News stories for Episode 187, November 21, 2020 show

News stories for Episode #187, November 21, 2020 show:

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1) Jim Brain of Retro Innovations is re-ordering Extender-Coco PCB's, and put up a request for any simple ideas to expand functionality on Facebok:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158755167927641/

2) Sheldon MacDonald also put up a request on Facebook - he has been learning assembly language (as a beginner) and is wondering if he should make his early coding bits as examples to post for others to learn:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158755047017641/

3) Paul Shoemaker has been fiddling with the Semigraphics-12 mode in assembly language (and shows a video of it, including sourcecode):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158752917677641/

4) Ben Drakes gave us the sad news, in our Discord, that Richard Wadman, one of the Dragon 32 designers, passed away from Covid. Here is a video of him talking to the press during a Christmas production rush cycle:

 https://youtu.be/305o5qCkkgI?t=25

5) Paul Barton has submitted a design for a board (he should see it in a few weeks) that has the 16550 serial chip on it: (this can be moved to the Ron's Garage segment, as we have talked about):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158763216857641/

6) Robert Sieg has been continuing his experimentation with the 160x192x16 color composite mode, to create extra colors on composite. He has had far too many screenshots, etc. for me to list them all here, but here is one from Thursday:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158762503847641/

7) Steve Batons put some photos up on Facebook with his "Coco Den" set up well under way:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158761278177641/

8) Chris Burke has a new video showing his progress in his Pi Zero based USB keyboard to Coco adaptor (it even does wireless keyboards - and can potentially do USB mice). It's basically working fine in DECB, but he needs some tweaks for OS-9 (it polls the keyboard differently), and he has a second design/prototype in the works now, too:

 https://www.facebook.com/chris.burke.7712/videos/10157277193821331/

9) Steve Blakely asked interesting question on the MC-10 Facebook group - what is the average "minimum setup" for an MC-10 these days? Example such as stock 4K, 20K with RAM expansion, MCX-128 and MCX-32 SD are given. It is meant for software developers for the MC-10, to gauge what they should target for. Thoughts from the panel?

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/permalink/3403189796474485/

10) 8-Bit Retro Journal on YouTube did an interesting hardware project: Converting a Coco mouse to work with a Sinclair QL (on it's Atari joystick port):

 https://youtu.be/thOtt9OSZtQ?t=195

11) retrobits on YouTube had his 2nd unboxing video (featuring a myriad of hardware and computers), but includes a Coco 3, which he got for a good price:

 https://youtu.be/4wwv9npSTfg?t=114

12) Our special guest Alan (of AC's 8-bit Zone) put up a new video of his continuing repair of his oldest Coco 2 (melty-keyboard). In a previous video, he 3D printed a spacebar key (which was missing), but now he has no video coming out out it. He is also one of our guests today:

 https://youtu.be/lO78B_Ii0QY
 (He also is asking for input on a new intro he is working on: we can show the video (or Alan can) and get feedback from the panel and the chatroom people): https://youtu.be/BcbzDYgCpSo

Game On news:

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1) Cuthbert Dragon has uploading more Dragon game videos, along with their cassette artwork: Star Spores (this was written by Dave Shadoff for Spectral, and he just recently joined our Discord, and is here to talk about the game) Toppler Cuthbert in the Cooler Mined Out Datafall Cruising Eddie Steady Go! Draconian

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

2) Jim McClellan is working on an MC-10 game (working title: Beyond the Blue Door), and showed a picture of his MC-10 system with the work in progress on the screen:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/permalink/3399797040147094/

3) A new (to me, anyways) YouTuber, called "gsurplus", put up a gameplay video for the Coco 3 version of Arkanoid:

 https://youtu.be/lZHPH42z6ds

4) Our own David Ladd put up a couple of gameplay Coco videos this week: Pegasus (our game of the week this past week), and Shock Trooper:

 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCx_XV-1thmRx-vqWnLXqnag/videos

5) MrDave6309 posted some updates to his first Coco 3 game project in machine language that he is working on, showing some Japanse style graphics (show my local copies of his quick move, and update palette screenshot)

6) Jim Gerrie has a video up for the MC-10 port of a Coco game called "Save Spock: Battle At Vulcan":

 https://youtu.be/g-yynAliCOY

7) Paul Thayer has his latest VLOG update on his upcoming CocoBan game project for the Coco 3, explaining why he switched to double buffering:

 https://www.facebook.com/paul.thayer.16/videos/10220163329646751/