News stories for Episode 251, February 26, 2022

News stories for Episode 251, February 26, 2022

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

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1) Our special guests today just released a video showing them upgrading their Coco 2 with an composite AV mod from Ed Snider at ZippsterZone.com:

 https://youtu.be/fh1PNAME2Oc

2) Josh Malone (48KRAM on Twitch) put up his livestream Twitch video showing his recapping a Coco 3 onto YouTube:

 https://youtu.be/r-Yh0b4ozts

3) Canadian Retro Things (Ken Waters) put up a video showing how to download the "nearly complete" single download of everything from the Color Computer Archive, and shows a few of the things that can be found on it:

 https://youtu.be/bzJ_Ukis1FE

4) Allen Huffman posted that the Javascript Mocha online Coco emulator now works with an iPad with a Bluetooth keyboard, due to some underlying changes to iPadOS that better support key up/down handling:

 https://subethasoftware.com/2022/02/23/js-mocha-coco-emulator-on-ipad/

5) Quick commercial for a fellow live show; TRS-80 Trash Talk Live #22 is live tonight at 9 PM EST. They cover all the TRS-80's, including the Coco. You can watch live on YouTube:

 https://www.youtube.com/c/TRS80TrashTalk

6) Frederick "Fred" Hicks had his Coco 3 featured in a special article in his local newspaper, and he shared the article on Facebook and Google Drive:

 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NZo2fYQxbKp3_JvYwtGiZJ7PBVuXpZVM/view

7) Daniielle O'Connor put up some videos showing her LED chaser in action, being controlled by a program she wrote on her Coco:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159761996242641/

8) Geronimus Vanden uploaded a guide to decoding memory address blocks using 74LS138 and 74LS139 chips to the Coco Facebook group:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159761829832641/

9) Ron Klein posted that the CocoPi now has the updated MC-10 BASIC compiler by Greg Dionne included, which adds support for the MCX-32SD card:

 https://coco-pi.com/updated-mc-10-basic-compiler-from-greg-dionne-now-available/

10) Alan over at AC's 8 Bit Zone on YouTube posted a video of him getting a Coco 2 marked as "not working" for $18, and what it took to fix. (spoiler alert - the computer worked fine, just needed some intense cleaning, particularly in the keyboad):

 https://youtu.be/y3AlPAe_nEU

MC-10

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1) It looks like we may soon have another machine language game programmer for the MC-10... Greg Hamilton has been learning MC-10 assembly language, and as he puts it "I'm slowly getting the hang of it". He posted some demo videos showing his progress in the MC-10 group on Facebook:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/4788380931288691/

And a scrolling demo (showing both up and down):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/4788317741295010/

Dragon 32/64

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1) Cuthbert Dragon on YouTube, who has been redoing their Dragon 32/64 games videos (for the 3rd time round I think, which is why I have not been bringing them up again unless there is something new), has brought out a video that is new, and quite different for his channel - a short video showing his Dragon 32 Book collection:

 https://youtu.be/EkVznlP65qk

2) Noel's Retro Lab reviews the new SCI-CAS hardware that can be used to play back 8 bit cassette files on a variety of platforms, including the Dragon & Coco. It features a color touch screen, SD card slot (Dragon/Coco at 12:38) :

 https://youtu.be/j4__v6ojPt0

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

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1) The next episode of The Coco Show featuring Draconian has dropped on YouTube:

 https://youtu.be/pQ2z7UL7tOw

2) Jim Gerrie released an update to MiCodle, which fixes a few bugs:

 https://youtu.be/3d5q2Nj_w9o

He also posted that he has compiled a bunch of his programs with Greg Dionne's MCBASIC cross-compiler, which now supports the MCX32-SD. He currently has them in WAV audio format so that you can download them and load them via cassette, and he will be updating his distro's soon as well:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/4783831268410324/

Direct Google drive link to show which programs he has done so far:

 https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/149N0WpWSZWLIC5zyl8n4V7kSFGCaCasz

Jim Also ported Chess from David Ahls's 1978 BASIC Computer Games book to the MC-10 (he had to fix a rather nasty bug, that he describes in the video description):

 https://youtu.be/24LUfS0byxM

3) Pere Serrat has multiple AGD related releases this week: SuperSprite FM+ AGD games pack #3, which contains: Dark Castle The Goblin

 http://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11010

Regular AGD converted games pack #52, which contains a special AGD game conversion called MIREMARE. Pere has a whole posted talking about it on the World of Dragon forum, where he mentions that this one has 35 assembly language subroutines that they ported to the 6809, including special sound & music routines. It also features other things not standard in most AGD games (like player wrapping between top/bottom and left/right side of screen). The pack also has "regular" Dragon/Coco games. It includes: Dark Castle Dirty Dozer 2 The Goblin Javi Pomez MireMare UniCycle

 http://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11011&

Also, since it is the end of the month, Pere also released the BIG PACKS version 2.9, which contains all of the games ported to date (which is now up to 297):

 http://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11012

4) Tim Lindner and his sister AJ have released episode 18 of their show "Sibling Rivalry", this time feature Rampage! on the Coco 3. We are also going to have them on the show for an interview on March 19!:

 https://youtu.be/C2B2FZb8pUE

5) Paul Shoemaker put up a quick video on the Coco Facebook group of his upcoming Coco 3 Freecell project, which is his first game that he is planning on going all in on assembly language. He has animated cards being dealt in the demo, as well as a bouncing hand ptr:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159758764747641/

6) Erico Monteiro posted a short animation to Facebook showing some testing he is doing for his upcoming game The Sedna Strain, in this case showing a large set of text char strings moving back and forth on the screen (all in BASIC, I believe) NOTE: HE HAS BETTER ANIMATIONS TO SHOW IN THE COMMENTS AREA:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159758292152641/