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2026 / 01
| 2 min read
Project: Emulatron E6 Part 10 of 12

CC-40 Completion and IVR Launch

Shipping the TI CC-40 backend with authentic CALL commands and audio, plus a full IVR phone tree system.

emulator cc-40 ivr audio testing

The CC-40 had been running BASIC for weeks, but it still felt generic. Today I shipped the CALL surface that makes programs actually work.

The original CC-40 uses CALL commands for hardware behaviour that other BASICs don’t have. These are exactly where programs lean when they want to feel “real,” and without them, anything written for the actual hardware just breaks or misbehaves:

  • CALL KEY(0, K, S) is non-blocking keyboard polling; games depend on it.
  • CALL CHAR(128, "FF818181818181FF") defines custom LCD characters (codes 128–135).
  • CALL SOUND(500, 440, 5) drives the piezo speaker with duration, frequency, and volume.

The backend now handles those calls, the LCD output, and the break/continue behaviour that shows you the exact line number when you interrupt a running program. Dialling 555-0040 drops you into CC-40 BASIC with the same shape and cadence as the original device.

The other system that reached “done enough” was the IVR layer. The illusion depends on timing: one ring, a fast auto-answer, and a greeting that sounds like it travelled through a phone line. The line handler now does exactly that—ring once, auto-answer after the first cadence, play a random variation (001–010) for the target company, then disconnect about 12 seconds later so the call doesn’t hang forever.

Ten IVR numbers, plus a trick: the “classified” line isn’t listed in the directory, and wrong numbers have a 20% chance of landing in an IVR instead of a person or a busy signal.

  • SpaWorld — 555-7727
  • Quick Fix Auto — 555-2886
  • FreshMart — 555-3637
  • DataCorp Industries — 555-3282
  • Tony’s Pizza Palace — 555-7499
  • Premier Properties — 555-7367
  • Valley Medical Centre — 555-8253
  • CompuHelp Technical Services — 555-4357
  • First Community Bank — 555-2265
  • Classified Access — 555-2532 (not in the directory)

On the testing side, I stabilized the Jest mocks for WASM and worker imports so failures mean behaviour, not infrastructure. Fifteen failing suites are down to three, all genuine behavioural issues. That’s a quiet change, but it’s the difference between “I trust the suite” and “I ignore it.”

Tomorrow I want to add boot sounds—the floppy drive head sweep, the hard drive seek clunks—so the BIOS feels physical before anything loads. Then a broader identity and SEO polish pass.

Previous: 2026-01-29