News stories for Episode 244, January 8, 2022

News stories for Episode 244, January 8, 2022

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Steven Goodwin interview today (author of the upcoming book "20 GOTO 10", which includes parts about the Dragon) https://unbound.com/books/20goto10/

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

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1) Pierre Sarrazin has released the latest update (0.1.73) to the C like compiler, CMOC. He has added some additional floppy support, a 16 bit value clear memory function, and some other optimizations. At the same time, he has also released a companion piece for those with Coco 3's: BGraph 0.1.4, which is a graphics library that includes functions like line, draw, paint and circle, but does NOT require the BASIC ROM's to be present. This newest version (which requires 0.1.73 or higher of CMOC) adds Coco 3 graphics support, and will handle things like MMU block mapping on it's own.

 http://perso.b2b2c.ca/~sarrazip/dev/cmoc.html

2) Tormod Volden has a software update for the MOOH board, which I think adds multi-ROM storage support if I understand correctly:

 https://gitlab.com/mooh-board/multi-rom

3) Guillaume Major has released SDCFlASH - which is a utility to easily flash the 8 available ROM flash banks in the CocoSDC from the Coco itself. It even comes with over 140 ROM's ready to go. It is available for download on the Color Computer Archive:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159673488687641/

4) Bill Pierce announced an update to VCC (2.1.0.5) available for download. This has a major update to the KeyMap editor, that should fix pretty well all bugs and make it easier to use. There are also other bug fixes and a manual update:

 https://github.com/VCCE/VCC/releases

5) Simon Jonassen has started working on demos with the SuperSprite FM+ board with the support that is now built into MAME, and Ron Klein has uploaded a video showing Simon's first demo on real hardware (an earlier Coco 2 in this case):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159676710222641/

6) Robert Gault posted a little utility on the Facebook Coco group that will allow one to run some BASIC programs that were specifically made for tape based Coco's (and using the extra RAM available when BASIC doesn't need to reserved disk buffers, etc.). It's a little ML program that you LOADM and EXEC after you LOAD your BASIC program, which will basically detach Disk BASIC through software, freeing your RAM for the BASIC program you want to run:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159676590977641/

7) Bill Nobel posted about his progress of porting the VCC 6309 core to a Teensy 4.1. It's not complete yet, but already supports SD cards and the MMU, and 128K to 8 MB of RAM. It is also running at about the equivalent of 6 MHz:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159675885207641/

8) James Jones posted a link to the Coco Facebook group with an article about programming in 1987 vs. today (in this case, programming a lexical scanner for an adventure game the author was working on. The Coco side of this is that the 1987 attempt he did was on a Coco 2 in BASIC. It ended up taking 8 seconds to parse a single sample line, and he ended up rewriting the scanner in assembly. But he never got to finish the Coco program; the Coco was his roommate's computer, and his roommate moved. By the end of the article, he shows a PERL script to do something similar:

 https://ovid.github.io/blog/programming-in-1987-versus-today.html

9) Mike Rojas posted an update on Facebook about his Replacement Membrane Project, which includes his now tackling the chiclet keyboards from the Coco 1:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159671645672641/

10) Brian Palmer initiated a fascinating discussion on Facebook about sound and music support on the Coco, both through the built in DAC and through sound/music chips, that many people have commented on:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159669093017641/

11) Jamie Cho released both a video and the DSK image of a Coco 3 Christmas card program that he wrote years ago. It features both animated graphics and music:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159668567367641/

12) RetroGuy on YouTube released a video showing his selfmade Atari style joystick adaptor on his Coco 2, and how it was made. The video is in German, but he has added English subtitles:

 https://youtu.be/88ILE4NFkXU

13) Allen Huffman released another BASIC video, this time showing how to rotate (as opposed to just shift) bits using BASIC:

 https://youtu.be/HgXsSEijTWs

14) Ken Waters of Canadian Retro Things released his first video in an upcoming series on programming in BASIC09. Here he does some nice small programs to show how easy it is to do things like pop up windows, change fonts, and playing digitized sound samples:

 https://youtu.be/NKr1ZDJ-cOY

MC-10

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1) Robert Sieg has been busy designing a high res Chess program layout, and posted some sample screens that he made with the Gameboy Tile/Map Maker program:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/4614822561977863/
 https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/4616702041789915/

Dragon 32/64

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1)

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

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1) Neil Blanchard released a gameplay video of the new cartridge game he is producing and selling (Blockdown, a Tetris style game by Ciaran Anscomb):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159669071427641/

2) Since Paul Shoemaker has so many different flavours of his Poker Square game now, he is now making a single disk image that will have all of them, and you can pick one from an animated menu He has a video of his new menu system in progress:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159669903457641/

3) Jim Gerrie made a quick video showing his Tank Capture game running on a real MC-10 (rather than emulator), and did an explanation of how the green characters in SG6 (the 64x48 mode) work on a real MC-10 vs. the emulator, pointing out our showing his video last week:

 https://youtu.be/TtDFPqu63cg

He also did an update to Solo Poker, based on the original Coco version from James Garon and Datasoft, sold through Radio Shack:

 https://youtu.be/cGWFhG-nDxM

4) Guillaume Major has released a Coco version of the Dragon semigraphics space shooter Star Swoop, which you can get from the Archive:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159671763292641/

5) Pere Serrate announced the AGD game pack #45 is now available for download for both Coco and Dragons. This weeks pack includes: Dan Terrifik II Journey to the Unknown Mystery Presentation Mystery Part 1 springbot - Mars Attack Tapper (demo)

 http://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=10995

6) Anders Carlsson posted in the MC-10 Facebook group about weekly gametrackers that they have over on AtariAge, and as an example, he posted the current top 10 for the MC-10:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/4613311002129019/

7) Tim Lindner and his sister AJ released episode 11 of Sibling Rivalry, where this time they tackle Glen Hewlett's Joust transcode on the Coco 3, a game that they both enjoyed in the arcade when they were kids:

 https://youtu.be/AjEzBvB58no

8) Paul Clews posted a video gameplay of Mission Moonbase running on his real Dragon 32, loading via WAV file from his PC (loosely based on Moon Patrol):

 https://youtu.be/LoON7XdQv1E