Case study

Prose 2000 Reborn: a C decompilation of the speech board

Decompiles the Speech Plus and Telesensory Systems Prose 2000 text-to-speech firmware, an 8086 host plus an NEC uPD7720 DSP, into C. The README says the build does not need an emulator or ROM files.

Targets: Binary
Category: Independent reconstruction cases
Relationship: Independent reconstruction project
Sources reviewed: 2026-11-04

Stars: 7
Last commit: 2026-09-28
Language: C

GitHub data as of 2026-11-09

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Requirements & limits

Prerequisites: The README's default build produces the speech library, prose_say, the samples, and the v3.4.1 tests. -DPROSE_VERSION=1 builds the v1.1 tests instead. It says the v1.1 DSP program was never dumped, so v1.1 frames are played through the v3.12 DSP model and that audio is an approximation.
Scope: Two firmware versions are in the tree: v3.4.1 (1988) and v1.1 (1983). The README says src/data holds data extracted from the ROMs, and src/tests holds the players and replay tests.
Testing evidence: The README says every stage was checked against an emulator of the original board, byte-exact on captured calls and frame- or sample-exact end to end. It says the replay tests are described in REFERENCE.md §14. build/pipeline_play speaks one line.
License: The reviewed root has no LICENSE file. The README says the original firmware was proprietary to Telesensory Systems and Speech Plus. The README names no license for the repository.

Cite

BibTeX

@misc{prose2000-reborn-case,
  title = {{Prose 2000 Reborn: a C decompilation of the speech board}},
  howpublished = {\url{https://github.com/rommix0/prose2000_reborn}},
  url = {https://github.com/rommix0/prose2000_reborn},
  urldate = {2026-11-04},
  note = {Awesome REA entry: \url{https://awesomerea.org/resources/prose2000-reborn-case/}}
}

Plain text

Prose 2000 Reborn: a C decompilation of the speech board. https://github.com/rommix0/prose2000_reborn (accessed 2026-11-04). Awesome REA entry: https://awesomerea.org/resources/prose2000-reborn-case/

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About this entry

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Primary sources

README.md GitHub · rommix0/prose2000_reborn · Revision 26c36db
REFERENCE.md GitHub · rommix0/prose2000_reborn · Revision 26c36db