News stories for Episode 197, January 30, 2021 show

News stories for Episode #197, January 30, 2021 show:

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1) Richard Harding posted some photos of his test fitting his USB Dragon keyboard case (still a work in progress):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/permalink/2830246640568320/

2) Simon Jonassen has uploaded the .BIN file of his Coco 3 Mandelbrott renderer (currently takes 9 minutes) - a work in progress version of his machine language conversion from the original BASIC version.

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158923628027641/

He also posted a brief clip of start of the song "Popcorn" translated from MIDI:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158927388372641/

3) Jim Brain of RETRO Innovations posted that he has got the Coco Flashpak working to allow autobooting of custom ROM images (including up to 512K using the same technique as the "Super-ROM paks" like Predator and Robocop), that works in all 3 Coco's and both Dragon's. It can be programmed from the Coco itself, and fits into a standard game cartridge case:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158932213797641/

4) The Coco Crew has released episode 68, which includes a tech segment by Ron Klein about doing software development on the CocoPi, Neil's review of the latest SDC Explorer release, and a discussion on whether "Ease of Use" matters for hobbyists. Spoiler alert: I side with Neil on this one, and not so much the rest of the panel. I did send the show an email with my take on it, and different levels of "ease of use" that are different to different people. Might be a good topic for use to talk about as well.

 http://cococrew.org

5) Fabian Rodriguez posted a photo from the French Quebec 1984 Radio Shack catalog, showing it's Coco 2 ad, with both french and Canadian pricing:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158939071617641/

6) Antonio Carlos Jimenez Ely upload a re-mastered manual for the Tandy High Resolution Interface to the Coco Facebook group (in MS Word format):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158933688402641/

He also posted the results of a collaboration with Paul Shoemaker on being able to reproduce the original box the High Res Interface came in:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158927524427641/

7) Joel Rees posted a link to his blog in the Coco Facebook group, which is the first of C language tutorial series. This particular one should work fine in both the Microware C compiler (CC) and in Jeff's newer DCC that is included in EOU.

 https://joels-programming-fun.blogspot.com/2021/01/looking-deeper-into-hello-world-in-c-char-type-characters-strings.html

8) Gary Moulton posted a small machine language subroutine in the Dragon group (should work on a Coco as well, I think), which will let you use the USR function in BASIC to convert a string to all uppercase, very quickly:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/permalink/2830844773841840/

9) The Retro Channel has an update to his SVideo/Composite mod that he did back for SepTandy, and he also has a chat with Mr. Lurch about his Coco 1, and fixing up the video on that as well. He also gave a shoutout to AC's 8 Bit Zone for his video circuit as well (he also mentions that he will be doing a Component adaptor in a future episode):

 https://youtu.be/EonH8vyYSAs

10) The ABug channel on YouTube (which is the Acorn & BBC Micro User Group), has a video presentation by Ian Bradbury, showing how to make an RGB to HDMI converter not only for the Acorn and BBX - but it also works on the Dragon, ZX Spectrum and others (and uses a Raspberry Pi). You can see a Dragon in the background of the presenter as well:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxoyYMmCtTs

11) EOU Beta 6.0.1 is now also available on the Color Computer Archive, and the Matchbox Coco version is now up to 6.0.1 on the main EOU page as well (and should be on the archive soon).

Game On news:

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1) RichN has released his port of Spacewar! for the Coco 1/2. He has made a a couple of videos for it, and even released the ASM source code. It should be on the Color Computer archive by the time this airs. (my folder "Clips for Cocotalk" has the videos, etc. saved from Discord).

2) Sheldon MacDonald put up yet another video demo update to his upcoming Semigraphics-8 game, featuring 4 way scolling, indoor/outdoor scenes, tile collision, etc. It's coming along really well!

 https://www.facebook.com/sheldon.macdonald.733/videos/10164816158005361/

3) Jim Gerrie has an update to his MC-10 game "Speed Demon" (slightly faster, doesn't leave a trail of your car anymore), originally a type in game called "Road Race" by Tom Rugg & Phil Feldman:

 https://youtu.be/o32eWVldSMo

4) The Digital Orphanage (museum) in the UK has released part 3 of their refurbishing Dragon series. In part 2 he had mentioned that he wasn't overly impressed with the games that he had tried. In this episode, he fixes/cleans a few more Dragons, and tries some games suggested by viewers, which he was more impressed with. One in particular I wanted to highlight is the playable demo (not complete) of Return of the Beast by Stewart Orchard. We have shown some video demos of the playfield before, but not the awesome intro screen music, which features a 3 channel music player by Ciaran with digitized instruments. He also mentions that the source is available on GitHub:

 https://youtu.be/29GpzTpqqQ4?t=488

5) Richard Harding in the Dragon Facebook group has released re-mastered, high quality versions of the famous "Cuthbert player" logo:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/permalink/2833963310196653/

6) Tor-Eirik Bakke Lunde has an update to his Atari->Dragon joystick converter; you can now get the files to make one from his GitHub:

 https://github.com/tebl/D32-Joystick-Adapter

7) Jim Gerrie has been playing around with the MC-10 cross-compiler (by Greg Dionne) that we talked about last week, and has videos of two games that he has compiled (there is a noticeable speed difference): Scramble:

(Original uncompiled version):
 https://youtu.be/3HOXjozV4RY
(New compiled version)
 https://youtu.be/8wjatkcwslQ

Lode Runner:

(Original uncompiled version):
 https://youtu.be/7FgsFaCGlGs
(New compiled version)
 https://youtu.be/4aYnSvxo3EI

He has also put up videos of compiled Chess & compiled "Conway's Game of Life".

8) Cuthbert Dragon is apparently revamping their Dragon game play videos - all of the old ones were erased, and now he is doing 2 related to each other games per 3 minute episode, and trying to show as many levels/features of each game (ie snakes & alligators in Frogger, All 5 levels and the win screen in Skramble, etc.):

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

9) Simonwgb on Twitch/YouTube did 3 longplay game videos of Dragon/Coco games in XRoar:

 https://youtu.be/HEgrxM0Q-5o
 https://youtu.be/3FvP5t2lV8k
 https://youtu.be/oW7LO37Vz9Y