News stories for Episode 281, October 1, 2022

News stories for Episode 281, October 1, 2022

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(September 24-September 30)

Discord discussions from Robert Allen Murphy - this should be a separate segment (a few were just posts about stories from elsewhere, but Discord should get it's own segment, along with the "who's new to discord"?).

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

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1) Color Computer Programing put up a short video demonstrating some graphics animation on the Coco 1/2:

 https://youtu.be/Wz7C-TFMfzw

2) Allen Huffman continued his SepTandy Coco coverage this past week: "My 1988 TIDYDISK program" - this is a program that Allen wrote between 1988 and 1990 to erase any unallocated space on a floppy disk (originally done to speed up full disk transfers using compression), which he has now uploaded to the archive

 https://subethasoftware.com/2022/09/24/my-1988-tidydisk-program/

"Pop-Up windows in Color BASIC" - pop up windows were actually used in Allen's TinyDisk program, so this article goes into more detail of how he handled doing pop up windows in BASIC itself, including a drop shadow:

 https://subethasoftware.com/2022/09/25/pop-up-windows-in-color-basic/

"Exploring 1984 OS-9 on a 64K TRS-80 Color Computer - part 1"

 In this post, Allen goes through the early history of Microware and OS-9, and it arriving on the Coco in late 1983 (first showing up in the 1984 Radio Shack catalog, but also appeared in the September 1983 Rainbow):
 https://subethasoftware.com/2022/09/26/exploring-1984-os-9-on-a-64k-trs-80-color-computer-part-1/

"Exploring 1984 OS-9 on a 64K TRS-80 Color Computer - part 2"

 Allen starts exploring the original 1.00.00 release of OS-9 Level 1 in this article, using XRoar to emulate a 64K Coco 1. He goes through some basics like how directories work, a few of the basic OS-9 commands, and what the contents of each directory on the main boot disk are:
 https://subethasoftware.com/2022/09/27/exploring-1984-os-9-on-a-64k-trs-80-color-computer-part-2/

"Exploring 1984 OS-9 on a 64K TRS-80 Color Computer - part 3"

 I this article, Allen goes through more commands in a little bit more detail, including the included EDIT line editor, ASM assembler, and multi-user access through the bitbanger using TSMON and LOGIN:
 https://subethasoftware.com/2022/09/28/exploring-1984-os-9-on-a-64k-trs-80-color-computer-part-3/

"Carl England must be stopped" - A rather humourous title to showing some techniques for "Stupid directory tricks with DECB". In this case embedding CR's into a filename. This technique works somewhat with OS9/NitrOS9 as well - I have embedded color codes, backspaces, etc. into filenames as well. Some commercial games used semigraphics as directory entries to draw narrow pictures when one typed DIR:

 https://subethasoftware.com/2022/09/29/carl-england-is-not-my-friend-but-hes-cool/

3) Ron Klein posted that the Coco-Pi Project now has an updated MAME 0.248 package available:

 https://coco-pi.com/new-mame-0-248-package-available-for-coco-pi/

4) Simon Jonassen got a pleasant surprise - a complimentary CP400 (Coco clone from Brazil) from Mauricio Matte, as a thank you for Simon helping him learn machine language for an SG4 mode game Mauricio made:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160132714517641/

5) Matthew Coffron posted a photo of a joystick he built for his Coco. While analog (like the Coco), from reading the comments, it may not quite cover all 64 positions perfectly, but should work on most games (including some analog based ones):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160127811832641/

6) Paul Shoemaker uploaded both a quick video demo and the DSK image of his Halloween/Great Pumpkin Patch demo to the Coco Facebook group: Download:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160126931722641/

Video:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160126089927641/

7) Teresa Fortner Ballentine Posted a photo to the Coco Facebook group with one of the last pieces of hardware that she was auctioning off, and wanted some information on. It's a full MIDI interface put out buy Rulaford Research - I believe that was Cecil Houk?). This is one of the MIDI interfaces that fully supported MIDI IN, OUT and THROUGH:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160124398342641/

8) Kieth March has uploaded multiple posts (and questions) to the MM/1 Facebook group, with some hardware details, rough schematics, etc. for this fairly rare "Coco 4" machine.

