News stories for Episode 171, August 1, 2020 show

News stories for Episode #171, August 1, 2020 show:

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The following can be used if the originator is not on the show to show these themselves:

• • DAVID IS CONFIRMED TO NOT BE ON, SO ADD THIS TO NEWS **

X) Terry Steege shows pictures of the two versions of the classic Coco cartridge (and manual) of Dungeons and Daggorath (Radio Shack, and Tandy):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158484200482641/

X) Brian Wieseler shows his new (to him) "Hands-On BASIC" book:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158484133002641/

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0 ) David O'Connor shows off his Realistic Pocketvision mini-TV, display from the Coco using a hacked antenna (there is no inputs that work with the Coco).

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158488345052641/

1) Canadian Retro Things (Ken) on YouTube just received his CocoSDC, and tries it for the first time (this shows raw usage, no SDC Explorer yet):

 https://youtu.be/f82Jp_IEQTo

2) Ed Snider of zippsterzone shows off a Retro Innovations (Jim Brain) "HalfMeg Coco" raw board (which actually can have up to 1 MB RAM), and shows the fully assembled version that works great. The raw board, for you hardware tinkerers out there, is only $3.00:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158490074937641/
 http://store.go4retro.com/tandy/tandy-color-computer-coco-3-512kb-sram-pcb/?fbclid=IwAR2HNW6JKGQy8tSyj57Wzo24K33Ndwohdj8YRxeGmm9JE1HiIk2cov8oJr8

3) Richard Lorbieski of BoystonTech has some photos of his "work in progress" add on board for the Sound Speech Pak. This will allow the pack to not only work fully at .895 MHz in the Coco 1/2 & Dragon, but also at 1.78 Mhz in the Coco 3, and even 2.86 MHz in the Coco 3 + GIME-X:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158485229962641/

4) As pointed out at Jim Brain, the Virtual VCF-West presentations are going on this weekend. One of historical significance is the History of the 6502 by Bill Mensch. Bill was one of the original 6800 designers at Motorola who jumped ship to MOS. It's on at 6:45 PM Eastern tonight. Full schedule for today is here (and link to their YouTube channel at the top of the page):

 http://vcfed.org/wp/vcf-west-event-schedule/

5) Thomas Winkler on Facebook is happy with his RE-FD502-KIT, which is a remake of the classic "short" disk controller (FD-502). You can buy it pre-assembled, or in kit form (as Thomas did). Will work with any 5&1/4" or 3.5" double density floppy drives. $45.00 in kit from, $65.00 pre-assembled.

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158488441527641/

6) Terry Steege has an update to his spreadsheet of "all known Coco and TDP-100 cartridges":

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158486679817641/

7) The latest CocoCrew episode is out (#62), and features and interview with Fran Purcell, tech segment about pseudo random numbers with LFSR's, and much more:

 http://cococrew.org/cococrew-podcast-62.html

8) Andrew Ayers uploaded a file to the Facebook Coco group contain his programs to interface with the old Armatron form the Coco:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158484902337641/

And some scans from Hot Coco from their original series about the Armatron:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158484897777641/

9) Paul Shoemaker put some scans up a Coco book called "TRS-80 Extended Color Basic" written by Richard Haskell from 1983 that I have not seen before:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158480718012641/

10) James Jones is working on a book to help teach users BASIC09, coming from Disk BASIC. He is looking for some feedback and suggestions on how to approach the book. If you are interested in this, please give him some comments:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158476611857641/

11) Christopher Zepka shows the result of his very first retrobrighting project (A Coco 2)... looks like it turned out quite successful:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158475931042641/

12) John Whitworth on the Dragon Facebook group has a photo up of his test setup - where he is trying to figure why the CocoSDC works with the Wordpak2+ board, but not his DMSX2+:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/permalink/2683441655248820/

13) Si Owen brought up a picture of the very rare Dragon MSX (only 500 made, it was never publicly sold, only 1 left known to exist), made by Eurohard :

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/permalink/2683066768619642/

