes applied in the past 6 months.

To play some speech in Black Holes sound test mode, see the flowchart from the manual here:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/black-hole-no-sound/page/2#post-5190666

From memory, Black Hole uses the voice pitch change when you tilt the game and it repeats the word "Tilt" a few times each with decreasing pitch.

Thank you for pointing me to that post! I'll try that and see if it works.

I used some code from both but the algorithm is in sync with the latest changes in the MAME repository.

I guess voice pitch change for Black Hole is not so critical then (at least for most owners I think).

I think most Black Hole owners would like to have the pitch change support. Of course it depends if you're able to implement it.

To get an idea of the the pitch change effect, try it in PinMAME.
> pinmame blckhole
Enable speech in the sound board DIP switches via the 'TAB' key menu.
Press F3 to reboot.
After 5 seconds game boot-up, insert a coin by pressing the '5' key.
Then press the '1' key to start a game.
Pressing the 'Insert' key is the tilt switch and you will get some idea of the changing pitch effect.

I'm not sure but the pitch change might also be used on the voice effect when the ball enters the lower playfield. And also the slam switch effect ('Home' key in PinMAME).

I am watching this.
I currently own volcano and would love to have an alternative if the sc-01 fails

Wow, that is great work! I no longer have a BH, otherwise I would be getting a few of these.

It makes sense. Supporting pitch change requires a few more components on the board. I'll do it for sure in the near future.

I tried running the Volcano sound board test and got it to work and say "ON", "OFF" and the numbers. They sound perfect.
However it seems to me that the voice is not as clear while playing the game.

Has anyone made a circuit to manually trigger all the specific sound effects? I can ground the 5 lines with a jumper but I only get those 5 sounds. Is there a grounding method that allows to trigger the other sound effects? None of those sounds are voice so I can't try voices without background game noise.

Can this be applied to any pin or video game that uses the SC-01 (I.E. Stern Electronics pins, Stern Berserk and Frenzy video games, Midway GORF and Wizard of Wor)?

Stern uses a different speech chip than the SC-01.

As far as I know only the SC-01 was used only on the MA-216 board by Gottlieb, which was used on less than 10 pins.
It was also used on a few other products, not pinball related however.

There would probably be a LOT of interest in this for Gorf specifically, if it worked 100% for it. You'd want to make sure to annouce on the Facebook group, "GORF - Talk, Repair, Competition"

Theoretically, it should. I’ll keep that in mind and try to find somebody close to me that has a Gorf to try (might be hard).

The 5 signals should be used in binary fashion. For Black Hole, these are the commands interfaced to the sound board for speech that I see running PinMAME:

0x1F = wait for new command
0x1C = "Tilt Tilt Tilt Tilt Tilt Tilt Tilt Tilt Tilt Tilt" (descending pitch)
0x12 = enter lower playfield "Ooowww"
0x10 = slam "Ooowww"
0x08 = "Shoot Captive Hole"
0x07 = "Complete Bank For Re-Entry"
0x06 = "Enter Gravity Tunnel"
0x05 = "Re-Entry Attept Has Failed"
0x04 = "Re-Entry Accomplished"
0x03 = "Extra Ball Lit"
0x02 = "Shoot for Special"
0x01 = "G-Force Accelerated"
0x00 = "Ball Captured"

Items in "quotes" are voice word/effects.

0x1F (all high on signals S16, S8, S4, S2, S1 to the sound board) tells the sound board to be ready for a future command.

I tried Volcano, it uses almost the same pitch change effect with the "Tilt" word as Black Hole. Most of the Ooowww voices are different pitch from another.

0x1F = wait for new command
0x1C = "Tilt Tilt Tilt Tilt Tilt Tilt Tilt Tilt Tilt" (descending pitch)
0x1B = "Volcano"
0x18 = "Eeewwww"
0x15 = "Shoot Lit Volcano"
0x14 = "Eruption"
0x13 = "Oowwww"
0x12 = "Oowwww"
0x10 = slam "Oooowww"
0x0D = "Oooowww"
0x0B = "Ooowww Ooowww"
0x08 = "Danger"
0x07 = "Lava Rising"
0x06 = "Ball Save"
0x05 = "Fire Pit"
0x04 = "It's Gonna Blow"
0x02 = "It's Gonna Blow"
0x01 = "Oooowww"
0x00 = "Throw Me A Sacrifice"

hello

my VERY congratulations for this great achievement!

please count me in for 1, or better, 2 units!!

