News stories for Episode 266, June 18, 2022

News stories for Episode 266, June 18, 2022

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(June 11-June 17)

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

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1) Adrians Digital Basement 2nd YouTube channel (with '][' instead of 2 or II - cute touch related to the Apple II) released an almost 3/4 hour video showing his recently acquired Coco 1, MPI and floppy drive. The Coco 1 has had multiple mods (composite out, 64K RAM upgrade and other things), the floppy drive is relatively unknown brand (but double sided). There are also issues with them, which are not solved in this video:

 https://youtu.be/EeFLelsb_uA

2) Allen Huffman has released a few Coco related blog posts this week:

a) The first one is on "Typing in an un-typable BASIC program, which is a follow up to his shrinking a BASIC program down to print a Christmas tree type shape on the 32x16 text screen. The main object of the program was to try and shrink it as much as possible. A visitor to his blog (Sebastion T.) sent in a really clever trick that includes self-modifying the BASIC program itself, which then allows the program to be shrunk further by manipulating string data that works in BASIC, but actually can't be entered from BASIC:
   https://subethasoftware.com/2022/06/14/typing-in-an-un-typable-basic-program/
b) The 2nd one is another followup program, this time in making his 64K RAM detection program for the Coco 1/2 easier to type in as a BASIC program:
   https://subethasoftware.com/2022/06/15/6809-request-smallest-64k-test/

And as usual, Allen would love for others to share any thoughts, comments and program modifications for both of his articles.

c) He also put up a blog article on how to install LWTOOLS on Windows using Cygwin:
   https://subethasoftware.com/2022/06/16/installing-lwtools-on-windows-using-cygwin/

3) Alderson Retro Computing put up part one of his tutorial using VCC with a virtual EDTASM+ cartridge to do some programming in assembly language. In this video he shows how to set up the EDTASM+ ROM in VCC, and how to cut text from the text editor of your choice in Windows (11 in his case) and to paste it into VCC as if you typed it):

 https://youtu.be/xtYKGwO5rCs

4) Pedro Pana (Rocky Hill on YouTube) put out a YouTube video that is a status update on his Coco 1/2 replacement motherboard (the 26-3134A Coco 2 version - he also notes that the Tandy schematics he originally started with do have errors). He also notes that he will be working on a 26-3134B (The T1/Lowercase VDG version):

 https://youtu.be/ZVgJEOnWDyY

In his part 2 video, he shows how he used a cellphone picture to help route the top tracks on the board using KiCAD:

 https://youtu.be/GyRi-DuZtJM

5) Chibiakumas on YouTube did another "general" assembly language video that applies to multiple retro systems (like last weeks sound tutorial), this time concentrating on "other" terms & concepts, like the differences between analog and digital joysticks, what things like strobes, DAC's, ADC's & multiplexer's:

 https://youtu.be/PLZIyHMT0Mc

6) Color Computer Programing on YouTube did a video showing a rendition of Link that he did on the Coco 1/2 in PMODE 3, and where he has discovered the GET/PUT trick of doing an even byte boundary without the ,G option to greatly speed up PUT drawing (several times faster):

 https://youtu.be/2_RkUYiV454

7) David Chesek put up a video this morning on YouTube called "Surfing the Web 80s style", where he demonstrates his use of 2 Modem Paks converted over to RS-232 paks) and going to the web with his 2 MB RAM Coco 3, along with an IRQ strapped Multipak:

 https://youtu.be/_kjrMEM-mrk

MC-10

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1)

Dragon 32/64

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1)

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

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1) Thanks to Pere Serrat, Paul Shoemaker's new game Ghost Rush is now available on the Dragon 32/64 as well!

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3196137417312572/

For Dragon users, I uploaded it (on Paul & Pere's behalf) to the World of Dragon Archive:

 http://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11025
(I will note that they are now working on backporting Poker Squares, although that will take longer - a lot of ROM calls and screen positions need to change)

2) M. David Johnson on the Coco list posted that he fixed a few bugs in some Coco educational games (a Bible quiz game, advanced subtraction and advanced division), and has uploaded the update DSK images and source code for these game the Coco page on his website for BDS software:

 http://www.bds-soft.com/php/coco/CoCoBASICGamesPuzzles.php

3) Pere Serrat & Kees van Oss have released the next AGD games pack (#57!). 4 of these feature the mini-sprites that he got the engine working with a couple of months ago, and the other 2 are regular sized sprites. The 6 games in this pack are (I list the mini-sprite ones first):

 Mini-sprite:

Mazania (Mage Rage Part II) Paintball 2048 Space Thunder The Humans

 Regular sprite:

Beef 1 Beef 2

 http://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11028

4) Erico Patricio Monteiro put up a YouTube video (running at 5x speed) showing the world he has designed for his upcoming Landerventure game:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159964804152641/

Video:

 https://youtu.be/bv3vT_zbUOg

5) Jim Gerrie ported "Star Command Sigma" (originally from the NEC PC-6001 from 1982) to the MC-10. It's an enhance version of Classic Super Star Trek from the 1970's. NOTE: This is a long play video - over half an hour:

 https://youtu.be/gvd_niYyvag

He also made a blog entry for this one, which goes through some of the differences with the NEC version (note the NEC had a 6847 VDG as well, although with it's own character ROM), and also with the later, fancier MSX version:

 https://jimgerrie.blogspot.com/2022/06/star-command-sigma-by-ascii-1982.html

He also Sheep Station from Tim Hartnell's Second Giant Book of Computer Games:

 https://youtu.be/j1reScJLjqc

6) Simon Jonassen is madly at work on the Ghost Rush port to the MC-10. He has the intro screen with animations done, and even a multi-voice music routine for the interludes between levels... and is now working on the gameplay itself. He put up a video on the Facebook MC-10 group showing his progress so far in the MC-10 emulator: (NOTE: Sound is loud, so turn it down a fair bit)

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/5095447207248727/

7) Johan Koelman is working on porting his SHOGUN style game (which he has previously made for low RAM machines like the Sinclair ZX-81, Odyssey 2 & ZX Spectrum) to the MC-10, and is just learning 6803 assembly language to do it. He has some screenshots of his progress posted in the Facebook MC-10 group (see comments for updates, as well as gameplay on the Odyssey 2 version - looks to be a chess type game?):

https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/5090601211066660/

8) The Laird's Lair YouTube page did another cross-platform game video, this time featuring the game Arcadia on the ZX Spectrum, C64, Dragon 32 and Vic20. As with previous videos, they show video for all 4 simultaneously, and switch the audio between the machines as they go:

 https://youtu.be/MLtqLgXorDo