News stories for Episode 285, October 29, 2022

News stories for Episode 285, October 29, 2022

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(October 22-October 28)

NOTE 1: Michael Furman will be on during the 2nd hour today to talk about NoICE.

NOTE 2: Confirmed: Boisy Pitre will be our special guest for part 2 of the 30th Anniversary of NitrOS9 at a special recording time of 7:30 PM EST on Wednesday, November 2. You are invited to join us live to ask questions in the chat, or email them to me at curtisboyle@sasktel.net and I can ask on your behalf. This will roughly cover the 2nd decade of NitrOS9, where the baton was passed to the open source community, and things like Drivewire, and the 6809 and Level 1 versions of NitrOS9 were born. We will post in the Discord and Facebook group the exact date/time as soon as we know.

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

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1) Alan over at AC's 8 bit zone did a CocoDV update - he is now selling them, and this new video shows the basics of the upgrade and also how he makes them:

 https://youtu.be/gc_3TPBjFf4

2) James Diffendaffer continues to post some mathematically based graphics demos that are nice and short to type in BASIC. This week he added: Maurer Rose Pattern (and lets you make your own):

 https://jdiffendaffer.blogspot.com/2022/10/make-your-own-maurer-rose-patterns.html

Archimedean Spiral:

 https://jdiffendaffer.blogspot.com/2022/10/archimedean-spiral.html

"Another 3D Plot" - converted from an Atari:

 https://jdiffendaffer.blogspot.com/2022/10/another-3d-plot.html

3) Ken of Canadian Retro Things has posted part 2 of his "The Cursed Coco 3" video:

 https://youtu.be/_VUZz_WbQis

4) Fabio Didoné release a quick video showing how he used his Coco 3 to program a lathe, shown at "Science Fair in Technique 3" (spanish description):

 https://youtu.be/c_2zAnLdn1Q

5) Garrett Reynolds posted a 2 minute video on Facebook showing that he got his TRS-80 FP-215 Flatbed plotter working (I presume running from his Coco?). This was an early and expensive pen based flatbed printer with multi colored pens, that cost $2000 dollars when it came out in late 1981... so I imagine not too many Coco owners had this back in the day:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160200945082641/

6) Although not strictly Coco related, Mikey Furman released a new VLOG showing how to test & troubleshoot RS-232 ports:

 https://youtu.be/hcghtgguL5s

7) Retro Tech Repair on YouTube showed his "repair" to a Coco 2 that he acquired. NOTE: He does mention that his videos are of "... an amateur attempting repairs. [...] This is NOT a how-to video". It was also meant to be for SepTandy... but is a bit late. He solves one problem - but more will need fixing in a future episode:

 https://youtu.be/_jn4gcnPnI8

MC-10

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1) Robert Sieg did a post in the MC-10 group on Facebook about some ideas he has for the MCX-128 upgrade for the MC-10 (and the MCX-32SD, 4K & 20K "plain" machines as well), as well as for his sprite editor and other things that he has worked on in the past:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/5476026492524128/

Dragon 32/64

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1) John Whitworth of DragonPlus Electronics posted in the Dragon Facebook group about a new hobbyist's experimenter board that will allow easy access to the cartridge port & contain an CPLD that will allow native use & simulating a multipak interface to help hardware developers prototype and test new cartridge hardware designs:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3300801306846182/

2) Julian Brown posted a picture of the latest boards he received that are to duplicate the original Dragon 32 motherboard:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3305766526349660/

3) Richard Harding posted a group pic from the 40th anniversary Dragon meetup, that was held in Port Talbot, Wales last weekend:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3302525596673753/

And Tony Jewell posted some other pics from the event (there are more in the comments):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3301612703431709/

4) Robert Stokes posted some photos from his Dragon 32 that his dad had - which includes a DragonPlus expansion board AND an extended keyboard with a numeric keypad built in (picture of keyboard in comments):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3301274796798833/

5) Ginger Hippy Gaming did a show on retro toys and games covering many systems - including a Dragon 32:

 https://youtu.be/laS-PCaIwLs?t=1747

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

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1) Jim Gerrie has ported an SG6 version of Jeff Vavasour's (of the original Coco emulator fame) version of Backgammon. This actually uses the vertical green bars (that take place of the text characters in this mode) to help draw the backgammon board in what almost looks higher resolution. Here is a photo of the screen that Jim sent, since he indicates the emulators don't quite get the coloring right - but it is a shot from a CRT, and it catches the beam going down the screen, so it isn't the greatest quality picture:

 (load "backgammon (jim gerrie).jpg") from local)

Emulator based video:

 https://youtu.be/mURVJCXLkQA

He also posted another SG6 game port, "Mosquito" by Mr. Slump from MICOM BASIC magazine, January 1985, originally for the NEC PC-6001:

 https://youtu.be/Zvm36KBINEk

And his blog post about Mosquito:

 https://jimgerrie.blogspot.com/2022/10/mosquito-by-mr-slump-1985.html

Jim also posted video game play of S.U.K.S. by Ron Davis, since he hasn't made a video of it before:

 https://youtu.be/UTW689LXqm4

2) Alderson Retro Computing uploaded an updated video short of his playing Color Baseball on his Coco 3 - this time with using composite so it gets the right colors:

 https://www.youtube.com/shorts/9JP6J1-VqTM

3) Boat and Aaron host the next Coco Show episode - on the ahead of it's time graphical adventure game, The Interbank Incident:

 https://youtu.be/IC2RF808sLg

4) Dave Veary (MrDave6309) put up a video showing his modified Devil Assault game, which now supports color on an RGB monitor on a Coco 3. This is more than the quick patches to convert it to PMODE 3 and then set the palettes for the game; Dave actually does palette changes during game play to enhance the effects (for example changing opponent colors each time a new one forms on screen):

 https://youtu.be/5FWyFI09fXI

5) David Ladd for the 2nd week in a row, has recorded his own game play footage of this weeks Game On Challenge, Devil Assault. He plays the just released Coco 3 enhanced version by Dave Veary, where the colors of your opponents changes each time a new one forms:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-Gdp9gXdZs

He did another shorter video on his other (Drencor) channel as well, but this one includes a small 6309 enhancement to hopefully help smooth the game out.:

 https://youtu.be/WJLLWxry6G4

6) Pere Serrat has posted AGD games pack #58, adding 7 more games converted from the Spectrum engine of the same name. Both Dragon and Coco versions are available for download from the world of dragon forums. Games this pack are: Atlantis Combat Wombat GhoSte's Grunge Sec on 1st Date Stickman Olympic Challenge The Training of the the Warrior Wizzard

 http://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11045

7) Lee Perkins posted a few updates about his effort to port the PC game Paganitzu to the Coco 3 on the Coco Facebook group. It includes some screenshots of the 16 color shapes from the original EGA version converted to the Coco 3 (make sure to expand comments - updated screenshots, including comparing with the original EGA version, are in there):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160188458667641/

8) CPRG Addict did an update blog entry for The Power Stones of Ard - he won the game and thus can do a full summary and rating:

 http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-power-stones-of-ard-won-with.html