News stories for Episode 219, July 3, 2021 show

News stories for Episode 219, July 3, 2021 show:

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

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1) During this months TRS-80 Trash Talk live show/podcast, Peter Bartlett of Bartlett labs mentioned a Coco card that he is working on that has a multitude of hardware on it (SD hard drives, Ethernet, floppy controller, switch selectable booting of Coco 1,2,3 and HDBDOS, VGA out):

 https://youtu.be/fntCPnqzZuw?t=2442

2) The Coco Crew has released episode 73, which includes a discussion about "CocoMania @ Tandy Assembly", which is what they are calling a Coco oriented Tandy Assembly this year, an interview with Torsten Dittel (who also helped us arrange our interview with Stefan last week), a rant by Neil on ebay, and a technical discussion on how to figure out if you are on a Coco 1 or 2, in software: cococrew.org

3) Ron Klein has announced that the latest version of the CocoPi is coming out soon, which will be a "universal" release that covers the RPi3,RPi4 and RPi400:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/748644118674047/posts/1595057920699325/

4) Richard Kelly has uploaded his latest "Retro Rick's Maze-making Algoritm" program (3.99D). The code is shrunk a bit. You can download it from the Coco Facebook group:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159318721877641/

5) Tony Jewell posted a question on the Facebook Coco group asking about how to convert a PAL-M version of the CP-400 Coco clone to run on NTSC. While that itself is not news, the photo he put up showing the CP-400 Color and CP-400 Color II (which show the switch from Coco 1 style chiclet keyboard to a more modern keyboard), is one of the best quality ones that I have seen:

 https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10160719694286756&set=gm.10159318367222641

6) The latest Glenside Color Computer Club newsletter (full color 60 page PDF... is this an online magazine now instead of just a newsletter) is available for free download:

 https://www.glensideccc.com/coco123-summer-2021-issue-ready/

7) Bill Pierce announced VCC 2.1.0d is out now, and it's enhancements include: VCC v2.1.0d ???(July?)/2021 - Fixed bug which cause certain RSDOS word processors (EliteWord, VIP Writer, etc.) to skip every other line of text. -James Rye - Eliminated the "Allow Resize" checkbox as I feel it's redundant. You should always be able to resize. - Bill Pierce - Reset a few "default" values that had gotten changed. - Bill Pierce - Add a "Custom KeyMap Editor" for making custom keymaps. - EJ Jaquay - Mapped "BREAK" to "F12" (as well as "ESCAPE") to facilitate using <CNTRL><BRK> used by some games/applications. - Bill Pierce - Updated the Manual - Bill Pierce

 https://github.com/VCCE/VCC/releases/tag/v2.1.0d?fbclid=IwAR0FUIY2hmtslNesn-m5EKcuxUioMw9LkwIIGaEkKrOa8FQl9os3wvRT6Ws

NOTE: There was a bug fix issued this morning for an issue using the arrow keys for joysticks.

8) David K on YouTube did a video showing a Coco Koala Touchpad he picked up at a garage sale, and some of the same quirks I noticed on it (like auto-centering when you lift the stylus):

 https://youtu.be/5qnA4_awTpU

9) Michael Pittsley put up a full series of videos showing Dorsett Courseware's Personal Finance multi-media educational software for the Coco 1/2. There are 16 lessons in all, and the videos range from about 11 & 1/2 minutes to 22 minute each:

 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQ5i3YBYt0KHcSxJab-KqNZGOKARWUCMf

MC-10

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1) Pedro Pena (Rocky Hill on YouTube) posted a video showing hooking up his MC-10 to HDMI using an RGB to HDMI converter. He is getting a beautiful picture out of it, which he demonstrates with both the full VDG character set, and a quick demo of the MC-10 ML Tetris game:

 https://youtu.be/DVpewK6XRqk

Dragon 32/64

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1) Dragon Plus Electronics has released an updated history of the development of his Dragon MSX 2+ board (The one with sprites, etc.). John Whitworth will be ordering the final gold immersed boards for the kits very soon:

 https://www.dragonplus-electronics.co.uk/dragon-msx-2-board/

John also put up a video showing him booting NitrOS-9 Level 1 for the 80 columns onthe MSX 2" board (he mentioned elsewhere that the RF on the 32 column monitor was particularly bad, but since that wasn't the purpose of the quick video, he didn't bother trying to fix it up):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159317218552641/

He also did a quick sound demo playing "Hey Jude" based on the sound chip included in the MSX2+:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159316972292641/

He also did a demo video to show off the card as a whole... all written in a modified BASIC, from what I can tell:

 https://youtu.be/REYXSoapkUI

He additionally did another video showing the first tests of using the Wordpak 2+ board's V9958, which uses some ML code from Pere Serrat, showing some of the color capabilities (video quality wasn't the best, John suspects his SCART cable):

 https://youtu.be/Yn7IGPhkcDg

2) For those interested in what modern solutions are available for mass storage on real Dragon computers, and what features each of them support, user "Bluearcus" on the World of Dragon forums created a Google Doc to do just that (which compares the DragonMMC, CocoSDC, DragonDrive, Gotek & Drivewire):

 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1W_kEev31ZjU_dEl1U_upCMeQsvo-QG2Ez7yI-aXB_aQ/edit#gid=0

3) Now that the MSX2+ board is stable, extensions to MAME allow use of it for developers, etc. So Nigel Barnes has posted a link on the Dragon page on Facebook to get the new version of MAME that adds support for both the MSX2+ board, and now the Multipak as well, to the Dragon emulation:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/2942948849298098/

Also in support of this, John Whitworth has also uploaded a file to the Dragon group that contain the ROM's to enable the hardware, and includes some of the sample games that Pere Serrat has ported over to use the new hardware (either via MAME or the real thing). As usual, you will have to rename the extension to .ZIP:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/2943091595950490/

(NOTE: Tim Lindner will demo those, be he can't join the show until ~ 3 pm EST)

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

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1) Cuthbert Dragon has some more unique Dragon gameplay videos:

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

Notables for the show:

 Dragon Hawk
 Return of the Ring
 Lucifer's Kingdom (This is an updated video from his previous one, showing some of the different planets you travel to).

2) Jim Gerrie has a video up for the Beta version of his port of Walter Bright's 4X Ur game "Empire" for the MC-10 (the original is a turn based wargame, finalized in 1977 (Walter originally started it in 1971) for the PDP-10 minicomputer. It was later ported to a variety of systems (C64, Apple II, DOS, Window, Atari ST, Amiga):

 https://youtu.be/GNkI1t8XceU

3) Tim Lindner pointed out that a new documentary on FPS (First Person Shooter games) is currently on Kickstarter, and has a trailer out. It actually briefly shows the 1982 game Phantom Slayer from the Coco (near the beginning, and again briefly at the end):

 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fandamental/first-person-shooter-the-definitive-fps-documentary?ref=dmpqmb

4) The "I only did it fort he Calculator Watch" channel on YouTube did a video for the game Black Hole for the Dragon 32 - two versions of it (one from 1983, one from 1984), that came from one of the Cassette 50 collections. The games are quite different:

 https://youtu.be/KRrOb4TIeVY

5) Pedro Pana did a game play video of Nick Marentes recent semigraphics game Rall SG - but using his Coco 2 with an RGB to HDMI convert playing on his modded iMac G3 monitor:

 https://youtu.be/uUvrFmTp6_U