News stories for Episode 220, July 10, 2021 show

News stories for Episode 220, July 10, 2021 show:

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

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1) Richard Kelly has posted a PDF on the Coco Facebook group that explains how his maze generating program works (the one we talked about last week):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159324577537641/

He also put up a YouTube video explaining it (and demoing the Coco 3 specific version):

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcNzbNiGo_8

2) Pedro Pana has been experimenting with the RGBtoHDMI adaptors, comparing the base 8 colors of the Coco 1/2 on an old style NTSC tube TV to what the HDMI output is. Some colors are pretty dead on, but some are definitely off a bit: CLS colors:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPlHFHk4y48

Game colors/artifacting:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPttAgc3Bog

3) Michael Golden shared a picture of his Coco 1 from back in the 1980's that he modified pretty heavily. While I have seen "RAM write protect" switches before (I way to load copies of copy protected cartridge ROM's to their proper address in RAM, and then you would flip the switch to disallow the Coco from overwrite the upper 32K), the CPU activity lights (based on which 4K RAM area was being read (green light) or written to (red light) I have never seen before. Awesome "hackers" computer!

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159334496267641/

4) Nik Bresievac posted the gerbers up on the Coco Facebook group for a "small tactile switch Coco 1 keypad:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159330996647641/

He also made a separate post of him resurrecting his Coco 1 with an SVideo circuit, and a joystick/paddle that he custom made that also is tied into the keyboard matrix so that you can steer keyboard based games (that use the arrow keys) with the joystick as well!

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159329414182641/

5) John Whitworth (who is going to be one of our *many* guests on next month's CocoTalk Dragon Special episode!) is taking suggestions for making an updated name for his MSX2+ board. Since it is now being targeted for both Dragons and Coco's, and some people were confused by the MSX2+ moniker (thinking it was actually a full MSX2 board on a card, rather than just the graphics and sound chips), he wants to rename it to something that is less confusing to the general public, and suggests that it is both Dragon and Coco compatible. John might have picked his final name already, but just in case, you can try leaving a suggestion to John on the Coco or Dragon Facebook groups:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159330950367641/

6) Jacob over at Newsmaker Tech on YouTube (whom we covered a fair bit during SepTandy last year), put up a video of his favourite top 5 Tandy computers. Guess which computer came out as #1? (about 5:35 in)

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-CqbOK7IRE

7) Sheldon MacDonald posted about an update to his RS Dostool on Facebook this morning:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159338408952641/

MC-10

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Dragon 32/64

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Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

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1) tanam 1972 posted a video about Gakken TV Boy (200X) (not sure what it is) running on the MC-10, which appears to be a medium resolution ML arcade game on the MC-10 that I have never seen before:

 https://youtu.be/wbMYrl1-PUQ

2) Nick Marentes has part 8 of his Zero Hour blog up:

 https://nickmarentes.com/ZeroHour/08.html

3) The Amigos have released a preview/no commentary video of the game they will be reviewing next month, Pitstop II:

 https://youtu.be/Zhzn6y2l8SQ

4) Cuthbert Dragon added some more gameplay videos (hopefully they stay up this time): (of note: Decathlon (not Olympic, and written in BASIC I believe), Dragon 32 Invaders, Desperado Dan (which we have seen before, but now shows the 2nd and 3rd screens with sea creatures & cars/houses, respectively), Taskship (Scramble type game), Sporting Decathlon (another BASIC game by the looks of it), Fantasy Fight, Albert and the Monsters (Space Panic clone), Kriegspiel, Crazy Foota 3.

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

5) Jim Gerrie has posted another MC-10 game port, with some rather interesting history - Blastar, originally written by 12 year old Elon Musk (yes, *that* Elon Musk!) and published in a computer magazine in 1984):

 https://youtu.be/rcNOjOm688g

6) MrDave6309 posted a video on our Discord showing what he has learned so far using hardware vertical scrolling on the Coco 3, as part of his upcoming game mega-project: (show file save to local desktop)