News stories for Episode 234, October 16, 2021 show

News stories for Episode 234, October 16, 2021 show

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

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1) John Strong showed on Facebook his new 3D printed case to hold a Raspberry PI 400 in a Coco like case - keyboard and all. $50 plus shipping, and available now (it should be noted that the back panels are an extra $5.00 each). Unfortunately, John is only currently taking orders via Facebook Messenger (and I know some of our viewers will not use Facebook, for anything):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/748644118674047/posts/1666219396916510/

2) James Diffendaffer put up a video showing rotating a 3D image of a Teapot in BASIC, comparing stock BASIC with Jame's patched BASIC that uses the 6809 hardware 8 bit multiple instructions:

 https://youtu.be/HN9qbnYNsxg

3) Sheldon MacDonald has started building a webpage for all of his projects, and currently has the downloads section up, which includes downloads for his RSDosTool programmer/disk manager, and his PSG Boot loader:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159502998042641/

Download site:

 http://www.smotion3d.net/downloads.html

4) John Whitworth posted some software ZIP files for the SuperSprite FM+ board, both written by Pere Serrat. One is a color graphic bars demo, and the other is a full compilation tookit:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/277387053720893/posts/308657543927177/

5) Tim Lindner has started a Google doc list of all the disk & cassette image utilities for the Coco and Dragon, which you can add to if he has missed any:

 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17RfYWQbUhSIsSn2DG_L12IN5wdcXCChApmeZZNbsnhU/edit#gid=0

6) Paul Fiscarelli is putting together a little utility to ID your base Coco hardware specs (works on emulators too), including Coco 1/2/3, GIME or VDG version, amount of RAM, and which versions of the ROM's you have installed. He demoed it on Discord last night (which I missed) - can anybody here comment on it?

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159513328122641/

7) Allen Huffman put up an interesting poll in the Coco Facebook group: How do you Coco? You can add multiple answers if you use more than one method (options are like "real hardware with modern add-ons", "100% retro hardware", various software and hardware emulation solutions:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159510445897641/

8) Robert Gault uploaded DWPRINT (for BASIC) to the Facebook Coco group - this program lets you print from the Coco (in BASIC, using PRINT #-2, etc.) to your host PC through Drivewire (creating a text file on the host PC). Barry Nelson in the comments linked to an Epson printer emulator that is another way to accomplish something similar:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159508480517641/

9) Christopher English found issues of his "Color Computer Connection" newsletter that was completely done on the Coco 3 back in 1988, which he did while in high school using Home Publisher. Hopefully they get scanned in and put into the archive:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159507829967641/

10) Simon Slaytor published photos of his Coco 1 after he finished refurbishing and upgrading it - from 16K to 64K, adding Extended BASIC, repainting the case, replacement keyboard, etc.:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159506510912641/

11) Color Computer Programming on YouTube put up several new BASIC program demo's on his YouTube channel this week:

 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq8e7rmnX95GZuou36i0t5Q

12) Allen Huffman continues to explore how GET/PUT works in Extended BASIC, and how to optimize memory usage for it (which is completely different than what the Extended BASIC manual says):

 https://youtu.be/8mbpRjlWOZw

MC-10

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1) Simon Jonassen added a new 3 voice music demo video for the MC-10 to the MC-10 Facebook group:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159511076292641/

Dragon 32/64

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1) John Whitworth @ DragonPlus Electronics has sold out of his first run of the Phil Harvey-Smith designed power supply boards for the Dragon computers, but posted that he is in the process of getting the components together to make a second run of 25 more:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3017007258558923/

2) The Dragon Meetup for Nov. 27/28 at Cambridge in the UK is officially on now, as per Richard Harding in the Dragon Facebook group:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3020782724848043/

3) Pere Serrat has been very busy posting software for John Whitworth's Supersprite FM+ board in it's own group on Facebook. He has uploaded an VGM player for the OPL2 (YM2413) chip, a VGM player for the TM2149 (AY-3-8910 like), and Coco versions for some of the utilities he had already written for the Dragons:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/277387053720893?sorting_setting=CHRONOLOGICAL

4) The Laird's Lair channel on YouTube put up a video "10 Amazing Dragon 32 Facts":

 https://youtu.be/AJh_9p5WKzQ

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

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1) Tony Jewell posted a couple of photos from the Retro Computer Festival in Cambridge from last weekend, including his running the SuperSprite FM+ board:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3016993951893587/

2) Jim Gerrie put up a video of Greg Dionne's Tetris for the MC-10 which includes digitized sound and speech (both will be amongst the guests on our MC-10 Special next week):

 https://youtu.be/E3fXppqvm9s

3) Glen Hewlett already has a blog about his Robotron transcode/port that he is working on, including a video showing some of the attract screens working. The big test will be if the Coco 3 can handle all of the sprites that Robotron can fill up with:

 https://nowhereman999.wordpress.com/2021/10/09/robotron-progress/

Video:

 https://youtu.be/JaPuiQNnT-c

4) Steve Bamford put up on update to his Circe's Island game project, this time talking about the text rendering routine he wrote, with some samples (he shared this both on Discord an in the World of Dragon forums, shown here:

 https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=5501&start=40

5) David Mitchell typed in the game "Explosion" from the book "Terrific Games for Your Tandy Color" by Hal Renko & Sam Edwards, and put up a YouTube video of it - both the original book version and an enhanced version he did, improving the display:

 https://youtu.be/N72LMi0zR7g

6) Christopher English posted on the Coco Facebook group about two game packages he wrote and had reviewed in the March 1990 issue of Rainbow (Arcade Action Packs Volumes 1&2)... but he had his house broken into later and lost his computer, all of his disks, etc. If anyone happened to have boughten in back in the day,

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159508137572641/

7) A channel on YouTube called 'Neb6' put up a video showing Glen Hewlett's Joust running on real hardware:

 https://youtu.be/OI1P-ENIB4U

8) LRU's Outrageous Gaming Project posted several videos of gameplay of the game Jet Boot Colin, running under the Windows version of XRoar. Shown here is level 1:

 https://youtu.be/8Aca6nScIwk

He also published a comparison video of Jeff Minter's Gridrunner, showing versions for the Atari 8 bit, Commodore-64, Dragon 32 and Sinclair ZX Spectrum:

 https://youtu.be/HhxP_TKbdnc?t=16

9) TGP Highscore Runs on YouTube posted a video of Dragon 32 gameplay using XRoar fo 3D Seiddab Attack:

 https://youtu.be/Nu7U_RrX7vM