News stories for Episode 272, July 30, 2022

News stories for Episode 272, July 30, 2022

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(July 23-July 29)

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

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1) Jason Reighard has posted his video blog of the 2nd day of this past May's CocoFest on Youtube. It includes the opening anthems by Brian Schubring using his Coco 3 with MIDI, the Zoom meeting with the Glenside club's president Jim Brain (who couldn't make it to the show at the last minute, a bit of Paul Thayer's game writing seminar, and a variety of things from the show floor on Sunday:

 https://youtu.be/CbM4rJENyqU

2) Don Barber has released programs and source code for the Coco implement RS, up to 2048 bit keys (note: large keys like that could take a month to generate... lol). It will run on a Coco 1/2 with 32K of RAM (16K can make smaller keys). He also added a 6309 native mode option later in the week, which speeds it up about 8%:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160027696587641/

3) Fabian Rodriquez might have found a photo of the rarest cartridge for the Coco yet - a French one that has some differences to "normal" cartridges. I faintly remember seeing something about this some years ago, but I don't know any details:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160031433872641/

4) Marco Van de Meulenhof has changed his strategy for Coco replacement badges (he wasn't aware that Carlos Camacho was already selling "standard" replacemens). So he will let Carlos keep doing the "standard" badges, but Marco will do custom ones, which he showed a few design samples of on Facebook:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160028048347641/

5) Our very own Ken (Canadian Retro Things) posted a video of his installing and trying out Rick Ullands (CoNect) Keyfix3 replacement keyboard circuit board (with real switches):

 https://youtu.be/ekqjjTR3yTA

6) Allen Huffman posted part 1 of his new blog post series on Color BASIC RAM hooks - which is the hooks that can be changed to allow addons to BASIC (including Color Basic to Extended, Extended to Disk, Extended to Super Extended for the Coco 3, and a lot of the 3rd party extensions). Near the end of the article he shows all of the hooks that are available as well:

 https://subethasoftware.com/2022/07/26/color-basic-ram-hooks/

7) Retrocomputing With Mike on YouTube put up a video about the MCH2022 (hackers festival in the Netherlands) that featured old computers, including the Coco 3 (6:05). He gives a brief background of each. (To give an idea about the show in general, play clip 1:56-3:41):

 https://youtu.be/FjyJK7gU3oQ

8) Pedro Pana (Rocky Hill on YouTube) shows off his 64K Static RAM chip for the Coco 2's that have the 2 chip option (originally used 4464's). I think this will help Brendan Donahe's SAM doubler run full double speed on a Coco 2?

 https://youtu.be/qNmRELRTp34

9) Alderson Retro Computing did a brief video comparing Coco 3 Extended BASIC vs Raspberry Pi Pico MMMBasic (also a Microsoft BASIC) with a HELLO WORLD program:

 https://youtu.be/fedatidZ9DU

10) Richard Kelly uploaded his "Easy Directory" utility version 1.9A to the Coco Facebook group, which is a program launcher written completely in BASIC (screenshot in the comments):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160036348402641/

MC-10

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1)

Dragon 32/64

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1) The Friendship Onion podcast page on YouTube, featuring Billy Boyd (Pippin) and Dominic Monaghan (Merry) from the Lord of the Rings movies, had LGR's (Lazy Game Reviews) Clint Basinger on to talk about retro gaming in general, and at one point in the show, when Bill talks about getting into retro computing, Billy tries to stump him about the first computer he ever owned - a ... well, you have to watch:

 https://youtu.be/d6OxV3gcraw?t=2706

(Some of you Dragon people may want to leave some comments. Maybe Ciaran should leave a link to online XRoar. ;-) )

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

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1) AJ & Tim of My Drunk Sibling took on our game of the week this week, playing Xenion. They played it longer than most other games that they have played on their channel, and AJ learned to trash talk!:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sr6_W8zpQCo

2) Jim Gerrie ported the game Bingo by Larry Bethurum to the MC-10. This was ported from a Dartmouth style BASIC, and is very, very early example of a BASIC game -the original version being done in 1966 (this plays line bingo, not blackout):

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ms7uEvQYTOU

Blog post about this port:

 https://jimgerrie.blogspot.com/2022/07/larry-bethurums-1996-bingo.html

He also did a blogpost and upload of an update to his conversion of Jim Menick's Draw Poker game we talked about last month (points 8 and 9 in his blog post - 8 mentions a fix to Jim's original code):

 https://jimgerrie.blogspot.com/2022/06/jim-menicks-draw-poker.html

3) The Amigos are doing their 12 hour gameplay marathon charity event again this year, raising money for the Children's Miracle Network Hospitals (the 5th year they have done this). They recently got a medal for raising over $20,000 over these 5 years, and this year they set their goal a little lower ($4000) because of people not work, etc.... but they have already raised $2446 even before the marathon starts! A big thank you to Frank over at Retro Rewind.ca for his extremely generous where he matched $1000 in pledges with $1000 from his company. The 12 hour stream started July 30 at 9 am EST.

 bit.ly/amigathon2022

4) I got the Xenion game page up on my site just in time to announce it during Game On Challenge Live yesterday. Aside from screenshots and the usual bit about the history of the game (as I know it) and gameplay, it also has link to a ZIP that has all 4 versions - stock, 6809 enhanced, 6309 TFM enhanced, and 6309 Native mode/6309 enhanced:

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

5) Coco Forest added some more real Dragon gameplay videos this week: Rommel-3D & 3D Seeiddab Attack:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lpQnNNL3dg

Draconian & Fury:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mX9M-Pkbaxc

Demon Seed & Mudpies

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0uxAUKba_Y

Intergalactic Force & Laser Run:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyC5eot7LYk

Cuthbert in the Jungle (Trapfall) & Crash:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBvYLV72fp8

6) Retro Mantra put up a video showing Donkey Kong clones and lookalikes. Included are two Coco ones - Dunkey Munkey by Intellectronics and Monkey Kong by Screenplay (starting at 3:31) (Unfortunately he used a 1) a hacked version of Dunkey Munkey with wrong credits, and 2) in the wrong colorset):

 https://youtu.be/aquUAhsdBZ0