News stories for Episode 204, March 20, 2021 show

News stories for Episode 204, March 20, 2021 show:

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Ron Delvaux isn't able to make it today, but he wanted me to show a on, rare system he picked up at Goodwill this week - a 1978 console called the Olympian 2600 by Unisonic:

 https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=5901405573218995&set=a.100554473304163

Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)

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1) TJBChris released a YouTube video showing an insane idea - booting OS-9 Level 2 from *cassette*. This is based on the ROM boot version:

 https://youtu.be/dNbaDJ0NNHw

2) Simon Jonassen put up both a video and a download for an entry he submitted to the lovebyte sizecoding contest this past weekend - in the 256 bytes maximum program size category: Video:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10159057860897641/

Download link on Facebook:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10159057907472641/

Sourcecode link on Facebook:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10159057894622641/

3) Roger Voss posted in interesting question in the Coco Facebook group, which has over 50 answers already: "Do people that love the CoCo computers love it because of its uncharacteristic but very cool Motorola 6809 8-bit CPU (with some 16-bit instructions), or do they just love it because, say, it's their first computer?"

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10159054376877641/

4) Mike Rowen of the The Coco Crew podcast has put out the first episode of a series of planned videos titled "Retro Printing for Fun and Profit": Part 1, which goes through the DMP-130, how it hooks up to the Coco & how the RS-232C between the Coco and the printer works, and a teaser of adding a Raspberry PI in the next episode to allow printing from a modern PC, and wireless printing:

 https://youtu.be/jYv-V4fLBUc

Part 2, which goes through getting the Raspberry PI (Zero in this case) and setting it up (Both hardware and software). But not including the CUPS printing system yet:

 https://youtu.be/Y9g4qZK9E1I

Part 3 is setting up the CUPS printing system on the PI (part 1):

 https://youtu.be/vuQ5ztTEP7E

Part 4 is setting up the CUPS printing system on the PI (part 2):

 https://youtu.be/TsYycpQLKK0

5) Boisy Pitre has put up a new website devoted to his Ghidorah networking project for the Coco, that we have talked about before:

 http://www.pitre.org/retrocomputing/ghidorah/

He also has a site set up where you can access some Coco's he has set up on Ghidorah using a Raspberry Pi Zero W:

 http://teeboy.dyndns.org:8020

6) Fabian Rodriguez recently fixed his Coco 3, and posted about it on Facebook. He also posted the question "How did YOU get started soldering/hacking/upgrading your Coco?" If you are one of the hardware hacking type people, please join in the responses on Facebook (note that the video and photos shown are from his original post when it wasn't working):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10159062714767641/

7) Doug Masten has released a 6809/6309 decompressor for the ZX0 compression/decompression format originally developed by Einar Saukus. It does both a high compression ratio and "extremely simple fast decompression". The decompression routines (which he has the ASM sourcecode free for download for both CPU's) are very small; the 6809 one is 95 bytes, the 6309 is 75 bytes (Turbo is 126 bytes). I think you have to get the compression program and run it on a more modern platform, but then you can save your compressed data/programs to disk, and use Doug's routines to expand them in memory (thus fitting larger programs on)

 https://github.com/dougmasten/zx0-6x09

8) Bill Pierce mentioned on the Coco list that VCC 2.1.0d is due out next month (April), which in addition to some bug fixes, will also have a keymap editor so that you can make custom keymaps.

