News stories for Episode 161, May 23, 2020 show

News stories for Episode #161, May 23, 2020 show:

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1) Frank Hogg published on Facebook, his remembered history of creating the Tomcat computer (TC-9 & TC-70):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158274266977641/

2) Stevie put up a couple of videos for the CocoPi3: How to set up the CocoPi3:

 https://youtu.be/nQlnXzExOqQ

Setting up a CocoPi3 to become a full game console:

 https://youtu.be/sPvzXV0HqoQ

3) Carlos Camacho put up a scan of an article that Frank Hogg wrote back around 1983/1984, about the Deluxe Coco (which was pretty well bang on for what was planned).

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158274975512641/

4) Eric Canales (who moonlights as the Glenside Coco Club President), posted how to download a tool he created for running MAME in it's debug mode for the Coco, that lets you merge in your own assembly source code into the debugger (so instead of just seeing a raw disassembly while running, you get to see your labels, comments, etc.):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158270853957641/

5) Our own David O'Connor has started setting up a website of all of his 6809 related projects (Coco's, synthesizers, etc.):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158275986067641/

6) Brian Wieseler posted some photos of Coco Kraft Joysticks (which were the basis of Tandy's Deluxe Joysticks), but these are of the rare grey case ones:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158274553217641/

7) Alison Denu had posted, up on Facebook this past Sunday, an encrypted file done on the Coco, and invited other Coco users to try and crack it:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158263393342641/

By Wednesday, Paul Fiscarelli had done it, and made a video about it:

 https://youtu.be/90ly9oQ9Uvg

ADDENDUM - Alison has changed her code a bit, and has issued the challenge anew.

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158278601702641/

8) David Brenneman shows a completed cartridge interface for the CocoPi3 to use for breadboards for experiments:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/748644118674047/permalink/1292324787639308/

9) Allen Huffman has posted another blog about BASIC, and ELSE/GOTO optimizations:

 https://subethasoftware.com/2020/05/21/basic-and-else-and-goto-and-work-part-2/

10) A Youtube channel that I have not seen before called "Take it Apart"... takes apart an MC-10:

 https://youtu.be/RGqTCrq6f-0

11) I updated the Ease of Use page a little bit - you can now get the blank hard drive image (for /h1) by itself, rather than downloading the whole EOU (so it's a couple of hundred K vs. 30 MB). There is also now a link off the main EOU page to documentation, which includes the quick Beginners documentation, All the release update notes (All the way back to Alpha 1), a text file showing what the boot screen characters in NitrOS9 mean (and also how to translate a boot error), a PDF of the full manual for the full screen text editor VED, and the first part of a long term project to update the entire OS-9 Level II manuals to current NitrOS-9 EOU features. The first part uploaded is the "Windows" part of the manual, which now includes new graphics commands, updated escape codes, and some more details on some of the features that are part of NitrOS9 and EOU, but were not in the original OS-9 level 2: Main documentation page:

 http://www.lcurtisboyle.com/nitros9/nitros9_docs.html

• • These last two, may want to narrow the browser window? **

VED 2.9 manual (From Bob van der Poel with permission):

 http://www.lcurtisboyle.com/nitros9/EOUDOCS/VED2.9_manual.pdf

WINDOWS part of the full NitrOS-9 Level II manual (we are formatting it fairly close to the original manuals):

 http://www.lcurtisboyle.com/nitros9/EOUDOCS/NitrOS-9_EOU_Level_2_Windowing_System_Manual.pdf

Game On News stories

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1) Marlin Lee has a video of Avenger (a somewhat Defender clone) by the Cornsoft Group:

 https://youtu.be/_ej6IFysjps

2) Paul Thayer has Timber Man back on sale again through PayPal:

 https://www.paypal.com/instantcommerce/checkout/WS823RPSY22YW

3) Pere Serrat has a full gameplay video now of his Coco 1/2/Dragon port of the AGD game "Foggy's Quest" running on the Wordpak2+ card (which adds sprite support, more colors, etc. though the V9958 chip). It looks quite impressive!

 https://youtu.be/XITAVNvrf0Q

4) Jim Gerrie has his (hopefully, as he put it) final version of Mahjong for the MC-10 (improvements are adding Undo, Save game, and make sure that the dragon is solvable):

 https://youtu.be/-w9fUJkXNqQ

5) Noriko Miyagami has put up a video playthrough of the Adventure International Coco port of "Dog Star Adventure" by Lance Micklus, that was published in Soft Side magazine as a type in game. She also describes the history behind the game (she uses a port that Jim Gerrie did):

 https://youtu.be/Rocjx7kTt9w