News stories for Episode 280, September 24, 2022

News stories for Episode 280, September 24, 2022

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(September 17-September 23)

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

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1) Color Computer Programing on YouTube continued his music player with graphical keyboard in BASIC (6 keys now working):

 https://youtu.be/2T556DVfjmA

He also put up a video showing a quirk with IF/THEN/ELSE. When you misspell ELSE. I think it's because the IF exits (it didn't find an ELSE, so it goes to the next line). If the value evaluated to TRUE, then it jumps to the line number specified, and also ignores the code afterwards on the same line. Does this sound right?:

 https://youtu.be/SJeemlfd3ms:

2) Joel Reese posted his port of VTL-2 (Very Tiny Language), it's first public release based on converting his 6801/6803 version (for the MC-1) to the Coco/6809). His blog describes it in detail, and includes link to the assembly source code. It fit's in 2K including it's own variables and stack:

 https://joels-programming-fun.blogspot.com/2022/09/vtl-2-part-5-transliterating-to-6809.html

3) Brenda Make has progressed on her Coco 3 video adaptor box, and is ready for her first 3D test print. This project mounts the box on the bottom of the Coco 3, so you don't have to plug/unplug the 10 pin cable for the RGB monitor, so the wear is on the box rather than the cable:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/1929079184021683/posts/3219891181607137/ 

She did an update on Friday, where she has published the 3D-printed box design on thingiverse.com: Announcement (click on the comments - she has a photo of it installed on her Coco 3):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/1929079184021683/posts/3222962277966694/

Thingiverse page:

 https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5528298

4) Graham Toal posted that he is starting to work on a 6809 "superoptimizer" in the Facebook 6809/6309 assembly language group on Facebook, and has a link to the C sourcecode. I believe that this is currently just framework code, with not much optimization done yet.

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/6809assembly/posts/2975767079383321/

Graham also posted a cool graphic that you can print out that has each pin on the 6809, 6821 and 6850 chips labelled by function as well as pin number, that you can print out as a reference:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/6809assembly/posts/2973508279609201/

5) I am not sure which "Dave" Guillaume Major thanks for this, but scans of the entire run of Hot Coco (from June 1983 to February 1986) has now been uploaded to the Color Computer Archive:

 https://colorcomputerarchive.com/repo/Documents/Magazines/Hot%20Coco/

6) Albert Marsh for his 2nd SepTandy video, showed the word processor (and other programs included) he used on his Coco 2 & 3 back in the day - Deskmate (the original version):

 https://youtu.be/SRnZOlzmgCA

7) Pedro Pana posted part 2 of his late model Coco 2 Static RAM board, upgraded for THT (Through hole) version that he started last week:

 https://youtu.be/uCUOCkbFi50

8) Sad news in our Discord this week from his son Peter Stark Jr. - Peter Stark, the man behind StarKits (a software company that made programs for a variety of 6800,6809 computers including the Coco, and probably most famous for things like Spell 'n Fix and his magazine ads that actually contained little tutorials and information columns, rather than just ads) has passed away at the age of 84:

 https://www.hornandthomesfuneralhome.com/obituary/peter-stark

(and show some ads from my desktop)

9) Allen Huffman continues his SepTandy blogs this week: "DEF FN" for fun and Profit"

 This goes into how to use the DEF FN (Define Function) feature in Extended BASIC, with sample code snippets. It also shows that it is always slower than doing the function manually, although it can save space in your BASIC program:
 https://subethasoftware.com/2022/09/17/def-fn-for-fun-and-profit/

"Drawing a maze level on the CoCo - parts 1 to 5". Part 1 covers things like making a PacMan style maze on a Coco, with various compression techniques in BASIC:

 https://subethasoftware.com/2022/09/19/drawing-a-maze-level-on-the-coco-part-1/

Part 2 covers more compression techniques which, while they end of working are too slow for Allen's tastes:

 https://subethasoftware.com/2022/09/20/drawing-a-maze-level-on-the-coco-part-2/

Part 3 covers making the maze represented by bits instead of ASCII characters. He ends up with a routine using hex, and with fixed length 2 chars per byte (HEX$ normally varies the length between 1 and 2 chars):

 https://subethasoftware.com/2022/09/21/drawing-a-maze-level-on-the-coco-part-3/

Part 4 covers writing a program to convert the original ASCII map data to a compressed hex based version, and creates DATA lines with them, so that you can merge them into another program, etc.:

