News stories for Episode 288, November 12, 2022

News stories for Episode 288, November 12, 2022

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(November 5-11)

Pre show discussion - would there be 2-3 people willing to help writing Coco gaming articles for Old school gamer? (see my PDF of emails). Ken and Sloopy, maybe Jim Rye, since they are in charge of Game On Challenge?

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

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1) Luciano Scharf posted some pics from the X RetroSC from Brazil that Erico Monteiro helped us cover live last week. Since there were some bandwidth challenges for Erico (that show was *busy*!), this is a good chance to see some high resolution still shots from the show, in the Facebook Coco group:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160231497232641/

2) Todd Wallace posted both a video and download link on the Coco Facebook group, showing his new graphics launcher (and using his CGA font). This allows launching the SDC Explorer, hard drive or floppy images, ROM banks on the SDC, cartridge slots in an MPI, etc. all from a BASIC & ML program suite that you can edit and change yourself: Announcement & video:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160230652662641/

Github download link:

 https://github.com/dragonbytes/Gfx_Launcher

3) Michael Furman has posted instructions on how to get EOU running on a Coco3FPGA, along with the support modules needed to access it's virtual hard drives,etc.:

 https://github.com/n6il/eou_ide/blob/main/COCO3FPGA.txt

3a) I should mention that our very own Allen Murphy also posted his own instructions - learning on the fly - to also get EOU running on his Coco3FPGA:

 https://exileinparadise.com/os-9:boot_coco3fpga_with_nitros-9_ease_of_use_beta_6.1.0

4) q4ia on itch.io has released some free ringtones for iOS and Android that have Coco sound effects - from either Temple of ROM or Doubleback:

 https://q4ia.itch.io/coco-tones

5) James Diffendaffer released a new blog post where goes through the ROM to RAM program (used on 64K Coco's) and disassembles/comments it to show how it works (based on the original BASIC program that POKE'd it in):

 https://jdiffendaffer.blogspot.com/2022/11/tandy-coco-rom-to-ram-basic-program-and.html

6) Roger Cooper has written a Coco 1/2 version of the "Matrix/Rain" text demo, I believe the first one that I have seen that doesn't require a Coco 3 (John Kowalski/Sock Master did a Coco 3 one back in the 1990's), and included a video of it in action on the Coco Facebook group:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160241991672641/

7) Steve Norton on the Coco Facebook group has released both documentation and disk images for a graphic text enhancement package for the Coco 1/2 called TextMaster that he wrote back in 1985, and was sold by Dataman International. Using special CHR$() values, it has a ton of features, including 32 to 85 characters per line, invert on/off, CTRL-G bell, proportional text, both top and bottom scroll/clear protection (like CWARea in NitrOS9), underlining, overtype mode, printer echo, subscript and superscript support, key click, upside down text, and custom keyboards. It also patches & additions to some of the BASIC commands (SET, POINT, CLS) to work with the graphics screen, and also displays full length error messages and has key repeat. Requires 64K:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160240687297641/

(Show my PDF of the docs from TextMaster folder on my desktop) Also show the ad for it, as posted by Paulo Garcia:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160240535127641/

8) Curtis Schuler posted on Facebook about a BBS system he wrote for the Coco 3 that had quite a few features (ANSI support, X/Y/Zmodem, up to 9600 baud on the bitbanger (although it glitched occasionally), RAM drive support and used a hard drive). He is wondering if anybody in the current active Coco community ever called his board (originally it ran at 300 or 1200 baud):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160240574512641/

9) Ron Rogers posted a screenshot of a program that he wrote for the Coco back in 1987 when he & his wife were expecting their first child. It was a program to monitor contractions, to see when might be a good time to head to the hospital. He made it very simple for his wife to operate - press the joystick button at the start and end of each contraction, and it interpolated the data from there:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160239106507641/

10) Alderson Retro Computing did a YouTube short about how the Coco 3 started his career in programming back in the late 1980's:

 https://www.youtube.com/shorts/4esJWNWy3nk

11) William Astle has started working on his new replacement BASIC for the Coco 1/2 and Coco 3, and you can watch his progress (and help test) at his Mercurial site. He plans on it having more text and graphics modes supported than the normal Coco 3 BASIC, moving disk buffers into RAM outside the regular 32K on a Coco 3, possibly Integer variables on both versions (in addition to floating point), etc.:

 http://lwbasic.projects.l-w.ca/hg/

readme to explain the project:

 http://lwbasic.projects.l-w.ca/hg/index.cgi/rev/fbb8f369ce76

MC-10

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1) Jim Gerrie ported a 1977 program originally by Sam Lundwall to the MC-10. He based his on the version by B. & A. Laurie (published in Practical Computing, December 1979). Called "How to Write a Sci-Fi Novel", it randomly generates really short "science fiction stories". It seems to favour dystopian outcomes:

 https://youtu.be/suCIp4JPkNE

Dragon 32/64

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1) Julian Brown's latest update on creating a new Dragon 32 motherboard unfortunately mentions a setback where he has had to order new prototype boards again, which will take a couple of weeks (explanation of what went wrong in the comments):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3314839642109015/

