News stories for Episode 271, July 23, 2022

News stories for Episode 271, July 23, 2022

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(July 16-July 22)

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

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1) Tim Lindner posted some "blink photogrophy" photos from new RGB2HDMI adaptor from real Coco 2/2B/3 VDG font vs. what MAME currently emulates. It's not perfect; there are some things that need to move around (and some need some pixel modifications) to get them to exactly match:

 http://tlindner.macmess.org/?p=913

2) Ron Klein announced that the Coco Pi now has the XRoar 1.1 package available for it. This update includes 1/2MB RAM support for the Coco 3 emulation, Matra / Hachette Alice support, IDE hard drive support, fixed VDG font glyphs, and much more!:

 https://coco-pi.com/new-xroar-1-1-package-available-for-coco-pi/

3) Richard Kelly upload a DSK image to the Coco Facebook group containing "Mode 2 Utility", originally released by the tape magnazine T&D Software. I haven't tried it yet, but it sounds like it will disable the Coco 3 Extended BASIC suggestions, freeing up some of the upper 32K RAM for other things (and to possibly make some more 64K BASIC programs work on the Coco 3). Anyone had a chance to try this?

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160024738882641/

4) Mike Rojas released some screen shots and a short video about the Debugging extensions that he has been working on for VCC. Looks really good!

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160024293357641/

He also released an update to his hardware project of making a universal keyboard connector for all 3 Coco's, including pictures of his prototypes. (I don't think he has the early C/D/E board header connector Coco's to make one for that version, although he is interested in doing so):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160016967102641/

5) Marco Van de Meulenhof has added Coco replacement (and custom) badges to his previously available replacement badges for other systems (including other TRS-80's, Amstrads, Commodore, Atari, etc.):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160023567517641/

His storefront (which also offers T-shirts, etc.):

 https://retro8bitshop.com/retrostore/badgeman/

6) Kent Timm (Atari_Hotel) put up a quick video about a Coco 2 he picked up on eBay. The power cord is cut off, but it has never been opened before, so the video is him "voiding" his warranty:

 https://youtu.be/mhvvJgXjp8A

7) Not really news, but a nice blast from the past from the 1981 Radio Shack catalog (I used to have the Canadian one, where the 4K Coco was $549 CDN). You can see the Coco's entire software library in the lower left corner. (I should note that the 1981 catalog was actually published around the fall of 1980 - you can see references to Extended BASIC not being available until 11/30/80):

 https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=5584106671619726&set=gm.10160021147047641

8) Jame Rye (I think that is Jim Rye from Game On Challenge Live fame?) has posted version 1.0 of his online DSK editor. Currently it only works with 35 track images (standard DECB), but he does have it able to tokenize/detokenize BASIC programs. He does warn that you should use backup DSK images as it may still have bugs in this first release:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160020267862641/

The direct link to try it out (also check out the Australian site in the upper right corner):

 https://jimrye.org/cocodsk/

9) Allen Huffman made a new blog post about the Coco's BASIC and how it handles variables, and how to use VARPTR to explore them. In this article, he goes further than he has before, including strings vs. floating point, and arrays (both single and multi-dimension). One thing he goes into that I had not realized before was the danger of using VARPTR on arrays when you have not declared all your variables before using VARPTR (see half way down):

 https://subethasoftware.com/2022/07/19/color-basic-and-varptr/

10) Terry Trapp is returning to a project he started well over a year ago, and is getting back into (we showed it back then as well). Ultimately he wants the Propeller P2 board to fully emulate a 6551 serial chip, and he is looking for some other people also interested in this type of project to collaborate on. The project he showed last year was a SID chip emulator using the same P2 board:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160020054287641/

11) Fabian Rodriguezk did an update about the Coco 1 on the Cocopedia Wiki, and wants some feedback and/or editing if he has missed anything:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160018471847641/

Entry itself:

 https://www.cocopedia.com/wiki/index.php/Color_Computer_1

12) Nick Marentes started an interesting discussion on using either 2 Orch-90 cards (or a new card that handles 4 DAC's) on the Coco Facebook group. Nick - what are the advantages to this, and where do you possibly see it going (quadraphonic/surround sound, for instance)?

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160017644322641/

13) As mentioned earlier in the CocoPi update, Ciaran (Sixxie) has released version 1.1 of XRoar, with enhanced Coco 3 support, font fixes, Alice support, etc.: Announcement:

 http://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=11036

Download site:

 https://www.6809.org.uk/xroar/

14) Alderson Retro Computing put up a YouTube short video showing his newly aquired Coco 2 & FD-500 drive and controller, and showed that it worked right off the bat. Looks likes he needs a RAM upgrade though. :-)

 https://www.youtube.com/shorts/eHYLAQoWBlw

MC-10

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1) Simon Jonassen is working on a port of Paul Thayer's Timberman to the MC-10/Alice, and has a screenshot of the title screen posted:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160017950702641/

Dragon 32/64

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1) David Linsley posted an ad for a Konix Speedking joystick - a rather unique design I don't recall seeing before (it was for a variety of the machines sold in the UK). Has anyone else seen this before? (photo of one in the comments)

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3223236297936017/

2) Billy Scott on YouTube did a video showing his Dragon 32 - unfortunately the audio is really low so it is very hard to understand what he is saying (he is aware of it and planning to get a microphone). I hope he gets a chance to remake the video.

 https://youtu.be/9HTqBTRTLfg

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

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1) Fabrizio Caruso has ported some of his cross platform games to his newer engine, that now supports PMODE 3 style screens to get 4 colors (previously only two color was available). He has put up for free download 2 of them so far: Cross Bomber with video:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160021561247641/

Cross Snake with video:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160017151367641/

2) Jim Gerrie has updated a number of his OS-9 Level 2 games, including some broad fixes and making them EOU friendly (We will be adding them in for the upcoming release of EOU, I think), and made a video to show some of them:

 https://youtu.be/YserKRzFc18

He also updated some of his OS-9 Level 1 games as well, with accompanying video. I should note - he also found a couple of bugs in the CoVDG driver in EOU (and earlier for one of the bugs) that will be fixed in the next EOU release. There is a 3rd bug that he found that I am tracking down as well. A second note is that Level 1 graphics games take a large chunk of system RAM on Level 2 OS-9 (due to how the screens need to map in for backwards compatibility), so you can only run 1 at a time (and only if you don't have too many processes and/or paths open already):

 https://youtu.be/qDmYTObHZig

3) Pere Serrat has posted both the Dragon DSK images (both the regular version, and a lowercase / T1-VDG version) for the Scott Adams series of adventures (all 13) to the World of Dragon forums. He also posted solutions for them for anyone that gets stuck:

 http://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11035&sid=362a6bf4230101cf2198cd9f173921f9

4) The latest The Coco Show (episode 34) about Juniors Revenge and Return of Juniors Revenge has now been uploaded to YouTube, where had the honour of being a live guest on it, as it was recorded at BoatFest last month:

 https://youtu.be/DwSfnszXElY

5) Coco Forest release some videos of gameplay on his Dragon 32: Phantom Slayer and Escape (2 Ken Kalish games sharing the same graphics engine):

 https://youtu.be/J7vS92QZdtU

Galgon & Pengon:

 https://youtu.be/IscRB8SrZ30

Katerpillar Attack & Katerpillar Attack 2:

 https://youtu.be/TOjftzy0DXo