 (no link)

9) A bit of history to note (that we have had discussions with Danielle O'Connor about some of it) that was mentioned on the Facebook 6809/6309/6800 Assembly group, talking about the 6809's place in music history with synthesizers (including the Fairlight II and higher, and the PPG):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/6809assembly/permalink/2586922518267781/

10) There was a discussion topic brought up at the latest Glenside meeting (suggested by Boisy Pitre) about bringing about a new animal based mascot for CocoFests (not the Coco Cat, which is still copyrighted). Current president Jim Brain posted about this on the Glenside Facebook group, and is asking for some possible suggestions, which should likely be a short name starting with a "C" or "K" (so it can be Coco XXXX). If you have any suggestions, please leave them in the comments (more details here as well):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/290791956162/permalink/10159178934711163/

11) Also from the Glenside meeting - with the likelihood of a physical CocoFest happening on it's new November date for this year, there was discussion of having some virtual gathering near the end of April (when the Fest would normally have been). It was basically decided not to have a virtual Fest, but a Glenside virtual gathering/open house around that time, with specific details to come:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/290791956162/permalink/10159168597666163/

12) A request came to me from Aaron Ishmael, looking for information on two Coco titles for education that Radio Shack sold. These were in a series called "History of Technology". They were fairly expensive, as you can see from this image from the 1985 catalog, and would have been cassette based (since the ad mentions that it includes recorded speech). Does anyone on the panel have either of these, or knows more about them?

 (load local "History of Technology" jpg)

MC-10

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1) Robert Sieg posted about an update to his 24 bit BMP to MC-10 128x96x4 graphics converter. He has been optimizing it. His original version took 4 to 6 hours (in BASIC on the MC-10); he now has it down to 42 minutes, and figures that he can cut that to around 39 minutes fairly easily. He then plans on adding some ML subroutines to cut it even further. Full details of his progress on the MC-10 Facebook page:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/permalink/3718828521577276/

2) Jim McClellan posted on the MC-10 group about his getting his TP-10 thermal printer working, including how to get paper that works for it:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/permalink/3718600571600071/

Dragon 32/64

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1) David F. Gisbert showed off his Dragon 200 setup - including MMC card adaptor (Similar to the CocoSDC, but with some unique features all it's own - like cassette image support), and a double 9 pin Atari joystick adaptor:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/permalink/2866162023643448/

2) Matt Kaye has made his Dragon 32 exact replica replacement stickers available, for £5 a pair (note: mentions that Dragon 64 ones are also forthcoming):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/permalink/2865403623719288/

3) For people trying to run cassette based software on a disk based Dragon, and who don't want to have to unplug the controller each time, Philippe Hennebert posted a link to a small BASIC program that will detach the controller in software to do just that (originally from Dragon User magazine). I do know that a similar program for the Coco exists as well:

 http://archive.worldofdragon.org/index.php?title=Dragon_Notebook#.28A.29_DETACH_DOS

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

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1) Erico Patricio Monteiro has a small graphical demo update showing his tweaking of his semigraphics fighting game's character graphics:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10159056033532641/

He also put up an animated GIF that shows the different movements you can do:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10159069550102641/

2) Jim Gerrie released another 10 liner entry, called Acey Ducey, which is based on a game by Bill Palmby from 1978. It's a game where two cards are dealt, and then you bet if you think the 3rd card dealt will be between the first 2 or not:

 https://youtu.be/VgPOD572fCI

He also released an update to his port Tim Hartnell's chess, so that it can play against itself. He does warn that 1) it is not particularly good, and 2) it still has bugs:

 https://youtu.be/3IIPXZrzLnY

3) Cuthbert Dragons added some more long play gaming videos for the Dragon, including a 3 part full gameplay of BackTrack:

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

4) The Laird's Lair channel on YouTube has a series of comparison videos (which show the same game playing on 4 different platforms, including sound on each), and this week he does Berserk between the ZX Spectrum, C64, Dragon 32 and Atari 8 bit. He chose Color Berserk from Mark Data Products, but since he is playing on an emulated PAL Dragon, there is no color:

 https://youtu.be/E8ijCIFNpCU

5) David F. Gisbert started a poll on the Dragon Facebook page on what are the most beloved games for the Dragon, which has 38 entries so far, with Chuckie Egg in the lead at the time of this writing with 29 votes, followed by Manic Miner (21 votes) and Donkey King (16 votes) to round out the top 3:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/permalink/2864230413836609/