News stories for Episode 263, May 28, 2022

News stories for Episode 263, May 28, 2022

==============================

For episode 263 (May 28) we are going to cover some games in development from Mr. Dave, Nick Marentes, Glen Hewlett (Nick will demo Robotron) and our special guest, Todd Wallace (LordDragon)

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

---

1) Alan @ AC's 8-Bit Zone put up a video showing his Coco 2 with 80x30 tile graphics using his Coco DV, which allows graphics up to 640x240 pixels, and 32x24 redefinable text characters:

 https://youtu.be/34s1Td_ojlM

Alan did a follow up video as well, now showing hardware scrolling of the character sets:

 https://youtu.be/GhiD1mSJ-kU

(He has yet another followup in the Game News as well)

2) Sheldon MacDonald has a new video showing his progress with his new Sega/ Tandy editor environment (still a work in progress). He goes over some things that he has changed since his last update:

 https://youtu.be/MLKhuNEq3bs

3) Jim Brain updated the Glenside page with a wrap up along with many photos from the Fest:

 https://www.glensideccc.com/cocofest-2022-is-a-wrap/

4) All the seminars, opening ceremonies and the jam sessions (sorry) from CocoFest are now up on the CocoTalk YouTube channel:

 https://www.youtube.com/c/ImaCoCoNut/videos

Ken also put our BASIC09 seminar up on his page as well:

 https://youtu.be/si1NDycoP6g

5) After CocoFest was over, Ken and I drove over to Amigos Retrogaming headquarters (both of them!) in Hurricane, West Virginia... where we suddenly became part of an impromptu live broadcast!

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOQUd_5QzXg

6) Henry Reitveld showed his Cocofest Coco 3 repack working with a newly re-imaged hard drive:

 https://youtu.be/2k7-oHBGxAE

7) John Linville posted some pictures showing his designs for Coco Crew Challenge Coin's (are these collectables, or prizes for a programming contest? If anyone knows, let me know - I may have missed a post):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159909884267641/

8) Ricky ElQasem posted a link to CocoUITape - which is a Maxduino based microSD card reader for the Coco that simulates tape. It plays only (no recording), but it is cheaper and also based on an open source firmware so that it works with multiple platforms (not just the Coco) if I understand correctly: Original post:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159909376382641/

Sale page:

 https://www.youmakerobots.com/home/97-362-cocouitape-trs-80-sd-solution.html

9) Roger Taylor posed that he will be bringing the CocoTV channel back onto Roku, and now adding it to FireTV as well. He is also asking for people who want to have their Coco related content on the channels to contact him:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159895015682641/

10) Tony Cappellini posted on Facebook in the OS-9/NitrOS-9 group that episode 82 of The Advent of Computing podcast is about the history of the 6809, BASIC09 and OS-9:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/1929079184021683/posts/3123134487949474/

You can even listen to it on YouTube:

 https://youtu.be/FZadYxrF3l8

11) Color Computer Programing on YouTube has done another in his series about programming (and his learning as he goes) in Extended BASIC. In this episode he covers negative exponents in math, and a little quirk on printing floating point numbers on the screen from BASIC:

 https://youtu.be/poi1YfblsC4

He also did an episode on Rational (fractional) additive inverses as well:

 https://youtu.be/6AyOR1NeGSE

12) Michael Furman has posted source code (and shown some screenshots) of some utilities he has written in C for Rick Ullands CocoIO networking card, that he just picked up at CocoFest 2 weeks ago. One configures the card MAC and IP addresses, and the other is PING, so that you can ping other computers on the network from the Coco. Github sourcecode & docs:

 https://github.com/n6il/cocoio-dw/tree/main/tests

Facebook post with screenshots:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159923924642641/

13) Rick Ulland had shown his BASIC09 simple web browser at the Fest (shown in the first screenshot):

 (local CocoFest Demo browser.jpg). After watching our BASIC09 seminar at the Fest, he quickly upgraded it to use the new GFX2 windowing/menu library, and it is a marked improvement done in just a weeks time:
 (local New GFX2 browser.jpg, New GFX2 browser2.jpg).

You can see the discussion about this and the screenshots on the Coco Discord, in the "network-interface-cards" channel (in the "networking" channel group).

14) Bill Pierce and EJ Jaquay have released a Beta (2.1.0.6) of the next version of VCC. This adds emulation support for both the Tandy and CocoMax high resolution mouse interfaces, various bug fixes, and updated manual, and the ability to hide the Windows mouse pointer while in the VCC work area (so that you only have the Coco's mouse pointer showing up, instead of two different pointers). Github download link for both the executable and source code:

 https://github.com/VCCE/VCC/releases/tag/vcc2.1.0.6-beta

15) Paul Shoemaker uploaded some samples of 8.5 x 11 inch small poster/prints for the patent application graphics for a variety of Tandy computers including the Coco 1, to Facebook. (Email him for the full sized ones). He also shows some framed prints he did in the comments.

