News stories for Episode 226, August 21, 2021 show

News stories for Episode 226, August 21, 2021 show

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

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1) The Turbo9 guys have released a new video about their pipelined 6809 processor core Masters project - this one covering the verification and toolkit that they have developed for it:

 https://youtu.be/eTlfH86KUog

2) Sheldon MacDonald has done an update to his RSDosTool utility that he showed us during his interview a few weeks ago. It can now save and load disk files from within assembly. He also shows an update to his Coco Draw program, which can now save graphic images without a header:

 https://youtu.be/N-zo6goeAuA

Sheldon also uploaded an almost hour long video on making a MIDI file on the Coco, in assembly language... from scratch (he goes into great detail about the MIDI format at the raw file structure level):

 https://youtu.be/1chlY_Gcv0E

3) Danielle O'Connor attended the Adelaide Retro Computer Group meetup last weekend, and posted about it (With some photos) in the Coco group on Facebook:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159406573407641/

4) John Kowalski (Sock Master) has been doing some experiments in graphics on the Coco 3: using 2 640x200x4 grey scale screens in composite mode ONLY (with slightly different decoding on each) and page-flipping between them, taking into account how a CRT displays the RGB individual dots for each pixel. He has 3 disk images for people to download an try on in the Coco group on Facebook (I should mention that he has uploaded several updates with tweaked algorithms to generate the pictures, too. They look quite good in real life, with a bit of a "shimmery" effect): 1st post with screenshots:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159407084322641/

Files (slideshow.dsk, slideshw1.dsk, slidesh2.dsk):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/files

New slideshow4 post (comments has screenshots):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159418445042641/

5) Richard Kelly is working on a font editor (it looks like for the Coco 1/2?), and showed an early development screenshot of it:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159409805712641/

6) John Linville posted about the October RetroChallenge, which has two categories for the month: 1) Systems release 1998-2002 (not applicable to any Coco/Dragon, etc.), and 2) Publish Your Old RetroComputing Project. This latter one is for people to document, put sourcecode up, show a schematic, etc. of any retro project one has worked on that has not been shared with the public before. There are prizes for the winners as well.

 http://www.retrochallenge.org

7( TJBChris put up a video tutorial on his YouTube page on how to program a custom Program Pak (based on the "Experimenter's Coco Cartridge" by Ian Mavric of Australia):

 https://youtu.be/u3LVrjKLSeA

8) Jose Antonio Vaca Bello put a post up in Facebook of a restoration of a Coco 3 he recently acquired (which to his surprise include a 512k upgrade already installed), and he did an awesome job of it:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159416008217641/

9) Jim Brain, the current president of the Glenside Color Computer Club, who organize CocoFest in Chicago, has put out a call to find photos from previous CocoFests to help promote the upcoming one at the beginning of November. If any of you have such photos, please share them with Jim on either the Glenside Facebook page, or to his post in the Coco Facebook group:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/290791956162/posts/10159538618606163/

MC-10

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1) Jim ported a fractal Mandelbrot set generator to the MC-10 in low res - something that I never expected to see (and because of that mode having 2x2 pixels that have to be a single color, it bleeds over itself). I will note that I did one in BASIC09 for NitrOS-9 EOU as well, that I posted in the Coco Discord, doing a 32x22 grid on the 40 column hardware text screen. Results? 59 seconds on a 6809, 35 seconds on a 6309 (I didn't try on GIME-X). That compares *Very* favourably with the other 8 bits in the video that Jim used for inspiration https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzjvvF2vRec):

 https://youtu.be/uwfZOtacfqE

Dragon 32/64

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1) Tim Gilberts uploaded a copy of a Microdeal Newsletter (issue #2 from April 1983) to the Microdeal group on Facebook:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/204334613785733/posts/824833498402505/

2) The Dragon Facebook group is trying to get a list of serial numbers of the various Dragons (32/64/200, Dragon Data, Eurohard, Tano) to help figure out how many were actually made (similar to the Coco, they aren't sure exactly how many were sold). If you own a Dragon of any stripe, please take a photo of the serial number sticker and send it the the group, and they will get added to the World of Dragon Archive listing (NOTE: As of this morning a direct link is broke, but the original post is still in the timeline, so will be showing that):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/2976539359272380/

Current list on world of dragon:

 https://archive.worldofdragon.org/index.php?title=Serial_Numbers

3) Due to some technical difficulties, last weeks DragonTalk! special got broken up into 4 parts (due to having to restarting the stream). Stevie worked for hours on it on Sunday, to create a combined single episode (with the extra bits of us trying to get the stream regoing removed), so it is now a single svelte 6 hour 5 minute episode, now available as a video or audio podcast, and also a single YouTube video:

 https://youtu.be/NNDDh1ZLkYg

4) Tony Jewell is looking for some input on having their first Dragon meetup in 2 years at the Centre for Computing History in Cambridge. Tentative dates that he is thinking of are October 9-10 or October 30-31. He has some other questions for people who would like to attend; please respond to him on the Facebook Dragon group:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/2977489665844016/

