News stories for Episode 190, December 12, 2020 show

News stories for Episode #190, December 12, 2020 show:

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1) Sheldon MacDonald has posted his 3rd & 4th episodes of learning the 6809 - this time round, going through branching in assembly & changing his text mouse to be IRQ based, so that it runs continuously in the background for his 3rd episode, and then creating a print subroutine in the 4th. Episode 3:

 https://youtu.be/HHdRypa5oFA

Episode 4:

 https://youtu.be/RSd88YIMJs4

He also working on a function library for his assembly tools:

 https://youtu.be/01iFlhoQkJE

2) Jim Gerrie ported a BASIC utility program that helps you learn about resistors and their color codes:

 https://youtu.be/hnUQyG1w0cA

3) Ken @ Canadian Retro Things posted a video of loading programs on a Coco... from an FM transmitter. To 2 Coco's at once. From one tape recorder.

 https://youtu.be/vKAO-UGXTow

4) José Antonio Vaca Bello put up a video on YouTube showing him unboxing a Coco 2 with joysticks, a CGP-115 printer, and Arkanoid cartridge - in Spanish:

 https://youtu.be/CFV0d5NpivA

5) Carlos Camacho is now selling T-Shirts celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Coco:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158809584707641/

He also posted how he has been "repairing" old Coco and Coco related dust covers:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158812791017641/

6) Allen Huffman has started a series of articles on his Sub-Etha site titled "Benchmarking the Coco keyboard", based on a Facebook post by Jim McClellan (which was referring to detecting if a key is being held down vs. the normal INKEY$ function of just detecting the initial press down. At the end, he gets into some possible differences between emulators and real hardware. There is also a technical comment explaining the BASIC ROM code underneath, and the keyboard was handled differently between different ROM revisions.

 https://subethasoftware.com/2020/12/09/benchmarking-the-coco-keyboard-part-1/

7) Jan Voss posted some great pictures of how they used the Coco 2 to test breathing air equipment, back in 1985!

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158807132202641/

And an ebay auction showing the re-labelled Coco 2 use for this project:

 https://www.ebay.com/itm/Honeywell-Biosystems-Posichek-SCBA-Tester-Keyboard-Controller-First-Generation-/132996889270

8) Jamie Cho found an interview with Craig Federighi of Apple (Their Senior Vice President of Software Engineering), where he mentions that his first computers was a Coco, and that he thought that the 6809 was "decent processor" (it was also part of the first Mac prototypes, when Jef Raskin was still in charge of the project):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158805713392641/

The video clip mentioning the Coco:

 https://youtu.be/43sjym5ZS68?t=478

9) Chris Burke has lost most of his Coco sourcecode over the years, but he found a bit this past week: source for a version of his Cybervoice text to speech code:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158805336497641/

10) Tony Vincent posted the results of his 3D printed dual floppy drive box (in his case, with one real floppy and a Gotek)

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/permalink/2798221843770800/

11) AC's 8-Bit Zone (Alan) put up a video on how computer data was stored on cassettes in the 1980's (and 1970's, I'd wager). Includes repairing a CCR-82 Recorder (and a demo of BASIC game he used to test loading, called The Maze of Moycullen):

 https://youtu.be/UaeAWhk6R9I

12) Henry Reitveld shows photos of him using his Coco 3 with the V-Term VT100 terminal emulator to read Google News on his Coco 3:

 https://imgur.com/gallery/mD05Dr0

Game On news:

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1) Jim Gerrie released Mine Escape, a Dragon 32 BASIC game he ported to the MC-10:

 https://youtu.be/bTzjn6jMaS0

2) Cuthbert Dragon added some more Dragon game videos: Mutant War (reminds me of Spectral's Android Attack, but with much more varied opponents) Kung Fu Master Kamacarzy Ruby Robba Cosmic Crusader Galax Attax Jaws Jet Set Willy Rommel 3D Galacticans Rail Runner Willy's Revenge

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

3) Uncoda on YouTube is a YouTube user in Japan who put up a video of some Coco 1/2/3 games:

 https://youtu.be/M2_uagpL6XA

4) Just in time for Christmas, Neil Blanchard is offering the updated cartridge game Flood It!, by Evan Wright, in a new green cartridge case, for $30.00:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158810849697641/

5) Erico Patricio Monteiro put up a video showing some of his progress on his semigraphics shooter based on an Atari 8 bit game:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158803360952641/