News stories for Episode 265, June 11, 2022

News stories for Episode 265, June 11, 2022

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(June 4-June 10)

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

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1) First, a correction to a story I covered a couple of episodes ago - concerning the hosting of the Radio Shack patent poster artwork (including the Coco 1) - these are actually hosted by Antonio Jimenez (He-menez). My apologies to all parties for that error.

2) Michael Furman put up a 10 minute video showing his using Rick Ulland's network card working with his PING and ECHOU commands from NitrOS-9 Level 1 on a Coco 1/2 (with a CocoVGA installed):

 https://youtu.be/utCqwvolmEY

He then added another video showing his new ntpdate utility, that can set the Coco's clock over the internet - no RTC required! He then goes through the C source code to explain how it works:

 https://youtu.be/eu2x6OmREF0

3) Brenda Make posted a video about generally working with her Coco 3, including installing a CocoSDC (with her own 3D printed case & label, that more closely resembles the Tandy original disk controllers), her upgrading to SCART output, installing a TRIAD 512K RAM upgrade & testing the memory, and finally running NitrOS-9/BASIC09 in inception mode:

 https://youtu.be/UyD2w1Z5R-E

4) Danielle O'Connor uploaded a video showing the first song (called "Ear Has Not Heard") from her upcoming album "Coco-Musik". The synthesizers and sequencers are controlled by a Coco 1 using a program she wrote (as well as some live playing):

 https://youtu.be/57KXMa0dxf8

5) Dave Wiens (originally of Sardis Technologies in the 1980's) posted on the NitrOS9/OS9 Facebook group that he has scanned the manuals for the IMS relational database manager (for both OS9/6809 & OS9/68000) that was originally sold by the Clearbrook Software Group, and has posted them on his site where they can be downloaded. He has also posted the DSK images for the Coco version of the database:

 http://www.sardis-technologies.com/csg/csg-ims.htm

6) Lyserg S. Diethal posted in the Facebook OS9/NitrOS9 group that the JVC MFM format (for Coco's) is getting supported added in the Greaseweazle. If David Ladd is here, he can explain what all this means... lol.

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/1929079184021683/posts/3139198653009724/

7) Ken Waters posted his Part 2 video about going to CocoFest. This part covers the stuff that happened after CocoFest:

 https://youtu.be/PbTBSGm1aK8

8) Color Computer Programing on YouTube did a quick video showing some semigraphics-4 text screen animation:

 https://youtu.be/rQHVeEKY9BM

9) Chibiakumas put up another machine language instructional video - this one is more generic, on learning the terminology for sound and music, and how exactly it works as far as a computer is concerned (so not CPU specific):

 https://youtu.be/lYoVo8QDT-o

MC-10

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1) Jim Gerrie posted a slightly modified old ad for TRS-80 computers, which he modified to be MC-10 specific:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/5066731223453659/

Dragon 32/64

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1) John Whitworth of Dragon Plus Electronics (who is scaling back selling finished products due to health reasons) announce in both the Coco and Dragon groups that he has updated the store to show which kits he has available at the moment to sell. No guarantees on when/if they will get replenished, so grab the ones you want now:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159952405842641/
 https://www.dragonplus-electronics.co.uk/product-category/hardware/

2) However, even with his illness, John keeps working on making a working Dragon Beta clone (which he likely won't manufacture, but will publish the gerber files so others can get them made). He also mentions some add on boards that Phil Harvey-Smith has been working on (and there is an update from John in the comments on further progress):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3190536097872704/

3) For those of our listeners who have Dragons, Richard Harding has a poll up on the Facebook Dragon group: How did you come to the Dragon Fold? Some of the responses are pretty interesting:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3190901844502796/

4) ToBach on YouTube put up a video of the first place winner of the Field-FX 2022 Demo competition - "The Green Machine" by Slipstream for the Dragon 32 (Note it is a 2 sided tape, with a part A demo (SG-4) and part B (PMODE 3), each with multi-voice music playing:

 https://youtu.be/nMWtWePVG5g

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

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1) Paul Shoemaker has released Ghost Rush, based on an online and phone game called Pac Rush. Runs on any Coco 1/2/3 with at least 32K of RAM. He just released some minor bug fixes, so make sure you get the latest one: (download link of the latest version at bottom of the page, should be on the archive soon)

 http://www.lcurtisboyle.com/nitros9/ghostrush.html

Paul's video clip of it in action:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159953504767641/

Paul is also on this week and next so that people can ask questions about the game, programming it, etc. and their reaction to it next week.

2) And, hot on the heels of that, Simon Jonassen is already working on an MC-10 port of Ghost Rush:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159954605022641/

Latest update with a video:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159956028572641/

3) The Retro Rewind channel on YouTube (no relation to Frank's Retro Rewind.ca hardware company) put up a video about Chambers and Shock Trooper for the Dragon 32. He obviously never read the directions on either of them, but figure out some of the basics (except in Shock Trooper). Warning: fowl language ahead:

 https://youtu.be/YsSsmvls4x0

4) FrodoNL's live Twitch stream this morning covered the latest 2 Coco game releases - Todd Wallace's Clickomania! and Paul Shoemaker's Ghost Rush. (This stream is probably still going as our show starts)

5) Tim and AJ released episode 33 of Sibling Rivalry - and they played our Game On Challenge game of this past week, Trapfall (spoiler - the game is *hard*, and has a pretty massive bug (at least in the 1.0 release)):

 https://youtu.be/D2VaMnJ6VEs

6) Jim Gerrie ported "Kagelian", originally written in Mycom BASIC magazine, August 1985 issue (although it looks like this is a 1988 modified version). Interesting that it split screens the same maze, but enemies and bombs only show on the left version of the map, and the money you collect is only shown on the right. Kind of like the Tom Mix classic Grabber in that way:

 https://youtu.be/6MkKbQjSafM