News stories for Episode 232, October 2, 2021 show

News stories for Episode 232, October 2, 2021 show

=========================================

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

---

1) I missed it last week, but James Diffendaffer took a Mandelbrott drawing program originally written in Applesoft BASIC (he believes from the IIGS, since it ran at 3.6MHz) and ported it to Coco 3 Super Extended BASIC. James' version does a patch to BASIC to use hardware multiply instructions that speed up some of the BASIC math, by up to 40%! (Make sure to use his later code in the comments, where he fixed up the palette to have 16 unique colours).

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/imacoconut/posts/983272102523728/

(James will also be on our MC-10 special next month to talk about BASIC optimizations that he has done for their BASIC as well).

2) The Retro Channel put up there last SepTandy video, covering S-Video/Composite mods for a Coco 2, and a look into S-Video for a Dragon 32 as well - he is not sure it is worth it since the Dragon already has composite out, and would require buffering the chroma signal):

 https://youtu.be/r-88OfykB4Y

3) Retro Tech Toys put up a SepTandy video of doing some "much needed maintenance" to his 64K Coco 2 (mainly a dodgy RF connector):

 https://youtu.be/hXy7Y8Hrlks

4) Tom Parlier did a quick video showing the color palette range (showing 256 colors at once) on the GIME-X:

 https://youtu.be/lMUsH_VBP1I

5) smbakeryt (Scott Baker) on YouTube did a video showing a bunch of upgrades he did to a 16K Extended BASIC Coco 2 he got off of ebay - 64K RAM upgrade, composite video mod, making a ROM cartridge, and building a multi-pak interface, including a 3D printed case. (It should be noted that the Coco itself looks like it was never used previously):

 https://youtu.be/oeNtnRMuL4Y

6) Scottyanimation on YouTube put up a video showing how to load cassette based programs using smartphones, including making the cables. He uses the Coco 2 as the base example:

 https://youtu.be/Gi_av9M34ck

7) The Coco Crew posted episode 76 of their podcast. Of special note this week is the the tech segment on how to add commands to BASIC, a discussion on the what amount of "polish" and support one should expect to receive when ordering a developers kit version of a product, and Neil reviews powering a Coco 2 from USB:

 http://cococrew.org/

8) The Spanish channel "Retro Entre Amigos" talks about the Dragon and the Dragon game Back Track as part of their latest episode (1:08:34 for some general Dragon info, and 3:28:30 for BackTrack). Please note that this is an audio podcast (and YouTube translation is not enabled for this one), so I hope I understand this correct):

 https://youtu.be/6LM8mKInSlc

9) Noel's Retro Lab put up a video on his YouTube channel: Is the Dragon a clone of the Coco... or not? This started a debate in the Facebook comments from his linking to the video:

 https://youtu.be/D5hpLtjiKZc

10) James Diffendaffer did a raytrace demo in Super Extended Color BASIC, which takes about 13 hours to render with the double speedup POKE. It is converted from a C64 BASIC program called MARCO64, which took 30 hours to render the same image. After James gets a chance to finish cleaning up the code a bit, he will be uploading it to the I am a Coconut page on Facebook:

 (show local file raytrace_coc3_basic.png)

11) Ken at Canadian Retro Things did a new "Donation" video, which was a package from MrDave6309, and shows what he got. Includes a custom Pooyan cartridge and 3D printed case for the Coco, as well as a Coco Split joystick board, and CocoJoy board. Also includes several non-Coco related hardware items as well. Nice haul!

 https://youtu.be/s8rxUKwDs8Y

12) Tandy Assembly is on this weekend, and they did set up some video streams, but unfortunately as of last night it had been blocked for a music copyright (I assume some music playing in the background). Hopefully this can be resolved for the rest of the weekend. They get some photos up in the Coco Facebook group:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159490323182641/

