News stories for Episode 240, December 4, 2021

News stories for Episode 240, December 4, 2021

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

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1) The Yandex Retro Games Battle (3rd year) has been expanded to include more systems. This is a game writing/development contest for 8 bit machines, and one of it's judges is none other than John Romero of DOOM & Quake fame. This year, they are accepting the following platforms: Amstrad CPC 464/6128 Atari 8 bit BBC Micro/Master Commodore 64 MSX/MSX2 TRS-80 Coco ZX Spectrum 48K/128K (I believe in previous years they were exclusively Spectrum?) The rules are fairly simple - write a game, in any genre, that runs on the original hardware (can't use emulator enhancements, etc.). It also must be exclusive for this competition, and of course be legal. No additional peripherals (other than joystick or mouse) is allowed. They are letting authors submit blog style updates on their progress as well. 4 Awards will be given, one of which is an audience choice award. Since this is a Russian based contest, the prize awards are done given in Russian rubles, which as of Friday translated to prizes ranging from around $270 USD to $1082 USD.

 https://rgb.yandex.ru/2021?lang=en

2) Frank over at retrorewind.ca tweeted that his first batch of CocoSDC units, with cases, will soon be on sale. He will also be selling some other Coco related hardware, and we are hoping to sneak him on the show today to talk about (he is at the "World of Commodore" retro show in Ontario this weekend):

 https://mobile.twitter.com/retrorewindca/status/1466421686945857543

3) Allen Huffman posted a blog post about his converting the PETSCII font over to the Coco 1/2, to help him port some of his old VIC-20 programs to the Coco:

 https://subethasoftware.com/2021/12/01/commodore-vic-20-petscii-on-the-coco/

He also posted a video talking about the differences to the 32x16 column screen between the original VDG and the T1 version, including a bug that XRoar had with some some colors (it has since been fixed, I believe):

 https://youtu.be/G81CIV7U4ys

4) Roger Taylor has started "Project 256" - finally picking this project up from others that haven't gotten anywheres with it. This project is get professional scans of the interiors of the GIME chips (both 1986 and 1987 versions). He has a Patreon set up to help foot the costs of this, and has gotten some scans up already, which has already revealed some things we didn't know about - while we knew the names of the two main designers (John M. Prickett from Tandy, and Jim L. Bruister from VLSI), we didn't know the codenames for both versions: "Tequila" for the 1986 version, and "Tortilla" for the 1987 version. He is also planning on getting a hold of some of the preproduction GIME's that went out to a few choice developers in earlier 1986 to see if they were much different from the 1986 version. This is an awesome project! Bill Nobel has some insight on this, and also a special announcement, so he will be joining me on this story.

 https://www.patreon.com/posts/project-256-58792912

Allen Huffman is also updating cocopedia to contain the new GIME information as it comes in:

 https://www.cocopedia.com/wiki/index.php/GIME

5) Kenneth Udut put up a video on Facebook showing one of the most complicated ways to render webpages on a Coco 1/2 that I have ever seen... genius! I won't even try to explain how he did it, but will quote the description from the man himself: "From Wikipedia on Opera through readability-cli running on NODE.js which runs a "Firefox Reader Mode" but without Firefox, pushed through lynx text browser to strip the HTML and make it 40 characters across and remove the links, converting the new lines from unix to dos endings into a virtual COM4 port which goes to a virtual null-modem cable to virtual COM3: which is read by RealTerm which starts a Telnet server that a DriveWire server is connected to, converting MODEM codes into TELNET which pushes the text to VCC, a Tandy Coco Emulator running a Becker port into a TERMINAL program which uses graphics mode to simulate a 51x23 screen that receives the text via localhost telnet. "

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159606444887641/

(I should note he did a simpler video earlier in the week as well - comparing video from the early 1980's showing the online San Francisco Examiner newspaper being read from the Coco, and using his modern method to check news, etc from the Coco)

 https://www.facebook.com/kenneth.udut/videos/204214395207529/

6) The Coco Crew has released their latest episode, which features a discussion on when one should do their own project after waiting for someone else to finish it, some coverage from the Dragon meetup (a good compliment to our live coverage last week) and Neil's review of Pooyan:

 http://cococrew.org/cococrew-podcast-78.html

7) Retro Tech Time (Terry Steege) has started putting up updated videos and tutorials on his YouTube channel on Coco related content (he does various retro platforms). The two he put up this week of a NitrOS-9/EOU setup guide (based on the older Beta 5, but pretty well still applicable), and also how to set up the Phoenix IDE cross development system (by Roger Taylor - yes, the same Roger working on getting into the microscopic guts of the GIME we mentioned earlier):

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

8) Michael Furman has put up another pyDriveWire tutorial / game on challenge video on his YouTube channel - this time showing the new pyDriveWire DLOAD feature (for Coco 1's and 2's, which have that command in BASIC), and some gameplay of MegaBug (this demo is in MAME, but it should work on a real Coco 1 or 2 as well):

 https://youtu.be/Us1uY-Iy-Ks

9) Alison DeNu posted on the Coco Facebook page about another 6809 based microcomputer, the Thomson M05 that was sold in France:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159599505347641/

10) Spanish YouTube channel RETROMAGAZINE.TV posted a video on how to install NitrOS-9/EOU (and VCC to run it on). The YouTube auto-translation isn't perfect, so if any Spanish speaking CocoTalk viewers want to let me know their thoughts on the video (or any comments that we should make), let me know:

 https://youtu.be/YCGIShOt-Ps

MC-10

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1) Simon Jonassen continues playing at the hardware level in coaxing the MC-10 to do mixed modes and color sets on the screen at once, simulating semigraphics type modes that don't normally exist on the MC-10 (those modes need a SAM and VDG together; the MC-10 only has the VDG):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/4472144632912324/

Dragon 32/64

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1) Steve Bamford (author of the upcoming Dragon/Coco game Circe's Island) posted a gallery of some photos from the Dragon meetup last weekend:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3057155924544056/

2) Mike "bluearcus" posted a disk image (and screenshot) showing OS-9 Level 1 on a Dragon 64 with his real time clock internally installed (which he showed at the Dragon Meetup we covered last week), on the World of Dragon Forums:

 https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=10980

3) John Whitworth and Phil-Harvey Smith have been discussing the demand for replacement Dragon power supply boards, and John has decided to make another round. No dates yet, as he has to still get parts in, with all of the electronics supply chain issues that are happening globally at the moment. This run will be kits only:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3055882064671442/

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

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1) Pere Serrat has started catching up the AGD game releases again, with ones newly converted to the Coco and Dragon since he last posted them. The first of these new packs has 6 games on it (scroll down for screenshots) - note these are standard 6847 versions, not SuperSprite FM+ versions: Agent Blue - Day Missions Agent Blue - Night Missions Akane Alchemist II Among Bad Aunt Rose

 You can download them from the World of Dragon forums:
 https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&p=24240#p24240

2) Erico Patricio Monteiro posted a challenge of converting a 1K BASIC ZX-81 "Space Invader" game to the Coco, and a few versions have popped up, including his own (see those videos in the comments):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159610007217641/

Jim Gerrie followed him up on the challenge, and put out an MC-10 version last night:

 https://youtu.be/3w1rMZF5PKw

3) Speaking of Jim... he also posted an educational game for the MC-10 where you have to figure out which country a flag belongs to:

 https://youtu.be/GjSZr4V8-mg

And he posted a port of David Ahl's game "Animal" from the BASIC COMPUTER GAMES book David released in the late 1970's. The original version prior to that was done by Arthur Luehrmann at Dartmouth College:

 https://youtu.be/X9S7hLEghgQ