News stories for Episode 264, June 4, 2022

News stories for Episode 264, June 4, 2022

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(May 28-June 3)

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

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1) Coco Crew episode 84 was released, including a review of The Interbank Incident, a recap of CocoFest (they had some pretty bad experiences with the hotel; much more so than I did although I did experience a couple of issues myself), and a discussion on Coco purism (which is using original hardware, etc. vs. newer stuff. This is something that they (and we) have talked about before.

 http://cococrew.org/

2) Michael Furman has made more progress on getting Rick Ulland's CocoIO working, including now getting RFC 862 echo services working in testing. He also clarified that he is NOT using the Wiznet in raw mode, but is using the cards internal API's to handle the Ethernet, ARP, TCP/IP, etc.

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159942577877641/

3) Steve Strowbridge posted about a young lad named Charlie that he met at last months CocoFest, and his experience setting up CocoPi on his custom Pi system, with help from some of Steve's videos. Community cooperation and spirit at its best!

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/748644118674047/posts/1831704447034670/

4) Our very own Ken of Canadian Retro Things put up a video - "My Trip to CocoFest Part 1". This covers part of the journey to Chicago, plus stuff he picked up at the Fest!:

 https://youtu.be/BLv37mZpRNc

5) Montgomery Computers channel on YouTube released a promo video talking about a longer video about the Coco 3 that they are working on:

 https://youtu.be/_q91IOLOSLA

6) Alderson Retro Computing put up an 8 minute+ video on setting up VCC and Edtasm+:

 https://youtu.be/bpyNiRREFX0

7) A shout out to Randy Kindig and the Floppy Days podcast (we had Randy on as an interview guest in January). While his new episode does not concern the Coco (it's an interview with Howell Ivy, who helped create the Exidy Sorcerer and has been involved with many fascinating things since), it does mark Randy's first foray into a video interview in addition to his normal audio only podcasts. Please check it out:

 https://youtu.be/QojU9ty4q_U

MC-10

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1)

Dragon 32/64

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1) John Whitworth had to put up a very sad post in several Coco and Dragon related Facebook groups - he has had to reduce what he is able to do with DragonPlus Electronics, due to illness. He will only be selling kits instead of fully finished products for now as he concentrates on his health (including his SuperSprite FM+):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159926372232641/

2) Tim Gilberts, who we had on our DragonTalk! Special last year, put up a video about Computing 40 years ago, going through a couple of multi-platform computer magazines from the time. This 1/2 hour show is just part 1 of at least 3 parts he is planning. This is definitely not centered on the Coco or Dragon, but an interesting view about the home computer scene in the UK in 1982:

 https://youtu.be/Nofp4TEVYW0

3) The Centre of Computing History channel (which is where Tim Gilberts was at doing part of his video we just showed) has put up a 1&3/4 hour video "Retro Computer Festival - 1982 Edition (The Movie) which covers a lot of exhibitors showing off computers that came out in the UK in 1982 (Dragons make an appearance at 54:36):

 https://youtu.be/LYSbK_4W09g

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

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1) The Wargaming Scribe has covered another Coco wargame, this time Kamikaze by Ark Royal Games. As they had done earlier with their review of Across the Rubicon, they do a very thorough review. In summary - he was not impressed. He also covered Mission:Empire by Strictly Color Software in the same review, near the end:

 https://zeitgame.net/archives/5716

2) Fabrizio Caruso on the Coco Facebook group announced that he now has added 4 color mode support for his Cross-Lib universal game framework, to support the Coco 1/2 and Dragon 32/64 (PMODE 3 as an example). He also released a demo video of his first game port to the new engine, Cross Horde:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159934955422641/

3) Jim Gerrie posted a game called "Wall of Bricks" originally Ediciel for the French MC-10 clone, the Matra Hachette Alice. Originally written in BASIC for the Alice, this one has been run through Greg Dionne's BASIC compiler (it seems to have better brick collision detection than most other BASIC versions of Brickout that I have seen):

 https://youtu.be/IZlKMmji1Is

4) Ken of Canadian Retro Things did a review and play video of Glen Hewlett's Robotron:2084 transcode. He recorded his video on his actual Coco 3:

 https://youtu.be/0aV0vNqbGi4

5) Speaking of Jim Gerrie - a new to me YouTube channel called "Sabrina" discovered Jim and his MC-10 emulation and porting of old games, and has now released two of their own game play videos on the MC-10: Part 1:

 https://youtu.be/GqYxso43mCo

Part 2:

 https://youtu.be/r3Vb1R3zeiI