 https://subethasoftware.com/2022/09/22/drawing-a-maze-level-on-the-coco-part-4/

Part 5 covers the reverse convert: Now that we have the compressed ASCII/Hex version to hold the maze, he now goes into using that to draw it back on the screen (with the much smaller maze data we now have thanks to parts 1 to 4). He does this by converting the hex values into low res graphic CHR$() block strings, which allows fast printing to the screen once they are converted, Unfortunately, this takes way too long (over 2 minutes), so Allen hints at a part 6 with some assembly language subroutines will be coming...:

 https://subethasoftware.com/2022/09/23/drawing-a-maze-level-on-the-coco-part-5/

10) Michael Evenson posted in the Coco VCC Facebook group that he has released a new floppy maintenance utility for Windows, that handles (OS9, FLEX, UniFLEX and MINIX file formats. It will also let you copy entire directory structures from your PC to floppy images (GoTek compatible only). Announcement:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/366791731040411/posts/775637113489202/

Page to download from (contains many other utilities that he has written for the SWTPC (SouthWest Technical Products) 6800/6809 based emulators - this is precursor to the Coco):

 http://www.swtpcemu.com/swtpc/Downloads.htm

11) As part of SepTandy, Joe's Computer Museum on YouTube did a livestream upgrade of a Coco 3 to a 6309 last night:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyGAdKu2cVk

MC-10

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1) Jim Gerrie drew the Batman logo on the MC-10. This is using the 64x48 mode & Greg Dionne's ML plotting routine, and a lot of math:

 https://youtu.be/Cu_jmKKyygI

2) Jamie's Hack Shack showed the stuff he picked up from VCF-Midwest - including the MC-10 (so he qualifies for SepTandy for the first time!) He also got the 6809 based Vectrex. (see 3:13 for MC-10):

 https://youtu.be/B2QD91xr1vg

Dragon 32/64

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1) Simon McElroy posted some interesting pictures of a Dragon he picked up, which has some additional boards inside. As he mentiones in his Facebook post, one is labelled "Dragon Data RGB/1", so he guesses it's for a second display output on the side, but he is asking other Dragon users if they know wha the second, apparently homebrew board might be for. From comments, it looks like the RGB/1 is an early SECAM/RGB adaptor before they integrated that feature on French versions of the Dragon motherboard (which is where this machine was found). It is speculated that the 2nd board may be an RS-232 port internal to the machine:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3269875373272109/

2) Roy Templeman posted in Dragon Facebook group about RetroFest 2022 in Cambridge, November 5-6. They have a record # of exhibitors this year (and Tony Jewell is showing off Dragons and other TRS-80 machines & clones):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3273315559594757/

Their website:

 http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/69485/Retro-Computer-Festival-2022-Saturday-5th-November/

3) Julian Brown is working on a replacement Dragon motherboard, and is also asking for some suggestions for improvements to the original design. Fairly high up in the comments is supporting the second joystick button the same way the Coco 3 does.

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3273089949617318/

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

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1) Boat and Aaron have released episode #36 of The Coco Show - this time covering the Mark Data Products classic, Shock Trooper:

 https://youtu.be/a7NIFcthbEw

2) As part of SepTandy, Aaron of Vintage Geek has release his second Coco 3 video - Testing the power of the Color Computer 3 (through games). He includes some 128K and 512K games, as well as disk and cartridge:

 https://youtu.be/1HoDf5xSNYA

3) MrDave6309 has his Coco 3 emulator only (until the chip shortage alleviates) game Space Pirate Kimiko showed off BapStarArcade's YouTube channel (which went through a ton of new games on other platforms):

 https://youtu.be/OOeLzDvvGOU?t=2252

4) Ken of Canadian Retro Things released a Top 5 "Games you must try on your Color Computer". (should say Color Computer 3 with 512k - all of the games require that machine spec lol. All of them are arcade transcodes too:

 https://youtu.be/Oinm41FItaY

5) Jim Gerrie posted an MC-10 port of the 1976 game "Hexapawn", originally written by R.A. Kaapke in 1976. It's a chess style game used to demonstrate simple Artifical Intelligence concepts. It was originally published in David Ahl's Compendium of BASIC programs (the original publisher of Create Computing Magazine):

 https://youtu.be/l4Rub6t4abc

He also posted ports of two programs from the Marvel Super Heroes Computer Fun Book (published by Parachute Press in 1984): "Time Spiral" and "Maze of Doom", both by R. Gueraldo & Susan Zakar. The first is more of a graphic/text animation, the second is a very simple text based maze game:

 https://youtu.be/liJ3CCcCYuY