5) For those enamored with the SuperSprite FM+ board that John Whitworth showed us on DragonTalk! last week, John has now created a special Facebook page for the piece of hardware (which features sprite and sound hardware, and should work on all Coco's and Dragons). One of the things he has already posted is a preliminary User/Developer Guide:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/277387053720893

6) I posted in the Dragon Facebook group an article (and chart, that I am showing here), that is based on charts published in Personal Computer News. These charts showed the top 20 home computer brands (by sales) for each two week period from the July 9-23, 1983 period through to the end of 1983. A bit surprising is how well the Dragon 32 did during this time - it was 2nd place for 4 of the first 5 two week periods listed, only behind the Spectrum. By the end of the year it was in 7th place. The Tandy Coco (which sold for more than the Dragon in the UK) started in 20th place and ended in 17th, but had gotten up to 11th at one point. The chart:

 https://regmedia.co.uk/2013/01/03/chart.png

7) Chris Poacher pointed out that Noel's Retro Lab channel on YouTube put up a video "Mail Day - The Case of the Smelly Dragon", where he goes through a bunch of unboxings, and the first thing up was the Dragon 64 in an original box... but it has a "burnt elecronics" small and was listed as not working. It is actually one of the ones manufactured by Eurohard in Spain. (play first 2:44 - everything else is non Coco/Dragon related)

 https://youtu.be/PbQDdJymISw

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

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0) Glen Hewlett released the transcode of the arcade Joust game to the Coco 3, and was going to be here to talk about it and answer questions, but at the last minute he unfortunately wasn't able to make it. He will be on the show on September 18 for a full length interview about all of his transcodes (including the Defender one he has picked up again, after learning things on Joust), and his Coco history in general:

 https://nowhereman999.wordpress.com/2021/08/17/joust-is-now-available-for-the-coco-3/

Antonio Carlos Jimenez Ely posted a quick video of it in action (via VCC) on Facebook (see in comments). I can attest it looks this good on the real thing on an RGB CRT monitor:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159413954607641/

1) Jim Gerrie shared the game Theseus and the Monster for the Coco 1/2 (not the MC-10 for a change!) that demonstrates the obscure SG6 mode. It only allows 2 colors and black (your choices are blue/red/black or purple/orange/black) but a slightly higher resolution (64x48 instead of 64x32) while using the same amount of RAM as the normal 64x32 screen (512 bytes):

 https://youtu.be/wRUzR041n2M

2) Paul Shoemaker released a video showing 30 animated bird sprites that uses compiled sprites to redraw the birds during each VBLANK. He actually had to slow it down to make the animations properly visible:

 https://www.facebook.com/paul.shoemaker.169/videos/393176372435083/

3) Chris Poacher put a link on the Dragon Facebook group to a video on YouTube from a 1980's computer show from the UK called "Magic Micro Mission", which had the Dragon version of Cuthbert Goes Walkabout as one of the games shown and talked about:

 https://youtu.be/D3B9-naSEJs?t=1245

4) Cuthbert Dragon put up more game videos. If the panel would like see / comment on any of the ones new this week, they ca. (Castle of Doom (BASIC I think), Great Fish Van Scandal (text adventure), Laser Zone, Lunar Rescue (BASIC), Jupiter Patrol (Moon Patrol clone by Aardvark, likely originally Coco), Treasure Tomb (low res RPG/adventure game), Attack (Defender style game - but no radar, and once you shoot a ship, you rescue it and land it on the ground?), Evictor, Android Invaders, Convoy Attack, Bugged (I think a semi-graphics 24 Pengo style game?), Jumpjet, Shuttlezap and he even did Ciaran's Blockdown on Wednesday:

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

5) Episode 23 of The Coco Show from Boat and Aaron is out on YouTube, spotlighting Pitstop II:

 https://youtu.be/3afpHLEgqqo

They are also live recording next months show on Sunday (roughly scheduled for 5 PM EST (but could be a bit earlier/later) on their Twitch channel) which will feature Mudpies.

 https://www.twitch.tv/amigosretrogaming/videos

6) Old School Games & Stories did a playthrough of Mega Bug - his first video game:

 https://youtu.be/bX5lWfep86w

7) Jason Arnopp's Terrifying House of Obsession YouTube Channel did a Dragon 32 unboxing video... but of Dragon 32 games (and a huge lot of them! Including Buzzard Bait, Jet Set Willy and Donkey King and many, many more):

 https://youtu.be/4A7c6ZXUp0k

8) Rob's Retro Rambles played Copta Snatch on the Dragon for his current video. It's a high res semigraphics game similar to Scramble, but with some difference (you have to land on a pad to refuel, rather than bombing fuel tanks... which makes a lot more sense; and you control the scrolling in both directions, rather a constant scrolling landscape):

 https://youtu.be/ZZpGdG2gZ_E

9) MrDave6309 has been further testing his sprite engine (6309 based), and put up a video recording of VCC running his current test/demo. Considering he has only been learning assembly for about a year, it's pretty impressive how far he has gotteh:

 https://youtu.be/xhzJjI184lc

10) Francesco Fiorentini posted about an article (in Italian) for RetroMagazine World about the RPG game "Valley of Death" for the Dragon, written in BASIC:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/2980576655535317/
 https://www.retromagazine.net/valley-of-death-dragon-32-64-basic/