2) John Whitworth posted that his now named prototyping cartridge board (now called "SuperBoB") is getting a revision that will enable "active" usage of the CPLD (clocks, flip-flops, etc.) that were not available on the original version he previously showed:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3314809745445338/

3) Matt Davies, who won the Ghost Rush game challenge at the Port Talbot Dragon 40th anniversary show, posted a photo showing his prize proudly displayed on the wall of his home:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3314773415448971/

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

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1) Paul Thayer has released his long awaited Coco 3 game CocoBan, which is an amped up version of Sokoban (and Picoban) with a ton of extra features (including auto-saving your progress to disk, different keyholes that require different methods to open, and other things that you discover as you go). It also includes an editor to make your own levels! Announcement on Facebook Coco Group:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160231468347641/

itch.io download page including screenshots (free to download, but if you can, please send some money Paul's way as a thank you - it's a lot of work!)

 https://pthayer100.itch.io/cocoban

Paul's itch.io page which also includes the Coco 3 game TimberMan for $5.00:

 https://pthayer100.itch.io/

Paulo Garcia also did a quick review post at Vintage is the New Old:

 https://www.vintageisthenewold.com/cocoban-a-new-puzzle-game-for-the-color-computer-3

2) TJ Ferreira on YouTube does a game play/review of the Inufuto Guntus game on the MC-10:

 https://youtu.be/w_I9EA5ItJc

3) Pere Serrat and Kees van Oss have been busy with AGD game ports to the Coco and Dragon this week: First up, AGD games pak #60, which adds 7 more games (and catches them up to the Spectrum released, from Pere's post on Facebook): Milo's Rescue Mythic Banjo Power Planes Ragequit Temple Treachery The Honey Thief Underworld Escape

 http://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11051

They also released the next BIG PACKS (version 3.1) which is a single zip with all 346 games converted in one package. They have separate zips for the Dragon and Coco, and each of those can be gotten with 8.3 filenames for the Coco SDC or with longer filenames for emulators:

 http://www.retrowiki.es/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=200038876

And finally, they released a new set of games converted to take advantage of the Supersprite-FM+ board graphics and sound... pack #4 for for this card, with 4 games: Antiquity Jones Apulija-13 Astronaut Labyrinth Baldy ZX

 http://www.retrowiki.es/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=200038855

(I will note that Pere mentioned in the comments of one of his Facebook posts about this that he hopes to have the next Supersprite-FM+ AGD games out within a week or two)

4) Tim Thayer (brother of Paul who just released CocoBan this week) has a poll up in the Coco Facebook group asking which of 4 Coco game projects he should complete (Craps, The Prize is Right, Euchre or Card Sharks). You can vote yourself at:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160237535662641/

In a separate post, he posted screenshots from each of them, since all of them were already in progress:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160237530802641/

5) Old School Games and Stories posted a video of his playback and review of Panic Button (originally released by First Star Software in 1983 on tape/disk, then by Tandy in 1985 on cartridge):

 https://youtu.be/3AH5MdLv7HA

6) Retro Arcade Gaming on Youtube did a quick video showing the official Frogger on the Coco (he also did a Dragon 32 one, but it's the same game so I will only show the one):

 https://youtu.be/t6yWNwthTIU

7) MrDave6309 did a color enhanced Coco 3 version of our game of the week Electron, and uploaded a short video to show what it looks like (it includes some palette animation effects on the MCP cone and light cycle screens):

 https://youtu.be/ZYb880V31MY

8) Retro365 posted a gameplay video of Monkey Kong for the Coco, although they erroneously labelled it as running in 4K of RAM (it actually needs 16K):

 https://youtu.be/yeZOWcHLA-I

9) Jim Gerrie released "William Tell", an MC-10 conversion of the 1984 puzzle game that originally appeared in the book "1001 Things to Do with your TRS-80" published by TAB books. Like one of the comments - I don't quite understand the game. It's like a version of Body Parts or Guess the animal, but making less sense:

 https://youtu.be/QFlK8QyP3l0

He also released an MC-10 conversion of a 1976 pencil an paper game from Computer Notes Magazine's November 1976 issue called Bulls and Cows (something like Mastermind - except this came out *Before* Mastermind):

 https://youtu.be/hc8UjX9SvgQ

And he released Stargates, originally from the Sinclair ZX-81 in 1982 by David Healey:

 https://youtu.be/VJD45LqOq9Q