News stories for Episode 237, November 13, 2021

News stories for Episode 237, November 13, 2021

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

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First, some sad news: Tony Podraza let us know on Facebook that Carl Boll, longtime Glenside Color Computer Club member and one of the main people behind the Glenside IDE hard drive adaptor has passed away. He was at a recent Coco Fest which is the first time I had seen him since around 2001 or 2002. He will be greatly missed in the Glenside and Coco communities.

Second, we need a CocoFest wrap up from the people that were there! (Stevie, Grant, Mark, Sloopy, etc,etc.) Also Rick Adams sang Nightmare Highway to Terry Steen, the man who's encounter with living room furniture inspired the song in the first place:

1) Guillaume Major now has some Coco 3 tape and cartridge programs on the Color Computer Archive that will auto launch the online XRoar (by sixxie / Ciaran Anscomb) and fire up the program automatically - and even set up joystick configurations, etc for what a game may want, automatically.

 He also posted that he is fixing up some magazine scans (including Rainbow) to fix some bad pages, etc. So if you don't find all the magazines currently showing up on the archive - he is fixing them and will put them back up once that work is completed.

2) Glen Hewlett has a new blog post on an interesting method of calling a "print text" routine in assembly, based on Tim Lindner's recent assembly language video tutorial on YouTube. He expands on it a bit with some different tweaks possible, which can save a little RAM or a few CPU cycles, depending on the programmers requirements:

 https://nowhereman999.wordpress.com/2021/11/03/6809-assembly-print-text-routine/

He also put up a blog post on several methods on how to optimize a vertical line drawing routine:

 https://nowhereman999.wordpress.com/2021/11/06/6809-assembly-thoughts-on-how-to-optimize-drawing-a-vertical-line-on-a-320x225-16-colour-coco-3-screen/

3) Guillaume Major has released version 1.30 of the SDCXplorer utility, which now allows you launch programs with alternate ROM's (like DECB 1.1 vs. the SDC-DOS, or any others that you have copied onto your SDC:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159561918812641/

4) Michael Strickland posted about his experiments with a very simple BASIC benchmark, and comparing it with other 8 bit systems that were originally posted up by the Noel at Noel's Retro Lab. Other people added to it, comparing Coco 1's to 3's, with both regular and double speed. I threw in a couple from BASIC09 on a Coco 3 for comparison as well.

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159554715872641/

5) Yet another new 3D printed Coco case for the Raspberry Pi400 has been shown by (I have no idea how to pronounce his name) Μιχαελ Βαρκλ on Facebook. Unlike the designs by John Strong (which he showed at the Fest) and Mark Seigel (hopefully showing up on the Color Computer archive soon), his is based on a Coco 1 style case design, not a Coco 2 or 3.

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/748644118674047/posts/1685224325016017/

6) Barry Nelson has posted a quick BASIC program that will let you call up the 3 Amigos graphic on a Coco 3 without having to do a RESET:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159560254537641/

He also posted up a cool utility package that you call from BASIC using USR calls to deal with ROM images. It includes: USR0 - read up to 16K directly into RAM starting at $4000 USR1 - Relocate ROM image to it's "normal" spot at $C000 and run it as a cartridge USR2 - Relocate ROM image to it's "normal" spot at $C000 and run it as a DOS ROM

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159554820507641/

7) Pere Serrat wrote another demo for the Supersprite FM+ board, which John Whitworth uploaded a video showing it (he uploaded a few, but some were blocked due to the music that Pere programmed it to play). It does depend on the particular make of one of the sound chips on the board, and is streaming (with a 6309) fully digitized sound from a CocoSDC. This is still experimental software:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159561712002641/  (post in case last video is also pulled)
 https://youtu.be/SnWdURDstr0

8) Sheldon Hildebrand put up another video showing the CocoVGA running a scaling/rotating graphic in 16 colors overtop a background that looks like Duck Hunt from the NES:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159545602057641/

9) Roger Taylor found a fascinating hardware cartridge for the Coco 1/2 that was used in the Mexican educational system, that 640K of ROM(!) on it. He reports that the ROM's have nice graphics based menus, and illustrate lessons... but it doesn't run on a Coco 3 (which he is now researching as to why):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159562101152641/