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159919963552641/

And Antonino Caballero is now hosting the full high resolution versions of them here:

 http://www.780tech.com/TandyPatentArt/

16) Alvero Ricardo posted a link to his Facebook group that covers antique, retro and vintage computers in Brazil:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159916573707641/

17) The VintNerd on YouTube did a video about a bunch of things he has received lately (he covers all kinds of retro computers), which this episode included the CocoSDC that he got from RetroRewind.ca (I should mention some other TRS-80 stuff is in the video as well as many other retro systems):

 https://youtu.be/3VLbxX-jgGI?t=327

MC-10

---

1) Jim Gerrie released a video of "Morse Tutor", ported to the MC-10 from it's original Commodore PET version (from the August 1982 Practical Computing magazine):

 https://youtu.be/ryUKmP1f5v0

He also did a few programs from the C64 book, C64 A.I. Projects (originally published 1983, and written by Timothy J. O'Malley): Knight's Tour (originally by Timothy J. O'Malley) (this calculates and shows how a Knight can get to every piece on a chessboard... without touching a square twice):

 https://youtu.be/WrJtp2o9hDY

The Towers of Hanoi:

 https://youtu.be/KGAqmTMPV2o

2) Alderson Retro Computing, whom we have covered their Coco, CocoPi and MC-10 video shorts before, released a longer video on how to use the MCX-32 SD in the MC-10 (including a bit game playing):

 https://youtu.be/84MyCISYs-8

3) The YouTube channel "Angel's Workstation" did a video about the MC-10 he picked up for $50 (after it had originally been listed at $100):

 https://youtu.be/3L8tchqw5O4

He then did follow up videos (2 parts) of him making a cable to hook it up to his TV (I am not sure why it is only coming out in black and white - perhaps one of our hardware gurus can leave a comment with some suggestions): Part 1:

 https://youtu.be/lmtJIZ0oetU

Part 2:

 https://youtu.be/TRtO0Ayrl9c

Dragon 32/64

---

1) Richard Harding posted an update to the upcoming Dragon Meet 2022: They are shooting for a late September/October date, but also thinking of moving it to the Port Talbot (Wales) area rather than the Centre of Computing History that we saw last year - because that is very near the original Dragon company's plant, and this *is* the 40th anniversary of the Dragon 32. As details are ironed out, they will keep members of the Dragon Facebook group updated:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3175314222728225/

And related - Richard went and took a picture of the old Dragon building as it currently looks:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3172802352979412/

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

==============================

1) Pere Serrat announced both AGD Game pack #56:

 http://www.retrowiki.es/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=200038271

This contains: Alien Slaphead Battle from Below Bomb Bomb Buster (easy version) Bomb Bomb Buster (regular version) MireMare2 v2.2 (newly updated) Stars The BIG packs (with all images up to date) has also now been updated:

 http://www.retrowiki.es/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=200038273

2) Rick Adams posted that he and William Astle have fixed a small bug that was in Rick's game Cocodle (they worked on this during the Fest), and the new source code for it is now up on Rick's Github (as well as a new disk image):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159905433267641/

3) Paul Thayer has posted a set of links to get the tools he uses for game development (and showed during his seminar at CocoFest):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159904504292641/

4) Andrew Ayers posted an experimental conversion of the ancient game "Ur", converted from Altair Basic. You can get it on his github:

 https://github.com/mark-bennett-uk/ur

5) The Old Game Database (Japan) channel on YouTube did a video showing 3-D Brickaway (Breakthru) - a game by Britt Monk from 1982:. It's a 3-D bustout game:

 https://youtu.be/xgSTjuz_92U

6) The Coco Show has released this months episode, featuring Nick Marentes Zero Hour:

 https://youtu.be/ctp6xGaXOG8

7) After covering Intellivision Basketball last week, Tim & AJ played one of our game challenges, Paper Route:

 https://youtu.be/KYMVuxzy8S8

8) D. Bruce Moore showed a photo of the Jim Brain designed CocoMP3 hardware MP3 player for the Coco that he is using on his upcoming game, Realm of Doom (the game will also support pyAudio, a Michael Furman enhancement to his pyDriveWire that allows the audio to come through it):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159916762087641/

9) Jim Gerrie ported "J-Checkers", originally by John White from the October 1981 issue of "Your Computer" magazine:

 https://youtu.be/A7IjeqEiDoA

And a game originally on the Dragon called Snakes and Ladders from the book "Load and Go with Your Dragon":

 https://youtu.be/NXPic0GfGhE

SPECIAL GAME UPDATES SECTION:

=================

1) Todd Wallace's Clickomania (I have quick screenshots)

2) Alan @ AC's 8 bit Zone Pacman using his CocoDV (Coco Digital Video) upgrade board. He demos all the new features that the CocoDV adds (new graphics modes, tile graphics, hardware sprites, sound chip, etc that we have shown before, but he has advanced it quite a bit. All running on a 16K Coco 1/2:

 https://youtu.be/TPKJAuVwvrY

3) Paul Thayer's CocoBan:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJr_rRs_7Y8&t=4085s

4) John Strong's Dr. Coco:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mg5ho910Hs4&t=1250s

5) Glen Hewlett's Robotron:2084

 (Nick will demo)

6) D. Bruce Moore's Realm of Doom with MP3 playing hardware:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmbsYf1LRWI&t=1049s

7) Mr. Dave's game Space Pirate Kimoko (1 of 2 he has going) that is now in beta:

 Dave hopefully will demo live, but we can show his earlier video for those not familiar with the game in progress:
 https://youtu.be/w9tIEWjRFLA

8) Nick Marentes update on Jumping Joey:

 (Nick will demo)

Have I missed any? (The 2 games that I am working on, I don't have any updates from last time)