13) A Youtube channel called "Retro Informatica Paraguay" put up a 14 minute video in Spanish showing a 128K Coco 3 with pistol grip joystick and a CocoSDC. It does offer close captioning you can also read it in english while it plays. He demonstrates the SDC Explorer, a couple of games, and the Ledger program in Deskmate 3:

 https://youtu.be/QKyz8oh0yKM

14) Ron's Computer Videos channel on YouTube as a last day SepTandy video, showed a litte bit of VCF Midwest (including Jason's table), and then the old Virtual Coco emulator that ran on first generation Power Macintoshes (written by Phil Stroffolino):

 https://youtu.be/EoIe_ghYNoQ

15) A new channel (to me) called "Color Computer Programming" put up a short 1 minute video showing a graphical demo of an old Atari 2600 game called Kickman, that he programmed on a Coco 1/2 emulator:

 https://youtu.be/3x0hvuXNM1s

16) Of course, the remaining SepTandy Coco video clips from Allen Huffman are all officially released now:

 https://www.youtube.com/allenhuffman/videos

17) ChibiAkumas (Keith) on YouTube has returned to the Coco 1/2 & Dragon for his assembly language tutorials. This is a Hello world program done in assembly... but using graphics and a graphical font, on a PMODE 3 (128x192x4) screen. He also announced that the next Coco/Dragon video will actually be a small game based on Duck Hunt. His other announcement is that sales for his existing cross-assembly book (which covers the Z80, 6502, 68000, etc.) was successful enough that he is planning a second one, which will be including the 6809:

 https://youtu.be/dupJerr65nY

MC-10

---

1) Juan Castro posted a link to a Github account that a listener of the Retrocomputaria podcast in Brazil made, which includes detailed, redrawn schematic for the MC-10:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/4284260068367449/

Also load the schematic from desktop; it loads really slow from Github for some reason.

Dragon 32/64

---

1)

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

==============================

1) The Coco Show's latest episode (#24 featuring Mudpies) is now out on the Amigos YouTube channel:

 https://youtu.be/NVhHlY9U5rg

2) A show that John Boatofcar Shawler is also involved with (This Week in Retro) has Glen Hewlett's Joust port as one of it's stories this week as well in episode 52:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__gggG5A5_Y&t=1020s

3) The Retrocomputing Roundtable Episode 242 on Sunday also featured Glen's Joust transcode:

 https://youtu.be/k9dJKZUz9jQ?t=5086 

4) Glen has uploaded the sourcecode for both his Joust and Defender ports for the Coco 3 to his Github:

 https://github.com/nowhereman999

5) David Gisbert put up an hour long video in Spanish on YouTube about his Dragon 200, demonstrating various games running on real hardware, all from original cartridges. (To translate, first click the CC button, and then Settings -> Autotranslate (lower right of youtube window):

 https://youtu.be/adKe3MVnOvI

6) As part of SepTandy, Jason Weber (alias Mr. Lurch's Things on YouTube) put up a video showing some of latest Coco game releases from the past year, including Glen Hewlett's latest arcade ports Joust and Defender, Nick Marentes Pipes & Rally-SG (and showing a brief bit of Zero Hour) & Chet Simpson's Digger III:

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

7) Jay Searle is working on a port of The 8 Bit Guy's PETSCII Robots game to the Coco 3... and put up a couple of screenshots showing his progress:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159489059952641/

8) MrDave6309 in our Discord put up a quick video showing some concept art / scrolling with a Battle City game clone (originally on a Nintendo) that he is thinking of doing for the Coco 3:

(use local video battlecity_Dave_Veary_test.mp4)

9) Sheldon MacDonald shared a couple of videos showing a new 3D graphics engine he is working on, that he plans to use on his next game project (make sure to reset HD for both videos):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159489793742641/

10) Robert Sieg and Jim Gerrie have uploaded an MC-10 game called Boulder Dash to the Facebook MC-10 group, and an instruction sheet for it as well:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/4277480899045366/