10) The latest episode (77) of the Coco Crew dropped a couple of weeks ago, including a review of Glen Hewlett's Defender, a look back at the just completed Tandy Assembly, and a tech segment on the differences between WAV and CAS files in emulators, and much more:

 http://cococrew.org

11) M. David Johnson, who recently join the Coco Discord, has a page with a ton of technical papers and projects for the Coco that I had not seen before (including his CF83 version of Forth that he sold commercially back in the 1990's):

 http://www.bds-soft.com/coco.php
 http://www.bds-soft.com/cocoPapers.php

12) Jayeson Lee-Steere posted about some modern hardware that he thinks could hook up easily to a Coco to support all kinds of modern hardware; the Raspberry Pi Pico. What's the thoughts from the hardware guys on the panel about this?

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159568072407641/

13) Fabian Rodriguez (who was at his first CocoFest this past weekend, and was one of the speakers at the seminars) posted an ad for a 68008 upgrade board and video card for the Coco that I remember seeing in Rainbow back in the day. From comments in the discussion about it, he is actually in contact with one of it's designers and has seen the real hardware, which I don't think many people have:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159567941052641/

14) The Radio Shack Catalogs website has added some more sales catalogs, including a few that feature the Coco:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/260663051145211/posts/1023120371566138/

15) TJBChris put up a video showing his repairing of a Coco 3 that was damaged in shipping:

 https://youtu.be/xW5HEq-gYOE

He also did one on replacing capacitors in a CM-8 monitor:

 https://youtu.be/Fv_jqP5W2XE

16) oldtechwrek put up a video on YouTube of a box he bought at an auction for $25.00 that was simply labelled as having a "typewriter" in it. Instead, he got a Coco 2, game cartridges, manuals, black beauty joysticks & CCR-81 cassette.

 https://youtu.be/ZNEcmkkR7c8

MC-10

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1) Brendan Donahe showed off several versions of this MC-10 Case extender, which increases the height of the MC-10 case to help fit the CocoVGA video upgrade in it, and also lets you reroute the power and reset buttons. He showed even more versions of it at the Fest:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/4387760218017433/

Dragon 32/64

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1) Steve Parham put up some pictures of his Dragon 32/VIC-20 game called Micropoly (a Monopoly clone) that once again showed some of the fancier packaging that Dragon/Coco products got in the UK compared to the US (the holographic foil tape insert in this case):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3039714156288233/

2) Retro Roamer on YouTube put up a video on replacing the power supply in a Dragon 32 or 64 (using a 64 in this case):

 https://youtu.be/caMCeY23U8E

3) Reuben Cornwall did a programming video for the Dragon 32 on YouTube, showing some SIN/COS PMODE 4 pattern drawing:

 https://youtu.be/_ZuyuFYj5aE

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

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1) MrDave6309 has put up a Kickstarter for his Coco 3 arcade game project "Space Pirate Kimiko", and has a video showing sample game play:

 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/844758331/retro-video-game
 https://youtu.be/-1SumT1jzSg

2) Ken @ Canadian Retro Things put up a video of 4 Micro Adventure books he received from a gracious viewer, which are interactive books where you had to type in small BASIC programs to decode messages, etc. and further the story. He talks about his history with these books, and also demonstrates some of the BASIC code in action:

 https://youtu.be/3AB4zJyvclU

3) Erico Patricio Monteiro put up an animation of a 16x16 rendering of Sonic the Hedgehog (he is doing it fort he Pico8), but speculates it could work on a Coco 1/2 (or even MC-10) in the SG4 mode in assembly. It might make a good candidate for the CocoVGA too, since you could do 32x16 with 9 or 10 colors (in the 64x32 mode) where you aren't limited to 1 color + black for each 2x2 pixel grid:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159559054372641/

4) For those of you who missed it during Paul Fiscarelli's portion of the Coco Game Developers seminar last weekend at CocoFest Chicago, here is the video showing his quick 1 week conversion of the opening sequence from the IBM PC VGA version of Prince of Persia, converted to run in a 512k Coco 3:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159561576947641/

He also uploaded the DSK image to Facebook:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159569748977641/

5) Also, Paul Thayer has uploaded his slides from his portion of the same seminar in PDF format to Facebook as well:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159560224012641/

