Manual Labors: SPAM: User's Guide

Installation
Controls
Resetting The Machine
Finding out How Many Messages You Have
Recording An OGM
Leaving A Message
Playing Your Messages
Erasing Your Messages
Fine-tuning Your SPAM
Troubleshooting

INSTALLATION

To install your SPAM, follow these four easy steps:

1. Connect the microphone to the microphone jack.
2. Wrap well stripped wire around the signal and ground connections for the BOSE Roommate TM speaker, and plug the speaker into an AC outlet.
3. Plug a Coleco power supply (modified for CS 150) into a standard AC outlet, and connect the +5 and ground leads to the red and black posts on the middle SPAM board.
4. Depress the reset toggle switch

CONTROLS

RESET

Click this switch to reset SPAM on power-up.

RING

Holding this down gives a "ring" to SPAM, signaling a user wishes to leave a message. As long as it is held down, a user is still assumed to be connecting or trying to.

REWIND

While playing messages, this will rewind to the beginning of the current message, or if pressed just as a message is beginning to play, rewind to the previous message.

FAST FORWARD

While playing messages, this will fast forward to the end of the current message (and continue playing, if more messages exist).

PLAY

Play your messages.

RECORD OUTGOING MESSAGE

Leave a new outgoing message.

ERASE

Erase all messages for a clean slate.

MESSAGE COUNT

The message count light blinks to indicate you have messages. One (1) blink indicates one (1) message, etc.

RESETTING THE MACHINE

When SPAM is powered up, it may begin execution in an unknown state. To get SPAM on track, simply depress the RESET lever. This is also useful if SPAM's execution is interrupted for some external reason, such as momentary power loss, or accidentally connecting pins with a logic probe.

FINDING OUT HOW MANY MESSAGES YOU HAVE

The MESSAGE COUNT light indicates how many messages are recorded by blinking once for each message. It repeats the sequence with a longer pause at the end.

RECORDING AN OUTGOING MESSAGE

An outgoing message of up to two (2) seconds in length is played whenever a RING occurs. To record a new outgoing message, press REC OGM. You then have two (2) seconds in which to leave an outgoing message. After two (2) seconds, a beep will sound, indicating that your time is up.

LEAVING A MESSAGE

To leave a message on SPAM, hold the RING lever down continuously. As soon as RING is depressed, SPAM will play the outgoing message, and then beep. After the beep, you may leave a message by speaking into the microphone. If you do not leave a message within approximately one half (1/2) second, SPAM will not record a message. If you do leave a message, SPAM will record until RING is released or SPAM's memory becomes full, at which point it saves the message and beeps. If RING is still depressed at the end of a message recording, SPAM will wait for it to be released before accepting another message.

PLAYING YOUR MESSAGES

To play recorded messages with SPAM, press the PLAY button. SPAM will beep and begin playing your first message, and then continue playing messages separated by beeps until all messages have been played. SPAM then beeps and waits for further input. While playing a message, you may wish to rewind to a previous message or skip ahead to a later one.

To go back to the beginning of the current message, press RW at any time after approximately one half (1/2) second of message has passed. To rewind to a previous message, press RW before one half (1/2) second has elapsed. Pressing rewind twice quickly will go back to the previous message if one half (1/2) second has elapsed. Pressing FF at any time when a message is playing will cause SPAM to skip ahead to the next message.

ERASING YOUR MESSAGES

When you have listened to your messages, you may press ERASE to have SPAM erase the messages. Actually, you may press ERASE any time you wish, whether or not you've heard your messages, whether or not you have any messages, whether or not SPAM is on. Do not be alarmed if SPAM doesn't beep if you hit the erase button while it is off, however. Without power, SPAM doesn't beep.

FINE TUNING YOUR SPAM

SPAM is designed to allow different types of moving coil microphones. To set SPAM to use your microphone, determine the peak to peak voltage output of the microphone at a loud level. Using a multimeter, set the two ADC potentiometers to 3.4V + 0.5*(P-to-P V) and 3.4V - 0.5*(P-to-P V). You may also have to set the bus silence level. To do this, find the value on the data bus when the microphone is silent (e.g. by turning off the microphone and pressing REC OGM). Then, set the four dip switches to 15 - (Bus Silence Value).

In addition, you can change SPAM's "wait" time. This affects how long SPAM will wait for noise before giving up on a message when recording, and also how quickly you need to press REWIND to go to a previous message. Simply adjust the potentiometer on the 555 timer that generates CLK_FSM. This may cause the message count light to blink faster or slower.

TROUBLESHOOTING

Next: SPAM Mark I