News stories for Episode 270, July 16, 2022

News stories for Episode 270, July 16, 2022

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(July 9-July 15)

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

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1) Our very own CocoMan (Jason) release a half hour video about his trip to this past May's 30th CocoFest:

 https://youtu.be/UyZAaU2JKY8

2) Jason Thorpe posted an update to his porting the NFP09 (6809 floating point library). He has added a pseudo instruction to his 6809 emulator that compares to chunks of memory (pointed to by X and Y registers) for up to 255 bytes (using A as the byte count). He shows some sample code that uses this to help track down bugs, etc.:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160014015932641/

3) Mike Rojas has completed the layout for his Coco 2 keyboard "switchboard", and has ordered his first physical boards, to make a switch based replacement with switches for the keyboard:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160013420517641/

He also completed the Coco chiclet key version as well (he had finished the Coco 3 version awhile ago):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160012002272641/

4) Ian Maverick from Australia has been posting some scans from Radio Shack's Intercom internal magazine (for staff). We have shown a few before of the US version, but I believe that some or all of his are from the Australian version (there was a Canadian version as well that I know of), and they were all different: - Coco 1 "F" board (cost reduced Coco 1) - March 1983:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160012605717641/

- MC-10 - July 1983:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160009322237641/

- Winners of the Radio Shack Research & Development Department outstanding achievements awards for 1984 (including John Prickett for his work on the Coco 2) - April 1985:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160007872752641/

5) Carl England has made a new version of his SuperBoot program, which is a patch program for Disk Extended Color BASIC that allows double side, up to 80 track drives, faster step rates, etc. You can customize individual disks with a single granule program (and make settings different for each disk if you want). You just type DOS and that disk to have it set up, and then it pops up a quick multi-page, 2 column selection menu of files on that disk. New to this version is that it now also works fully with the CocoSDC. It sounds like it should be on the Color Computer Archive soon.

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160012003592641/

6) Allen Huffman posted a list of Coco downloadable files that were hosted on Haye's (of modem fame) own BBS, from around 1991-1992:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160008039537641/

7) Graham Toal shared a link in the Motorola 6809/6309, 6800 Assembly Language Programming group on Facebook the source code for a 6809 monitor program that he used in school (Edinburgh) back in the 1980's, that is a custom version based on Motorola's own:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/6809assembly/posts/2925764364383593/

8) John Linville posted an article on recovering an old rare interpreted language called "VTL-09" on his Retro Tinker blog. He ready a blog post by David Wiens (who was involved with the Sardis buffered disk controller and drivers on the Coco, amongst other things) about a 6809 port of the VTL programming language ("Very Tiny Language"), which was originally for the 6800 and then ported to the 6809. John and Dave have now got it assembling (in two different assembler environments), but it's not properly working yet, so this is very much a program language recovery project still in progress:

 https://retrotinker.blogspot.com/2022/07/recovering-vtl-09.html

9) Voidstar Tech posted a video on YouTube showing a demo of using a WiModem232 on a Coco 3 through Drivewire (on the bit banger) to log into a BBS at 1200 baud using Greg-E-Term (not sure why he used 32x16 when Greg-E-Term supported 40 and 80 column modes on the Coco 3):

 https://youtu.be/YTRd5hTMWyE

10) Phil Kruman on YouTube put up a half hour video discussing whether retrobrighting old computers is worth, and some of the downsides that have been found since it became popular (it seems to be temporary, it could reduce the strength of the plastic etc.). He brought up a previous video he had done with a Coco 2 - where he had decided to NOT retrobrite it (starts about 1:49). He shows how it looks now, and what he actually did do to it:

 https://youtu.be/PBDt7WQzJWc

11) Color Computer Programing posted some more BASIC tutorial/exploration videos:

- Dealing with animating graphics using DATA lines:
 https://youtu.be/ax9Uq1QFTe8
- Exporting/importing data on cassette (this got split into two videos as he had a video feed crash): 

Part 1:

 https://youtu.be/usnMkOQHX2k

Part 2:

 https://youtu.be/s6nJvKpXeEM

MC-10

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1) Jim Gerrie posted in the in MC-10 group on Facebook about the trs80gp emulator that we mentioned last week - this emulates pretty well all of the TRS-80 line (from Model 1-4, 12, 16, 6000, Videotex, DT-1, MC-10). Jim does mention that it does not support the SG6 (64x48) semigraphics mode though, just SG4:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/5176100045850109/

Dragon 32/64

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1) Richard Harding posted in multiple groups that the Dragon 40th anniversary meetup in Port Talbot is offically October 22-23, and that Coco's and Dragons both are welcome. He also added that they are doing a crowd fundraiser to pay for the meeting room costs, and if they get more donations than are needed for the room, the excess money will go towards leukaemiauk.org.uk "in light of group member John Whitworth's recent leukaemia diagnosis". (John is the man behind the Supersprite+ board, amongst many other things):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160010563387641/

2) Estrella Speedster in the Dragon Facebook group posted photos of a complete Dragon system including a lot of original software that he recently acquired from someone who had stored it in a loft for 30 years. Some really nice game artwork on some of these that I had not seen before (make sure to click the magnify button a few times):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3218402618419385/

3) David F. Gisbert posted a link to his archive.org account of scans he has made of 3 different Dragon brochures, all in spanish from the Eurohard era. He has Dragon 32, Dragon 64 and the Dragon disk drive:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3218143875111926/
 https://archive.org/details/@tromax

4) Mike Miller uploaded the manual updates for DosPlus 5 for the Dragon, which includes new commands for the SDC as well:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3216773865248927/

(show local .pdf copy I have)

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

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1) Eric Patricio Monteiro posted a few updates to his ongoing hybrid Lunar Lander/adventure game: - screenshot of the shipyard in the caves with some hints:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160013552817641/

(in the comments he put up a video clip showing the animated title screen and some game play (both graphic modes)) - some final pass updates on the world map, adding some visual aids & fixing some map lines:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160010085947641/

2) Chris Oliver posted a photo (courtesy of Chris Poacher) of the Dragon/Coco box, artwork and tapes for Doodle Bug and Nerble Force as sold by Microdeal (both originally by Computerware in the U.S):

 https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10227668210671958&set=gm.10160007332332641

3) Cathe Cita posted on the Dragon Facebook group some screenshots, manual cover and disks of a 3 disk graphical adventure game for the Dragon 64 called "The Stone of Magician" that looks pretty interesting, and is not on the World of Dragon archive yet. Her version features some German instructions by the look of it. It features 6 bit speech and sound (Make sure to click on the images in the comments as well):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3220035228256124/

4) In preparation for the next taping of the Coco Show, John "Boatofcar" Shawler put up a video showing Color Robot Battle (a programming game for 2 human players) using some of the sample programs from the manual (no commentary):

 https://youtu.be/p5v8AgKMbws

5) Dmitrii Simlianskii on YouTube posted a couple of videos in Russian about his Dragon 32 based on the book "The Dragon 32 Book of Games". Episode 1 shows the BASIC game Alien Invaders (and goes through some of his retro collection):

 https://youtu.be/ovj37OK9fWU

Episode 2 covers the game "Guideline" from the same book, and at the end he shows another book:

 https://youtu.be/BF6l3eXGnWc

(Will want to turn close captioning on, and auto-translate to english)