News stories for Episode 165, June 13, 2020 show

News stories for Episode #165, June 13, 2020 show:

=====================================

1) Christopher Hyzer (TJB Chris on YouTube) has released a video on how to replace the "3 mugateers" photo that shows up during a CTRL-ALT-RESET cold reboot.

 https://youtu.be/Ezjx75N-m68

2) Todd Wallace (Lord Dragon) has released both a video, and software images, showing his new OPL / CCT player for NitrOS-9 that works with the OPL3 sound chip in the MegaMiniMPI from Zippster (Ed Snider) (He is also using his IBM CGA font in the demo video):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158330794107641/

3) Ciaran Anscomb has released a new version of XRoar (0.36):

 http://www.6809.org.uk/xroar/

4) Aaron over at The Amigos released a video on assembling the Keys2USB board (sold by Paul Fiscarelli), and the quirk he hit that he and Paul worked out a solution for:

 https://youtu.be/hulOoHIcgmM

5) Jerry Stratton posted a link to his blog on Facebook (he is the author of the Super Basic we have covered recently), which is about him converting IBM PC Microsoft BASIC programs to the Coco. The original programs (from a a book by Tim Hartnell called "Giant Book of Computer Games") were designed to be fairly generic (no special sound or graphics statements), so they are generally easier ones to convert, but he goes through and explains which statements had to be changed, and why:

 https://www.hoboes.com/Mimsy/hacks/coco/convert-pcbasic-code-trs-80-extended-color-basic/?fbclid=IwAR18IlUAtCQsg_udEX-iuopouUIbvIl6np14dXUTm5xXKE98rCIXk2NXawM

6) Soren Roug posted on reverse engineered the OS9P1 kernel into assembly source code for the Dragon Beta. This machine supported at least up to 256K of RAM, had a 4K block sized MMU (the Coco 3 is 8K). The graphics were done a bit differently; one could allocated graphics in the lower 128K only, but some screen modes required mapping in non-contiguous chunks (basically 64K apart), so you might allocate 4K from lowest part of RAM, and then 4K more from the 64-68K area that "matched". Other modes would be contiguous just in the lowest 64K. I am not sure all what modes it supported.

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/permalink/2623730101219976/

7) ChibiAkumas on YouTube is starting a video tutorial series on programming the 6809 (in his case, he wants to eventually program for the Vectrex, but it also works on the Dragon and Coco, and the Fujitsu FM-7):

 https://youtu.be/UIy0DgmVReY

8) Allen Huffman posted an article on bit shifting in BASIC:

 https://subethasoftware.com/2020/06/11/bit-shifting-in-basic/

9) John Whitworth shows his Dragon MSX 2+ prototype board he just received, and inserted a SCART socket:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/permalink/2642744715985181/

He also has a video up to show the graphics, along with music that Pere Serrat wrote for it:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/permalink/2643514192574900/

10) Ian Hopkin posted some photos from a UK Tandy Catalog (1984-1985) - where it shows that *they* sold 3rd party software at Tandy! (go through the photos)

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/permalink/2642159462710373/

11) Ed Snider put up on article of a modification he did for Stevie for the MC-10 - a memory upgrade that also fixes the video circuit to allow >4K for video RAM (and thus allows PMODE 3 and PMODE 4 to work). His is an improvement over some of the originals, like Dennis Kitz's from the September 1983 issue of Color Computer Magazine, and uses less chips. Ed has plans to extend this mod for 32K of RAM plus the higher graphics modes supported.

 https://thezippsterzone.com/2020/06/12/mc-10-8k-internal-mod/

12) Don't know if it is still available, but RE1974 (Ian Maveric) on YouTube put up a video of some Coco's he has for sale in Australia, including a Coco 3/6309/512K:

 https://youtu.be/8_yiXbWCtzw

13) Mark Marlette posted a picture of the motherboard of one of the last OSK machines that Frank Hogg Labs produced - the KiX 30. It featured up to 128MB of RAM, a kick ass graphics card, and a 32 bit 68030 CPU.

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/274667910367845/permalink/301029597731676/

14) Bart van den Akker of the Home Computer Museum in the Netherland posted a photo of his Coco 3, with his new CocoSDC case that he 3D printed himself:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158345358612641/

Game On news:

=

1) Marlin Lee has a new Demon Seed Coco gameplay video up:

 https://youtu.be/LnI5RJnXJzo

2) Davy Mitchell (Daftspaneiel on Github) posted a link to his disk image which contains multiple Coco games in BASIC that are 10 lines or less (as well as Ingress Island and Pig). NOTE: some games require Extended BASIC):

https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158336836097641/
https://github.com/daftspaniel/daftspanielcoco3/tree/master/DiskImages

3) Both Carlos Camachos and Terry Steege started some interesting conversations of Facebook this week about the cartridge label designs from Tandy. Terry showed 3 different label designs found so far for Downland (two of which I knew of), and one oddity is that the oldest version shows a copyright of 1984, while the two newer ones show 1983: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158337015617641/ Carlos, barely an hour later, mentioned that the original 3D shadow stylized cartridge logo designs (that all Coco cartridges had at the beginning... whether a game, productivity app, etc.), and later they went all over the place, and some were rather poor looking in his mind. One in particular he pointed out as looking amateurish is Demolition Derby. Thoughts? Were some of newer ones good designs, or should they have kept the look and feel of the originals? (a google image search will find plenty of examples).

https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158337205327641/

4) Cuthbert Dragon's YouTube page was busy this week. Some text adventure games, games we have seen before, and some new (or rarely seen, or finally by somebody who knows what they are doing) ones to check out:

 https://www.youtube.com/user/MaryWinstead32/videos

Educational game Let's Count: Educational game Words, Words, Words: Cruising: Maurice Minor L Driver: Toppler (a different take on Shooting Gallery): Vultures (Galaxian style, but only one diving ship at a time): Pogo Jo (Q*Bert in high res semigraphics!) Brocks Kingdom: Morbid Mansion (show other game play at around 5 minutes too): Jet Boot Colin: Desperado Dan: Star Swoop (Good semigraphics shootemup): Copta Snatch (semigraphics scramble) Mission XK1 (a good Lunar Rescue clone, except you appear to be mining rather than rescuing people): Wings of War (interestingly laid out adventure game-Lost in Space & Franklin's Tomb are similar, and there are videos also up for those): Immortal Strain (text adventure game using a PMODE 4 font): Caverns of Doom (text adventure with 3 panes, well done): Dickie Spaceman Caverns of Chaos Boulder Crash (another Boulder Dash clone) Creepies Jaws (1:50 is another level, quite different)