I own several speech-capable games (right now: rocky, mars, and our haunted house in multiball) so I'll be able to make trials and send you reports if you wish.

If anyone need a sound/speech board for a system 80 let me know. I have (3) all tested and working. None have the Sc-01 chip. Two are out of HH which I believe did not use it, third is unknown. Also have several drivers, power supplies, sound/speech power supplies. All came from a retired pin-tech.

1CBCD930-B536-44AC-B1D3-2B687D239FD8 (resized).jpeg

7FF2EE16-D7EE-4E57-B5E2-5D48F4E2E575 (resized).jpeg

There are all kinds of random noises for volcano.

Volcano speech:
Eruption ( multiball)
Volcano (anytime)
Tilt tilt tilt ( tilt)
Send me a sacrifice ( idle chatter)
Ball save
Fire pit ( extra ball is lit )
Lava rising (locked ball)
Shoot lit volcano (skill shot)
Danger ( idle chatter)

I tried yesterday with Black Hole ROMs. 0x07 is very easy to trigger for example. Just jumper Sound 16 and Sound 8 to ground and it plays.

Also played a little bit on VPinMame on BH and sound seems pretty close to what I get on the real board.

Thanks, I inverted the five command bits in the post above with relation to what's on the five S16-S1 sound signals to the sound board, and corrected the spoken words for Volcano. The voice command originally listed as 0x18 is now 0x07, i.e. sound signals S16 and S8 go low.

Also fixed my answer for future reference

My bro-in-law has a Caveman. I have a Black Hole, Mars God of War, and soon to be Gorf.
However, we are in Nebraska.

I have a volcano, mars god of war and a Black Hole I need SC-01s for. I’ll buy one and try it in all 3 games if you like.

New boards should be ready before the end of the week. Also feedback from the first users should also come soon!

I just received mine. looks nice!

tip: my PI-80 board has a sound test menu that allows to test each individual sound of the 15 or 30 sounds set.
no need to jumper soundX signals

I have more boards ready to be shipped. If anyone is interested PM me.

I just got mine, and tested them in my Rocky.
They work and sound great!

Hey all, I did the haunted house speech upgrade and used this emulator. I works perfectly, and I also tested it in my Rocky.
Don't hesitate, if you need one

The SC-01 emulator is a very nice project and it is happy to see, that there is now an alternative to replace this rare circuit.

It's great to have designed this independent solution for this circuit, because it can be used in any assembly (and not necessarily in pinball sound cards). It remains to implement the clock and it will be perfect! (not necessarily easy to do ...). Clock rate variations are mainly used in TILT / SLAM sequences and on pinball machines like the Black Hole or the Q*Bert's Quest .

For the speaking Haunted House, glad to see that it also works with the SC-01 emulator, but there was no reason why it shouldn't. I looked into the source (ouch! it's been 8 years since I wrote this!), and the only place where I vary the frequency of the SC-01A is for the message of "TILT". So except this, the remain should work like a real SC-01A.

Does Mame emulation more a SC-01A or a SC-01?
For me, I think it's more SC-01A than SC-01 (the latter being even rarer), but only purists can tell the difference.

Yes nice project !
Interesting implementation on STM32.

Mame uses SC-01A decap process to get information about components on chip.
(Very complex, filtering emulation is 'nice', hard work, regards !)

I own SC-01 and SC-01A, and i have tested the two chips and compared results :
From my point of view, listening to the SC-01 is a little bit more metallic / robotic than the SC-01A.

Thank you both for your nice words.

I've been working on supporting the voice clock, too. I think I got it figured out, I should have a prototype to try in the next few days.