News stories for Episode 260, April 30, 2022

News stories for Episode 260, April 30, 2022

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

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1) Pierre Sarrazin announced that version 0.1.177 of CMOC (the C like compiler) is out, with these changes:

- If a floating point value cannot be represented on the target platform, it will now now show an error instead of crashing
- Math functions sinf,cosf,tanf,atanf,logf,expf,sqrtf,fabsf,floorf,truncf & roundf have been added. These call ROM routines in Extended BASIC, so Extended BASIC is required to use these functions.
- Local static variables are now supported
- K&R C function definitions are now accepted, although these should only be considered "experimental" at this time
 http://perso.b2b2c.ca/~sarrazip/dev/cmoc.html

2) Coco Crew episode 83 has been released. Some highlights are the host discussion of more/better programming languages, and Neil's talk on Paul Shoemaker's card games:

 http://cococrew.org

3) Daniel Campos posted pictures from the Clube Color Rio (Coco gathering in Rio de Janeiro over last weekend) that were taken by Luciano Scharf:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159864635667641/

4) Sheldon MacDonald uploaded an updated video of his running CocoCAD with a Sega mouse on Zippster Zone's PSG card, with his own driver. He also goes through the driver code in the video.

 https://youtu.be/9HTPJGKzV88

He also uploaded the DSK image for people to try if they have the hardware:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159864363127641/

5) Ron Klein announced and update to CocoPi that includes MAME 0.243, which includes some new Coco support, including formatting Coco disks (both DECB and OS9 formats) & increased range on the emulated Tandy High Resolution Joystick X/Y coordinates.

 https://coco-pi.com/new-mame-0-243-package-available-for-coco-pi/

6) Mark Overholser announced on Facebook that he will finally have some Boomerang 2MB RAM upgrade boards (With DAT) available for sale, and will have them at CocoFest (in 2 weeks!). He is also getting things lined up to also have 512K upgrade boards soon as well:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159871942327641/
 https://www.facebook.com/FakebookBusiness/posts/370468391676194

7) Our very own Ken @ Canadian Retro Things posted a video showing his upgrading his Coco 3 to a 6309:

 https://youtu.be/EBUen-LtZGo

8) Alderson Retro Computing on YouTube features a recently retired programmer getting back to his Coco roots, so far with 3 video shorts on the MC-10, Coco 3 / CocoPi, and setting up his CocoSDC on the Coco 3:

 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3WdQa0hlrRL9wdF-X8oA7w

MC-10

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1) (see Jim Gerrie games news)

Dragon 32/64

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1) An update on last weeks story about Adrian Sinclair working on full size posters of Dragon game artwork - he has received his Lunar Rover Patrol (60x40 cm, or roughly 23.5" x 16"), and is impressed with the quality he received from the printer:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3161363634123284/

2) Retro Tech Archive on YouTube posted a video run through of the Dragon 32 by Tony Jewell:

 https://youtu.be/xUrnimybXfU

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

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1) Pere Serrat & Kees van Oss have announced AGD converted games pack #54 - which features a special version of the AGD engine that supports smaller 8x8 sprites (which allows more, but smaller, sprites on the screen at once). The games in this pack are: Little Fish Big Tale Mage Rage Moon Ranger Rat-A-Tat Road Trippin The Legend of the Frog Prince Announcement on World of Dragon forums (in English):

 https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=11018

Retrowiki (spanish, but has screen shots):

 http://www.retrowiki.es/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=200038214

2) I missed this when it was released on April 14, but Ray on the World of Dragon archive posted a Dragon game/utility menu for XRoar, DragonMMC & CocoSDC. This contains 421 games & 97 utilities that you can access through a menu system on real hardware or the XRoar emulator:

 https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11017

3) Jim Gerrie has some more games converted over to the MC-10 (what a surprise!) this week, including: Poco Rally - A Night Driver style game (originally by Dean Mackie & Peter Lear in 1986 from the book "Colour Computer: Exploring the TRS-80":

 https://youtu.be/rsvpZSteZOw

Wormy from Rainbow Magazine in 1990 (quite late!) which is a text based Snake style game:

 https://youtu.be/pwrfBSVmGck

Smash Up! (Which is a 10 line BASIC game!):

 https://youtu.be/2q9e8ddAsks