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/3194643584094250?sorting_setting=CHRONOLOGICAL

9) A reminder for those in the area of Springfield, Ohio : Tandy Assembly is on this weekend:

 http://www.tandyassembly.com

They also have a YouTube channel that they are live streaming videos from, including some Coco ones:

 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPyGtUzQU0Vf7CiSiJLySUg/videos

"Extending Coco BASIC's Vocabulary" by Brendan Donahe of CocoVGA fame is on that was released yesterday:

 https://youtu.be/IYCY5NO-gmM

10) The Amigos did a live SepTandy event earlier this month, and the full video is now up on YouTube. Featuring a real Coco 3, with some real hardware addons being tested in the few games that supported them (a multipak interface and Sound/Speech pak in this case):

 https://youtu.be/Vnh50rSPbg0

11) Wells Wang of Geek Logic, a YouTube channel in Chinese, does a Coco 2 repair for episode 8, and then tests it with Tetris:

 https://youtu.be/zxhtadaIEh4

12) Vintage Geek did another SepTandy video with the Coco - this time talking about the educational series for the Coco by Dorsett that Tandy sold for the Coco, called "Pioneers in Technology", which he first found mention of in one of the DC comics promos with Superman and Wonder Woman. He got to interview one of the people involved with Tandy's educational software that promoted it, and restored it to better quality:

 https://youtu.be/Mb5xV3w3Dt4

13) Sheldon Macdonald put up a video showing his progress on his dual development environment (for Sega Genesis and Coco), and demonstrates a short Coco program to show how it works:

 https://youtu.be/6S3sAGpP4GA

14) The next episode of the Coco Crew just came out, including a discussion about whether OS-9 was too little/too late, or too much/too soon, with some differing opinions:

 http://cococrew.org/

15) Not strictly Coco related, but the Amigos are having their next ICC (International Computer Club) online meeting/presentations tonight at 6 PM EST. This is cross platform, and also covers other aspects of the hobby, and always has a great variety (both Nick Marentes and I have presented Coco things on it before). While there is no Coco specific presentations that I am aware of tonight, they do have a very special guest: Former commodore managing director David Pleasence.

 https://www.twitch.tv/amigosretrogaming/

16) Carlos Camacho put up some photos of one of the most complete book collections for the Coco and Dragon that I have seen in one spot at the same time. While not strictly "news", I think some of these books are rarer than others - how many have the panelists and chatters seen or owned?

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160133880452641/

MC-10

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1) Jamie's Hack Shack on YouTube does a followup video for SepTandy, with his newly acquired MC-10 that he got from VCF-Midwest. He gets some programs running on it via an MP3 player to the cassette port using a Commodore cable. He also shows how to convert .C10 files to .WAV:

 https://youtu.be/W-kz-yuY3k0

Dragon 32/64

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1) QuantumStix on YouTube released a video showing them getting a Dragon 32 to run from USB for power (with half the power consumption of the original power supply, which he shows by using a meter on both power supply options):

 https://youtu.be/BvPm46tLHEE

2) Julian Brown posted about an update to his duplicating the Dragon 32 motherboard, this time converting as many components as possible to SMD (surface mount). His next plan is convert from DRAM to SRAM:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3277963352463311/

He did a second update, spacing the RAM and buffer according to the original - spacing within .3mm of the original, thanks to some suggestions from Andrew Gosling:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3279594645633515/

3) Matt Kaye shot a Google Tour at the Swindon Museum of Computing, which included showing a Dragon 64 playing Lunattack, and a Dragon 32 in a cabinet (note: the google tour ran really slow on both Safari & Chrome):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3277916749134638/

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

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1) Ken of Canadian Retro Things posted a video to answer the question: Is a 6309 in a Coco 1/2 worth it? I concur with his conclusion:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avQJDf4T__Q

2) SmnartWarGames on YouTube did a video showing gameplay for Kriegspiel for the Coco 1/2 and Dragon, written by Ron Potkin from Beyond Software. This actually looks like a pretty complete wargame simulation in 4 color graphics for I am guessing a 32K RAM machine:

 https://youtu.be/DOotfoHN35E

3) Paul Shoemaker put up a video on the Coco Facebook group showing a preview of his new Halloween Edition 2022 version of Ghost Rush:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160135154192641/

4) retrosutra on YouTube put up a comparison video of the various ports (and the original) of the arcade classic Rampage, including the Coco 3 version by Steve Bjork (Coco at 18:49):

 https://youtu.be/3N7uHl-nkuc

5) The 3rd episode of The Retrogames Show (which is the new YouTube channel that is a direct descendant of Retrogaming magazine which started in 1995, and he covers that history at the beginning of this episode) has a bit on the Dragon:

 https://youtu.be/HOWJ7-dqNPA?t=1919