News stories for Episode 246, January 22, 2022

News stories for Episode 246, January 22, 2022

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Interview with Randy Kindig (host of the Floppy Days and Antic (Atari 8 bit) podcasts:

 https://floppydays.libsyn.com
 https://ataripodcast.libsyn.com

Also, hoping Brian Wieseler will be able to come on at some point in the show to talk about his massive Coco sale:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159703824057641/

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

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1) First, some followup from our Coco Brothers x 2 episode last week: Kevin Leany sent some pictures, and a scan of the John Dvorak column that spiked the sales of their DOS version of Slots and Cards: TRASHCANKID.JPG:

 "My daughter (Susan) watched the CocoTALK! episode this morning, and sent me this photo. I thought you might get a kick out of it; I know I did. :)"

FADAC COMPUTER.PNG:

 "This is a picture of the FADAC computer I used in the Army.  I should have got one with the Nixie Tubes lit but...  And I do have to admit we weren't always on target.  We sent one round into a ball field and another just missed a rage road (both of which were not my fault and got considerable attention)."

HTTPS://WWW.TI59.COM:

 "This is a link to the TI-59 Calculator.  In many ways it was like a computer and was more programming than the FADAC was.  You can see the print cradle that printed out the "payline" and added coins to it.

The software we did was of machines that were being used at the time. When we started Video Poker was only 5 years old! (At NDOT I gave the inventor Si Redd outdoor Advertising permits.) Slot machines were all mechanical. Cards got the full treatment with full cards and fancy card backs, but they have gone to the type the Thayers are using now. They did a wonderful job with them."

AAADEPOT.JPG:

 "I thought the Thayers would get a kick out of the picture of the depot I have in my backyard.  It was used for the in-laws when they would stay with us.  The Population was correct then and the elevation is correct."

PC MAGAZINE DVORAK.JPG:

 This is the Dvorak column from PC Magazine, September 13, 1988 issue that spike their sales of the PC version of Slots and Cards (far right column of text, "Genuinely Interesting Software Dept.")

2) Pierre Serrazin has released version 0.1.74 of CMOC, which fixes some bugs when working with GCC 11.2.0, some minor optimizations, and K&R C function definitions have now been added (the last is experimental at this point):

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

3) Simon Jonassen release a video/audio demo, source code and BIN file for a 3 voice square wave music player for the Coco 3 (which sounds closer to some hardware sound cards) on the Facebook Coco group. Here is the video/audio demo:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159691885107641/

Simon also put up a video of his first experimentation with the sound chip in the Supersprite board (done under MAME). I think it isn't quite working on real hardware yet, but should be soon.

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159703236287641/

4) Bill Nobel had a quick video update to his Teensy project that he explained a couple of weeks ago. ROM is in place, MMU and video operational, and the quick video clip shows the Buggy Monitor using these:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159691583842641/

A second update has some graphics primitives working now as well as full USB keyboard support:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159701054872641/

5) Frank at retrorewind.ca announced that they now have HD6309E's in stock, and also offers the service of socketing the CPU and installing it for you (particularly for later Coco 2's and all Coco 3's, which have the original 68B09E soldered to the motherboard):

 https://retrorewind.ca/tandy-coco/hardware

6) Baptiste Hobbe received his batch of 20 Atari style to Coco joystick converters that he sells, and has 14 left available (as of January 19):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159700385327641/

7) John Linville shared a video showing his Coco / Tandy 1000 joystick testing prototype in operation, although he does have some board updates he needs to do:

 https://youtu.be/zOLrVZrfkmY

8) James Jones did another video showing BASIC09 vs. DECB, this time doing a program that figures out all the ways to make changed for a dollar. In this one, he goes into some detail on how important it is to optimize the algorithms you are using as well as the actual code and / or language. By the time he is done from the original version, it is running 135 times faster in DECB and 183 times faster in BASIC09:

 https://youtu.be/c3wWG2pCJXE

9) Pedro Pana (Rocky Hill on YouTube) posted a video showing him upgrading a 26-3134A Korean Coco 2 to 64K RAM and adding Extended BASIC:

 https://youtu.be/7pboD7RAzOM

10) Bill Pierce has fixed some broken links, and developers can now access the last developers-only release of Drivewire 4.3.4e that was never officially released from his website, written by Aaron Wolfe. It featured many enhancements, and some caveats, that Bill lists on the page. This is in JAVA, and probably requires an older version of JAVA then the current one:

 https://sites.google.com/site/dabarnstudio/drivewire-4-3-4e 

MC-10

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1) Following up on his posts last week of his 128x96x4 Full Screen project (FSP) character generator driver for the MC-10, Robert Sieg put up some screenshots of characters for Flipull, a game originally done in semigraphics, using some custom font characters:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/4642382372555215/

He also made a video showing some animation tiles using the Gameboy editor:

 https://youtu.be/lBATaey-B4k

The latest version of FSP is available on the MC-10 Facebook page, in the Files area.

2) Ciaran Anscomb did another update to XRoar this past week, now allowing XRoar to load ASCII BASIC files directly via a "quick type" scheme:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/4647657825361003/

Dragon 32/64

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1) Chris Hawkins of CRC (Chris's Retro Corner) has done a followup video on his Dragon 32 that he got just before Christmas (and did 11 days of Christmas gameplay videos). This time around, he goes after fixing a couple of the things - a key that didn't work, and the power button that only worked sometimes.

 https://youtu.be/f3poUyOj50I

2) John Whitworth announced on the Dragon Facebook group that another batch of the PSU Kits are available again from Dragonplus Electronics:

 https://www.dragonplus-electronics.co.uk/product-category/hardware/

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

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1) Jim Gerrie released a port of Sinclair ZX81 arcade game by "Dr. Beep" called "Pooper!"... a 10 line BASIC game:

 https://youtu.be/TRwPqmisbmI

Soon after, he released a graphical version using redefinable characters with Robert Sieg's Full Screen Project machine language driver:

 https://youtu.be/TAS130Me_ug

2) Pere Serrat and Kees van Oss have released AGD games pack #47 for the Dragon and Coco computers. The 6 games this week are: Never More (this one appears to be a room by room adventure style game, rather than a pure platformer?) Papyrus Quest for Elements Ray's Reprisal (a clone of Yars Revenge on the Atari 2600 VCS, by the looks of it) Restless Andre Stripping Penelope

 http://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=10998

3) Fresh off being a guest on last weeks show, Tim Thayer posted a rough draft of the background graphics for an upcoming game called Card Sharks, and was asking for critique / suggestions on the Coco Facebook page:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159700021172641/

4) Robert Sieg posted a video showing some older BASIC MC-10 games that he has converted to use his Full Screen project character display generator for higher res graphics, and also shows using the Gameboy graphics editor to make the graphics, including some Jim Gerrie ones:

 https://youtu.be/ypuzd3JXWZo

5) Aaron & Boat will be recording their next The Coco Show live on Twitch on Sunday, somewhere around 1 PM EST (I would show up a little early, just in case):

 https://www.twitch.tv/amigosretrogaming

6) Nick Marentes has his 13th Zero Hour Blog post up - all 13 levels are basically designed, and he has screenshots of 12 of them:

 https://nickmarentes.com/ZeroHour/13.html