News stories for Episode 218, June 26, 2021 show

News stories for Episode 218, June 26, 2021 show:

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

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1) Steve Norton has uploaded the design for a slot cover for the MegaMiniMPI (from zippsterzone.com) for those that one spacers rather than just open connectors, to thingiverse.com:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159301475402641/

2) Sheldon MacDonald put up a video showing his progress in flashing the PSG card ROM's, right from the Coco, which he eventually will have a menu select for multiple gams on the ROM:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159304910127641/

3) Glen Hewlett posted a blog entry about some of the copy protection routines he found when going through the William's arcade game Joust, which he is attempting to transcode to the Coco 3. The fact that he found multiple layers of it has him now suspecting that the reason his earlier transcode of Defender (which he has demoed at CocoFest) was randomly crashing may be because he had not found/disabled *all* of the protection in that game, which increases the chances that he may be able to finish that one:

 https://nowhereman999.wordpress.com/2021/06/23/found-some-copy-protection-code-in-joust/

4) Brenda Make posted a review of the Cloud9 Triad 512K RAM upgrade she just installed in her Coco 3:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/1929079184021683/posts/2889862481276677/

5) Nice Keyboard Alan on YouTube (who was contemplating selling his Coco 3 in a previous video we watched), has decided to keep it for awhile, and actually has it set up now in a computer store so other people can try it out. He is now in the midst of moving, so he likely he won't have any new videos for a few weeks:

 https://youtu.be/PXNnFIp0WO8

6) Table & dinner registrations for this November's rescheduled CocoFest are now open on the tandylist website:

 https://www.tandylist.com/

MC-10

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1)

Dragon 32/64

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1) Dragon Plus Electronics now has the Dragon Plus Board available in kit form for £65.00 (this is an upgrade for the Dragon 64, Dragon 200, or a Dragon 32 upgraded to 64K). This is the board that features: - 80 column monochrome display - runs on a second monitor, leaving your VDG screen still useful (with the right software) - Has drivers for EDIT128, Flex and OS-9. - dedicated video RAM on board, so it does not take system RAM in OS-9 or Flex - 64K additional RAM that can be set up as a RAM Drive It now includes an extra 40 pin DIL socket for re-socketing your SAM chip. The board design is based on the original from 1985 that was sold commercially at the time.

 https://www.dragonplus-electronics.co.uk/product/dragonplus-board-for-dragon-32-or-64-kit/

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

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1) Darren Atkinson has ported the Infocom Z-Machine to run on MC-10's (or clones) with the MCX32-SD upgrade expansion. It should play most (if they fit) version 3 stories using that engine:

 https://groups.io/g/MC-10/message/19

Download link for the program:

 https://bit.ly/MCX_Z_Machine

Download link for a fair number of the Infocom files to try with it:

 https://eblong.com/infocom/#zork1

2) Cuthbert Dragon has done some other Dragon game videos for games that I have not seen before:

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

Of note: Folly Farm's Chicken Run, Lucifer's Kingdom, Dragon2 (This seems to be 3 different games in one? not sure if this came as a pack?), Pooyan (which uses a different color set than the US version), Olympia, Total Eclipse

3) CRT Worlds on YouTube did a 1 minute live play demo of Dungeons of Daggorath:

 https://youtu.be/YY0k3GhtPzM

4) Rob's Retro Rambles reviews Starman Jones in Caverns of Chaos on the Dragon:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryU3lY_8RFs

5) MrDave6309 on our Discord put up a video showing his use of the hardware scroll register for his upcoming Coco 3 game (on VCC in this video): (use local copy of video on my desktop hardware_scrolling_game_demo.mp4):