News stories for Episode 189, December 5, 2020 show

News stories for Episode #189, December 5, 2020 show:

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1) With Boisy's episode 6 of the Coco Collector (with his token ring networking style project last week), I completely missed the fact that he had released episode 5 a few days earlier - where he shows a Coco 2 that got it's part number changed on the box, and some rare stickers, etc. He speculates that some of these Coco 2/16K versions were still around at Tandy when the Coco 3 was announced (and the Coco 2 was standardized with 64K), these were internally upgraded before sale:

 https://youtu.be/Ca-phoEZFf0

2) Allen Huffman put up an interesting blog post about a quirk in the DATA statement in Color BASIC:

 https://subethasoftware.com/2020/12/02/color-basic-data-quirk/

3) Carlos Camacho found an ebay sale for a Coco 2 with a very interesting hardware mod - it can run the cassette port at 6000 baud (after you load a special program), which 4x the original speed:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158794869567641/

4) Antonio Ely has put up some other SD Card label designs up on Facebook: Robocop:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158794732997641/

Pinball:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158792008252641/

There are others; he is posted one every few dyas in the Color Computer Facebook group.

5) [REDACTED] posted an update about his [REDACTED APP] crossplatform development system for older machines with bitmapped graphics (including Coco's, Fujitsu FM-7/FM-77, PC with EGA, Atari ST and Amiga):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158790617862641/

6) Chris Burke has an update on his USB keyboard/mouse on a Coco projects - he received his USB and flex card adaptor boards (See comments for a first build, and a video showing it with the wireless mouse). He mentions that the scroll wheel is used to change the resolution:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158788659792641/

7) Jason Downs does a quick video breakdown of a Coco 2 he just purchased:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158788491597641/

8) Ed Snider is now offering CocoSDC cases by themselves (in black, white, or marble) for $20.00, for those that need a case (scroll until near the bottom):

 https://thezippsterzone.com/2020/06/25/the-coco-sdc

9) Richard Harding posted a scan of a Dragon 32 ad from back in the day:

 https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10157872736531453&set=gm.2792566074336377

10) The Coco Crew's latest episode (#66) is out, which features an interview with Joe Scinta (one of the people behind the Kenton SCSI interface), a review of Matchy's JUMPY game, and a breakdown of how BCD (Binary Coded Decimal) works on the 6809.

 http://www.cococrew.org

11) Ben Manuel put up a video on YouTube demoing an assembly language sort program that sorts characters on the VDG 32x16 screen. The code is from the August 1988 Rainbow magazine:

 https://youtu.be/dC4Yqg9GaA4

12) A new to me YouTube channel called "Take it Apart" put up a video disassembling the CCR-82 computer cassette record by Radio Shack:

 https://youtu.be/1TdS8IK5Pmg

13) Simon Jonassen released a video showing his video player doing a 3 voice song with some modifications for better compression (APLIB / APULTRA compression). The load of the program is only 1738 bytes (player code & note data combined), and decompresses to to 3993 bytes:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158797367652641/

14) Terry Steen still has some Coco's up for sale, which we want to remind our community about, on Ebay. These are Coco 1's to 3's, some with manuals:

 https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?sid=terry(2000)&isRefine=true&_pgn=1

Game On news:

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1) Cuthbert Dragon on YouTube has put up more videos showing live gameplay on his Dragon 32, along with the original UK cassette artwork, although he appears to be running out of those now. This week he has added: Mubungly Copta Snatch Gridrunner (very loosely base on Centipede, but with entirely new gain elements like Neutroid) Defense Juniors Revenge Beam Rider Space Wrek Ultrapede Cosmic Zap Scarfman Starman Jones

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

2) Jim Gerrie has ported a very early Star Trek game (from the HP BASIC vesion in 1972) to the MC-10:

 https://youtu.be/B-sxst-TfpM

He also posted a longplay video (23+ minutes!):

 https://youtu.be/EYO5GEp_i84

He also ported Rat Run (1979) from the Commodore PET (3D maze, find the cheese game):

 https://youtu.be/qO-5ZpD7zGo

3) Simonwgb is changing a bit how he does his retro and modern longform gaming livestreams, on his Twitch channel. Instead of randomly picking a system each day he streams, he will be doing 2-3 days in a row of the same system, before switching. At the tail end of this week, he did several days of Dragon 32 (and some Coco 1/2) games: Day 1: (Manic Miner, Mr. Dig, Cuthbert and the Golden Chalice)

 https://www.twitch.tv/videos/824286560 - (gameplay starts around 3 minutes in)

Day 2: (Doodle Bug, Dungeon Raid, Hunchback, Trapfall (Cuthbert in the Jungle), The Dark Pit, Cruising)

 https://www.twitch.tv/videos/825391313

4) Paul Shoemaker has a video update on his 3D dungeon crawler SG12 experiments for his upcoming game project:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158796324512641/

5) Erico Monteiro posted about porting a Atari ASCII game called Arasci Blaster to the Coco, and has been doing some semigraphics mockups to get started:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158795714037641/

6) Tricob1974 (Richard Kelly) on YouTube posted a video showing gameplay of his "The Binary Adventure" adventure game on the Coco. Your mission: to destroy a cabin. The catch? You are trapped inside that same cabin:

 https://youtu.be/ovPyyvtpIAo

He also put up a video showing his "Easy Directory" program, and the cover program for his P.G.D.M (Painfully Generic Disk Magazine) digital disk magazine, that he is just starting. It features some pretty cool animations, and he has a date of Dec. 7 for issue #1.

 https://youtu.be/rb2y2em_aAg

7) Retro Arcade Gaming put up a video showing gameplay of Donkey Kong variants, which includes Donkey Kong Remixed on the Coco 3, as well as Donkey Kong Spooky Remix in MAME (both by Sockmaster), and Donkey Kong II Jumpman Returns in MAME (by Jeff Kulczycki):

 https://youtu.be/ckaJDtSkwTo

8) Gigerpunk (Rob's Retro Rambles) returns to the Dragon with his play of Downland (I didn't know that there was a Dragon version!). It doesn't go smoothly. At all.:

 https://youtu.be/vvRLbMUr5Q4