News stories for Episode 249, February 11, 2022

News stories for Episode 249, February 11, 2022

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

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1) Roger Taylor has released an incredibly detailed 24000x24000 pixel resolution image of the 1987 GIME (code named Tortilla) - and this is the lossy version. Lossless will be coming later.

 (Show local file if it doesn't kill my machine!)

2) Guillaume Major has relased the latest "Full download" for CocoSDC from the Color Computer Archive. This contains everything on the archive up through February 10 of this year, and allows one to get everything up to date in one download rather than trying to find everything separately. (At least that's my understanding). It's a 343 MB download, zipped:

 https://colorcomputerarchive.com/repo/Disks/Coco%20SDC/Image/

3) The Retro Tech Time channel on YouTube (Terry Steege) released a new video - Mail call for February, 2022 - where he shows some of things that viewers have sent him over the last little while. It includes A coco 1 (white case) that has a TDP-100 label on it (if that is factory, that has not been reported before) that is a bit of a different design than TDP-100 labels that we have seen. There are also other Coco related and some general Radio Shack related items that he received as well:

 https://youtu.be/rqQO3IEZbl4

MC-10

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1) Robert Sieg put up a video demo in the MC-10 group on Facebook of an animated Sonic the Hedgehog using his font/tile/sprit utility that we mentioned a couple of weeks ago, that runs through MC-10 BASIC:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/4728549827271802/

2) A YouTube page I have not seen before called "Nick and Felice" did a quick little video from an MC-10 showing random colored pixels and tones. Good to see more and more interest in the MC-10 these days!

 https://youtu.be/btc6Txceu5U

3) 8bitsinthebasement on YouTube put out a video of his upgrading his Alice (MC-10 clone from France) with the MCX-128 upgrade (designed by Darren Atkinson), that he built himself since Ed was out of stock (he didn't even use the Gerber files!). He demonstrates both PacMan, and the recently released MAZY game:

 https://youtu.be/HISggbfHSS0

Dragon 32/64

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1) Ciaran Anscomb has released the BIN2CAS utility version 3.14, which now supports ZX0 decompression (using code by Doug Masten) instead of DZIP. This runs a little slower decompressing, and requires a larger decompressor, but saves even more loading time when loading cassettes, and compresses even more:

 http://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=11004

Download:

 http://www.6809.org.uk/dragon/#castools

2) Robin Hemmings in the Dragon group on Facebook posted a photo from the Black Mirror: Bandersnatch interactive show on Netflix - which shows a Manic Miner box for the Dragon 32/64 on the wall in once scene:

 https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10157856464667493&set=gm.3106949162898065

3) Julian Brown posted a link to his github in the Dragon Facebook group, that features a design for RAM replacement board for a Mark 2 Dragon 32. This is a preliminary version that he just ordered a board based on, so it hasn't been tested yet, but he plans on keeping up with it until it is working. This will allow a Dragon 32 to get it's RAM upgraded using modern chips, vs. the older dynamic RAM that is getting harder to find:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3104848613108120/

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

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1) Pere Serrat has released the first official AGD games pack for the special SuperSprite FM+ board versions of these games. This requires this hardware upgrade for a Dragon 32/64 or Coco 1/2/3, which adds hardware multi-voice sound and sprites. If I understand Pere's introduction text file, they also require a 6309 upgrade, but only 32K of RAM is needed in any of these machines (the standard VDG ones will run on 6809 based Coco's and Dragons, but require 64K of RAM). They also will work with the latest MAME. The first pack has 6 games: Bean Brothers Circuitry Diamond Geezer Foggy's Quest Meteormania Robot, The Impossible Mission

 http://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11005

2) For those without the hardware necessary to run the improved AGD games we just mentioned, fear not: Pere and Kees have also released the regular AGD Pack #50 with 6 new games for regular Coco's and Dragons:

 http://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11006

This pack has: The Shining The Witch Toofy's Nutty Nightmare Turtle Tales UFO Vampire Vengeance

3) Paul Shoemaker is in the early stages of planning a Freecell game for the Coco 3:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159732831802641/

4) I uploaded my quick BASIC09 hack of Rick Adam's COCOdle (Wordle clone) that I wrote in BASIC09. It isn't quite up to date to Rick's latest version (he updated it multiple times this past week, and I only had two quick cracks at it before work got busy), but it's fully playable. It will become part of the next NitrOS-9/EOU, and will get a launchable icon at that time as well:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159743175282641/

5) Jim Gerrie has ported "Space Derelict" by Jim Menick to the MC-10 from the "BASIC Adventure Strategy Game Design" book from 1984. This one had to be condensed a bit to fit into a 20K RAM MC-10:

 https://youtu.be/EUo78spxCcA

He also made a blog post about this one:

 https://jimgerrie.blogspot.com/2022/02/jim-menicks-space-derelict.html

6) In the "really good timing" department: Marlin Lee released a game play video this week of Mark Data Products Space Raiders game (a Space Invaders clone). By coincidence, next week we are interviewing it's author, Brian Bruderer:

 https://youtu.be/cRM33txvQOk

7) Not entirely Coco related, but highretrogamelord on YouTube put up a video showin the NEC PC-88 version of Super Pitfall (which was also on the Nintendo NES and the Coco 3). It's got some differences from the other two versions:

 https://youtu.be/3xhlx7HuCRU