News stories for Episode 274, August 13, 2022

News stories for Episode 274, August 13, 2022

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(August 6-August 12)

ANNOUNCEMENTS: We will be taking questions via email to Cocotalk, or on Discord, for a pre-record interview with Michael Duncan that will be recorded the weekend of August 20th for edited playback the following week (August 27th). Please have any questions you may have for Michael sent to us by Friday, August 19th. Hopefully this interview goes through; we haven't heard from him in a few days (hopefully he is just busy).

Also, next week will see 3/4 of the original NitrOS9 development team (Bill Nobel, Alan Dekok & myself) on for a special reminiscing on the 30th anniversary of NitrOS9. Wes (the 4th original member) is very busy, but we still have a faint hope that he can pop in.

September 3 we will interview Dave Dies of Diecom fame (as well as earlier game titles for the Coco from several other companies).

September 17 will see a full interview with Frank Linhares of retrorewind.ca. Previously we had touched on his first computer being a Coco 2, and then into his retro repairs and hardware creating, but this time we will be covering his full computer career, including being on TV with the Lab with Leo Laporte, meeting and being friends with early internet personalities like Amber MacArthur, Kevin Rose, etc.

Still trying to line up some other interviews; but trying to schedule these is still very much like herding cats (even if it is only one cat).

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

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1) Allen Huffman has started a new blogpost series with part 1 now up - Doing spiral effects in Color BASIC and assembly. This first chapter covers 2 ways of doing it in BASIC, with an almost 3x speed increase in the second version:

 https://subethasoftware.com/2022/08/09/spiraling-in-color-basic-and-6809-assembly-part-1/

2) Graham Toal pointed to some pages on Github put up by a BBC Micro user that show (and clarify) some undocumented instructions and behaviour on both the 6809 and the 6309. Most were known before Facebook post:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/6809assembly/posts/2945167922443237/

6309 behaviours (the newly dubbed "M" register, which is basically a way to expose an 8 bit internal register for some instructions, is of particular interest, as well has how the half carry flag is affected with certain instructions):

 https://github.com/hoglet67/6809Decoder/wiki/Undocumented-6309-Behaviours

6809 behaviours (some interesting bits like XDECx (same as DEC except it modifies carry) and XCLRA/XCLRB (same as CLRA/B except Carry is left unchanged, rather than cleared):

 https://github.com/hoglet67/6809Decoder/wiki/Undocumented-6809-Behaviours

3) Mike Rojas has some membrane keyboard replacements available for the Coco 1, 2 and 3. He (as of Friday afternoon) had 4 of each type available for $25 + shipping: UPDATE: Coco 3 ones sold out and only 2 left of the Coco 2 ones. He is ordering more.

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160057655892641/

4) Richard Setti on Facebook has been unpacking some old Coco stuff that hadn't seen the light of day in decades, and came across some rare finds. This was over multiple posts on the Coco Facebook group - as an example, part 4 has a very rare RAM upgrade for the Coco 1 - Spectral Associates RAM Charger, which let one upgrade an older Coco 1 (like a D board, which was originally only designed for 16K RAM maximum) to 32K RAM without any soldering or trace cutting. (Somebody dug out the old 1981/82 ad for it as well in the comments):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160049992697641/

His 3rd post included Alpha Products A-BUS (they used to have full page ads in Rainbow for the Bus connector and all the different cards they had available). This was actually available for multiple computers, and had adaptors for the cards for each:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160047314332641/

MC-10

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1) James Host upload the PDF for "HELP! MC10 Colour Computer Reference System", an Australian book about the MC-10 by G. Scott Wright Jr & Guier S. Wright, III. This was a companion book on the MC-10 BASIC, including general tips on writing and planning BASIC programs, small sample programs, etc.:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/5254085464718233/

Dragon 32/64

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1) One of the people on the Coco Discord (handle of "junkman") posted a link to Github link by Dan Werner who has put up his Dragon 64 clone board (and has provisions for changing the keyboard to be Coco 1/2 compatible). From the readme, it looks like not all of it is fully tested yet, but for the most part appears to be working: Raw link:

 https://github.com/danwerner21/Dragon64

Readme with photos:

 https://github.com/danwerner21/Dragon64#readme

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

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1) Inufuto, the multi-platform game engine people whom have made a multitude of Coco 1/2 and MC-10 ports of their games, have started making Coco 3 specific versions in 16 color graphics modes. This week they released almost all of the rest - I think only Mazy is missing at this point (it still is on the Coco 1&2/ MC-10 of course): Cacorm:

 https://youtu.be/4hAW6RwE-l8

Lift:

 https://youtu.be/xG0byQMZHOw

Ascend:

 https://youtu.be/xmEPh_OPilA

Bootskell:

 https://youtu.be/kk9sD-x1XlI

Aerial:

 https://youtu.be/qRkayB-DZsE

Cavit:

 https://youtu.be/K-pbWgvXWJA

Ruptus:

 https://youtu.be/cRTez1ciGyU

Impetus:

 https://youtu.be/cIiZ8XvVsi8

Battlot:

 https://youtu.be/SQX0ySqhg8Q

Neuras:

 https://youtu.be/f9KIb9_Tj4k

General page to get to all of the games for download:

 http://inufuto.web.fc2.com/8bit/

2) Jim Gerrie also released another game port to the MC-10 this week, and this was updated several times. His final edits to his MC-10 port of Dark Castle (originally by Darin Andersen on the Coco) (I like his patched cursor):

 https://youtu.be/yZAzMzbiD2w

Blog post about those edits (including fixing some bugs in the original code):

 https://jimgerrie.blogspot.com/2022/08/darin-andersens-dark-castle-1984.html

3) Coco Forest has done some more 2-pack game videos on his Dragon this week as well: Vultures & Mission XK1:

 https://youtu.be/GmGjCRBQ_tM

Electron and Space Wrek:

 https://youtu.be/eVg5x2v19qE

Talking Android Attack & Cosmic Zap:

 https://youtu.be/wm29ujxbYAg

Ice Castles and Beam Rider:

 https://youtu.be/gIAAkrENkl0

Ugh! and Monsters:

 https://youtu.be/udRZ_Gq-MQ4

Lunar Rover Patrol & Juniors Revenge:

 https://youtu.be/DBYwwf5V3ag