News stories for Episode 206, April 3, 2021 show

News stories for Episode 206, April 3, 2021 show:

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Special presentation by Alan before News:

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Alan over at AC's 8-Bit Zone has released a video showing his first tests with the prototype boards he received for his direct digital boards for Coco 1's and 2's, that has no analog circuitry at all. He should be on the show today to discuss this project in more detail.

 https://youtu.be/5VZsq050Lbk

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

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1) I don't normally talk about "gets" of Coco hardware on the news, but the haul that Anthony Kelley got this past week, and only for "coffee money" as opposed to the higher prices most Coco stuff has been going for these days, I think is newsworthy. It includes multiple Coco 1/2's (some with keyboard upgrades), multi-paks, a rare pen/plotter printer, parallel printer interface, joysticks, software and more:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10159089594047641/

2) The Coco Crew have posted a video related to a segment that they did for their 70th episode, of using a modern spreadsheet (Google docs in their case) to help design Coco artwork. I have used this technique myself for years in things like Libre Office, and it's a handy, quick and dirty way to experiment with tile and sprite style graphics:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y16R6GE7ipg

Episode 70, of which this is a part of, has been released (it also includes a review of Treasure Island Defence, an interview with Kevin Phillipson & Michael Rywalt (who are behind the Turbo9 project), and more):

 http://cococrew.org

3) Fred Provoncha has put up a 3rd video showing his progress with getting .ics calendars working on the Coco over Drivewire, but now importing events in the MultiVue Calendar app:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10159092783982641/

4) Brian "The Music Man" Schubring has posted a preview/teaser video for his upcoming "My MIDI stuff" series and goes through his setup:

 https://youtu.be/aHJliROnKEY

5) For those that want a quick program to see if you have a 6809 or 6309 CPU, Barry Nelson has uploaded a DSK image to the Coco group on Facebook to do just that:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10159101264837641/

6) The Myrkhouller Brothers channel did a quick video called "80's Technology Adventure" - firing up a Coco 2 on an old TV - to demonstrate it a little bit, including saving a quick BASIC program to tape:

 https://youtu.be/FIhae6CeTdU

MC-10

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1) Robert Sieg has done another update to his 24 bit BMP to MCX-32 128x96x4 MC-10 graphics converter. At this point it looks he is down to 25 minutes per screen. He also put up a video showing some results he has gotten showing different brightness levels:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/permalink/3747762405350554/

Dragon 32/64

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1) A bit of info on the differences between the Dragon 64 and the DraCo64 (I didn't even realize that there was such a thing) was posted to the Dragon group on Facebook:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/permalink/2876587319267585/

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

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1) Nick Marentes put up his 2nd blog entry for his new game in early development, called Zero Hour:

 https://nickmarentes.com/ZeroHour/02.html

2) Paul Shoemaker put up a graphics demo of some playing card designs that he has running with a machine language subroutine for a Coco 1/2, and and is thinking of porting some of his Coco 3 card games back to the Coco 1/2 with this engine:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10159089609022641/

He then did a further update, redesigning the deck slightly, and played around with different speeds of display:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10159092514132641/

3) Erico Patricio Monteiro put up an animated GIF demo on Facebook showing 6 sets of moves for his upcoming semigraphics fighter game (not shown at actual speed, but greatly sped up):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10159087725402641/

4) Darren Ottery put up a cool video showing his new MC-10 game "Dropship" (which requires an MCX-32, for fast loading the screens) (Note: he has a spoiler video in the comments showing the end of the game, too):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/permalink/3756296467830481/

5) Jim Gerrie has ported and extended another old game to the MC-10, this time Closeout, based partially on the original Vic-20 version from COMPUTE! magazine from March 1983:

 https://youtu.be/fTkspCmoXh8

6) Trey Tomes is itching to start a "major Coco-based software project", a game in particular, and is asking for some possible suggestions for a type of game to tackle. Join in on the discussion in Facebook:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10159101211912641/

7) Noriko Miyagami has released her full solution play through of Coco version of Zork III, with commentary:

 https://youtu.be/jvjfzBOkZAo

8) John Shawler (boatofcar) of the Amigos has posted a non-commentary sneak peek of him playing the game for their next The Coco Show episode, Springster:

 https://youtu.be/75ino6WTn9g

9) Giger Punk, who does hilarious Dragon 32 game reviews that we have shown before, did a test of live streaming multiple systems, including the Dragon 32, all on real hardware. If he schedules these in the future, it would be cool to interact with him on some of his Dragon game plays (Dragon starts around 57:30 - and the game he tests is one I have *never* seen before, but of the Star Trek style). He also gives a tour of his systems at the end:

 https://youtu.be/u5UrXdxm1jc

10) YouTube channel "La Quête des RPG" (a French channel) did a part 1 of a Dungeons of Daggorath playthrough, as part of his series of videos on attempting to play all video game RPG's, in chronological order. This part 1 video on Daggorath is his 114th day going through this. Unfortunately, YouTube Translate isn't the greatest translator, but it helps give the gist (done with CC button, and then settings). I am also not sure if he is France or Quebec, or elsewhere:

 https://youtu.be/bKsm8d6fne8

11) Tomorrow's episode of the Amigos "ARG Presents" is about type in games (from books/magazines), and both Aaron and Brent picked Coco games from Rainbow. Check the show out live on Twitch at 10 AM EST on Sunday, on the special ARGpresents channel: https://www.twitch.tv/argpresents