Info on it:

 https://www.msx.org/wiki/Dragon_MSX-64?fbclid=IwAR2bsTSNX7Egdxv_-Dlc07_YSTfsmsjRQkiJVCMH7OJpYsNS2dI1OY6HOGk

14) ChibiAkumas has a video up showing how to do a Hello World program in 6809 assembly on the Dragon or Coco:

 https://youtu.be/qZlOOAkaQzU

15) Re.Enthused has a video up on YouTube on the history of the Dragon (the 2nd computer from Wales that he has done a video on; the first was the Sam Coupe), as well as the hardware and some games (running on a CocoSDC) including Chuckie Egg, Ugh!, Time Bandit:

 https://youtu.be/g9nzvpTASrI

16) Newsmakers Tech (whom did the complete Coco lineup unboxing recently) did an episode exploring a 1990 Radio Shack catalog, where they each pick some stuff cool to them. Jacob picks the Coco 3 ad for one of his... and they talk about how expensive getting a Coco 3 is these days (it should be noted that Daniel worked at Radio Shack around this time period):

 https://youtu.be/QvoR96iBtL8?t=2604

Game On news:

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1) Jim Gerrie has his MC-10 port (requires MCX-128, since it uses higher resolution graphics) of Missile Command, originally by Andrew Black, from Dragon User magazine in 1983. Gameplay is a little different; including a cursor velocity key (since normal MC-10's don't have joysticks), their trails stay behind after you kill one, and they can wander a bit, rather than going in a straight line, and you have to hit them pretty precisely to kill them:

 https://youtu.be/y7n8G1A5jdo

He also has Cave Raid - and original game for the MC-10, loosely based on Scramble (but collecting and avoiding objects, vs. shooting/bombing), and with his son's help (Charlie):

 https://youtu.be/IcwDACyL_LM

And Red Alert, from the TRS-80 Space Adventures book:

 https://youtu.be/_BO-0wfsWJY

He also ported a puzzle game originally for the Alice:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/permalink/3054995854627216/

2) Erico Monteiro has posted his first blog about his semigraphics fighting game:

 https://vintageisthenewold.com/a-trs-80-color-computer-commercial-quality-action-fight-game-in-basic-part-1/
 He has also released a video Work In Progress #2, which shows some more enhancements, and close to what the actual speed will be:
 https://youtu.be/uN7jC96MTPg

3) Marlin Lee has posted a Color Outhouse video:

 https://youtu.be/Wug2v9MQTwk?t=16

4) Paul Shoemaker has officially finished his Poker Squares Coco 3 game (a hybrid of BASIC and ML, running in 320x225x16 color, which is available for download from the Coco Facebook group (screenshot in comments):

https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158489105042641/

5) [REDACTED] did some more [REDACTED GAME] III live streams earlier this week for AI tweaks, new sideways digging control testing, etc. (colorful language alert) on the Coco Facebook group. Here is on on AI tweaks:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158481075232641/

6) Aaron of Amigos did a live stream from many systems on Friday - he showed off Pac Dude Monster Maze (since their Amiga game challenge this round is Pac Mania) - Aaron and most of the chat audience was impressed with it (skip to 1:18:37):

 https://www.twitch.tv/videos/696799665

7) Bill Sexton showed a quick video (at a distance) showing 5 line Fruit Slot machine running on his Coco 3, on a smaller monitor:

 https://youtu.be/g-R23a9kdTc

8) FrodoNL, who is the first person I know of who has wrapped the score in Bomb Threat, has a full 4 hour video showing him wrapping it:

 https://youtu.be/w_GvpEDbIrw?t=9317

9) Simonwgb on YouTube (live stream versions were on Twitch) put up an almost 3&1/2 hour stream of playing Dragon 32 games in XRoar:

 https://youtu.be/HcFVHi-hMTE

And another of about 1&1/2 hours:

 https://youtu.be/aQcJwkRO2AU

10) Gigerpunk (Rob's Retro Rambles) plays Beyond the Cimeeon Moon:

 https://youtu.be/iVfemgShyOY