Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/10/21/if-alexa-amazon-echo-existed-in-1988.html
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Brilliant - this brings me back.
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Pro-tip: The list of unpacked files during setup has some great easter eggs.
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Both Plastic Love and The Computer Did (not The Computer Did It) are worth a spin
The aesthetic is a bit more '84 than '88, but I approve.
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Don’t use the phone for 2 hours, I’m playing a song!
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This reminds me, does anyone recall back in the glory days of Omni magazine, there used to be full-page advertisements for a domestic voice control robot or something? I think it managed your heating / air con, answered your phone and such. It was voice controlled and was a cool blue box with a blue LED display.
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These are like ads from the world of the Netflix series Maniac – I think that’s the 19A0s era, if I vaguely remember. I’ll never stop being entertained by Squirrel Monkey videos. 
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They’re cheating a little bit. The voice sounds like Peedie from MS Agent from ~1997. (Still a good trick to get that to run these days.)
I found the schematic from my 1980s speech PC card. It only used power from the bus, and I think it can be set to steal power from the RS-232 interface. That’s more of a classic SC-01 “kill the humans!” voice.
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I remember a similar system advertised sometime between 1983-85. I think it ran on an Apple II with extra hardware (but that could be just because I subscribed to a lot of Apple II magazines). I don’t remember any colors, but given that this was before blue LEDs were invented, however they did it (incandescent bulbs?) would have looked really cool. I thought it might have had a name? I’ll have to go scour old back issues… thanks for the memory!
That was cool, nice digging, thanks for (DOS) prompt.
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Why yes, yes there are!!!
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Rick Rolled at 3:00
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