6) Nick Marentes posted Part 11 of his Zero Hour development blog, which features some details and screenshots from two new levels he has been working on - the Power Station and Transporter Tube levels:

 https://nickmarentes.com/ZeroHour/11.html

Also, Michael Strickland put up a scan of a page from an article on retro computers from the Sydney Morning Herald from September 2001, that has mention of Nick (and his picture) and the Coco 3:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159569013592641/

7) Glen Hewlett had a progress update this week on his porting of Robotron:2084 to the Coco 3:

 https://nowhereman999.wordpress.com/2021/11/10/robotron-for-the-coco-3-progress-update/

YouTube video:

 https://youtu.be/f_MSE8Go3jM

8) The Coco Show by Boat and Aaron will be live pre-taping on November 20th at 4 PM Eastern (Dungeons of Daggorath), and the next official episode will be released on YouTube (Donut Dilemma) on November 22. There is also the TEAYS Valley Classic Computer Club live gathering (first time since CoVid started!) on November 13 at 7 PM Eastern, which is a mix of gameplay and hardware tinkering. I am hoping to convince them to try some Coco stuff (like Glen's transcodes of Joust and Defender) with some of the members that have never seen them.

 https://www.twitch.tv/amigosretrogaming

9) Richard Rivard, thanks to help from fellow Coco users on Facebook, manage to make a disk image of an adventure game called "Labrynth of Chaos" (originally written by Michael Setzer in 1991 - Michael had some published programs in Rainbow magazine around this time too), and put the disk image up in the Coco Facebook group:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159565850547641/

10) Color Computer Programming on YouTube has put up multiple new Coco BASIC videos up, including some game software he has written (including a graphical Poker game):

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

11) Alan @ AC's 8 bit zone has his 2nd episode about sprites, this time going into machine language (rather than BASIC):

 https://youtu.be/1RDNSn0DpGk

12) David 'mamehaze' Haywood did 2 live multi-hour streams of Dragon games on MAME this past week on YouTube, and multiple Coco / Dragon community guests helped in the chat (including Ciaran and myself):

 https://www.youtube.com/c/mamehaze/videos

13) JorgeChe on YouTube (a Spanish channel) did video of Dragon 32 games:

 https://youtu.be/RlsdQiWPpwk

And now, a wackload of MC-10 games news:

14) Jim Gerrie has converted a French text adventure game originally called Vaisseau Fontome to English on the MC-10:

 https://youtu.be/cfqCvC5tyw8

He also converted Mystery Mania by David Leithauser (originally from Compute! magazine December 1987, using GW-BASIC for the IBM PC and clones). (See YouTube description):

 https://youtu.be/zHBYDn_9sAk

He also converted Star Lanes (a BASIC space trading strategy game) from Altair BASIC to the MC-10:

 https://youtu.be/QZbRqL7UCnk

And he converted the PET game Capture as well (originally written 1978-1980):

 https://youtu.be/qONTlPY8xFg

15) There appears to be some new (to me anyways) MC-10 machine language games (And Coco!), that are part of a large multi-platform conversion project from a Japanese website. Games released so far are (and the download pages have both Coco and MC-10 versions): Neuras:

 http://inufuto.web.fc2.com/8bit/neuras/
 https://youtu.be/U_k53kwqkCQ

Ruptus (appears to be a Bosconian type game):

 http://inufuto.web.fc2.com/8bit/ruptus/
 https://youtu.be/mmJ5dxTXe68

Bootskell (Pengo clone):

 http://inufuto.web.fc2.com/8bit/bootskell/
 https://youtu.be/a0sODvDis8M

Battlot (a little like Tutankham, but no scrolling and extras like destructable walls):

 http://inufuto.web.fc2.com/8bit/battlot/
 https://youtu.be/jeR_0lfwmgw

Caviti (Dig Dug):

 http://inufuto.web.fc2.com/8bit/cavit/
 https://youtu.be/9wY8L_ktZJs

Aerial (Scramble or Adventure International's Eliminator, with bosses?):

 http://inufuto.web.fc2.com/8bit/aerial/
 https://youtu.be/trep3r_gKcc

And a bonus, currently only Coco game (since it needs 32K): Mazy

 http://inufuto.web.fc2.com/8bit/mazy/
 https://youtu.be/TS-ouPwkQ9Q