News stories for Episode 292, December 10, 2022

News stories for Episode 292, December 10, 2022

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(December 3-December 9) NOTE: John Shawler will be on December 17 to announce the details for BoatFest 2023.

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

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1) Allen Huffman posted a cool picture, courtesy of Henry Reitveld. It's a picture of his Invaders09 game (running in the just released NitrOS9/EOU Version 1.0.0) running in Henry's Rampage arcade cabinet:

 https://subethasoftware.com/2022/12/03/my-old-space-invaders-game-running-on-an-arcade-cabinet/

He also put up parts 1&2 of his Coco version of the Logiker Vintage Computing Christmas Challenge - which is to crunch code as small as possible to create the screen output specified in the challenge:

 https://subethasoftware.com/2022/12/06/tackling-the-logiker-vintage-computing-christmas-challenge-2021-part-1/
 https://subethasoftware.com/2022/12/09/tackling-the-logiker-2022-vintage-computing-christmas-challenge-part-2/

And, he also decided to delve into CMOC (C like language) development for the first time, getting his very first CMOC program generated for DECB (using the XRoar emulator):

 https://subethasoftware.com/2022/12/07/my-first-c-program-for-coco-disk-basic/

And a follow up to that is his blog post titled "I will never write a shell script again" (using the Chat AI he has been using a lot the past couple of weeks):

 https://subethasoftware.com/2022/12/07/i-will-never-write-a-shell-script-again/

2) Konrad Pietrzykwoski shared a video showing his loading a game via a PC that is part of his Museum collection in Poland - with a Coco 3 that was originally sold in Canada:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160334463372641/

3) Medium.com did an interesting piece on Christmas demos for early computers, with the Coco being an early one with a BASIC one written in 1982. I seem to recall our interview with Glen Sogge that he had done one early - either for Christmas 1980 or 1981, that he has unfortunately lost (but was demoed at multiple Radio Shack stores in the Chicago area):

 https://medium.com/geekculture/when-the-first-christmas-computer-demo-was-created-bfb043279d9b

4) This one is a catch-up story that I missed back at the beginning of November. Glen Hewlett (of transcode fame) took on the challenge of one of the "Code Golf" challenges. This is a website that has people issuing challenges of making code as small as possible (in the language of their choice) to accomplish a specific task. Glen had taken on a challenge of drawing a Mona Lisa on a graphics screen using a technique originally by programmer Jakub "Ilmenit" Debski. It's a procedural graphics demo originally for ab Atari XL, and took 250 bytes of assembly code and data (calling some ROM routines to draw & set up the graphics screen). Glen took 283 bytes in his final result, but that include the screen setup and drawing routines as well. He supplies the source code on the blog post, and a video of it in action:

 https://nowhereman999.wordpress.com/2022/11/02/code-golf-on-the-coco/

5) Sheldon MacDonald posted the first of several planned videos on his new dual IDE environment (which lets you develop programs for both the Coco and the Sega Genesis):

 https://youtu.be/GUjfwEiqUM4

6) Jim Brain, president of the Glenside Color Computer Club, posted that Glenside is planning to have a celebration Tandy computers (or workalikes, clones like the Alice, Dragon, CP-400, etc), sharing stories, etc. on December 30. It will be a Zoom call starting at 6:30 pm Central time and last as long as people are around. There may be some demos as well. Full details can be found on Facebook (pictured) as well as the Coco mailing list:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160340953372641/

7) Adrian at Adrian's Digital Basement on YouTube went through what appeared to be a very dirty TRS-80 Model III... but the insides show that it was once a Coco repacked into a Model III, with working keyboard, drives, etc. The machine was donated to Adrian by Tim Lindner:

 https://youtu.be/_0XGFz67DIc

MC-10

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1) Jim Gerrie announced this morning a little contest - he has his DDOOM game port pretty well finished, so he has a challenge: The first person to complete the 5 dungeon levels that Jim created (this is a game we showed a video of recently, where one can create their own maps) and get the "Idol" on level 5, and documents it with either video or screenshot evidence, will one one of his semigraphic man cups (I have no idea if he has an official name):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/5599437420183034/

Dragon 32/64

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1) Julian Brown posted in the Dragon Facebook group that he has finally received what he hopes to be the final prototype Dragon replacement motherboards:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3339260283000284/

And an update has solders more and more parts to the board:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3341177252808587/

2) Richard Harding has been doing research and scanning in documents related to the Dragon and it's history from the National Archives in the UK (see comments section for some examples, including buyouts, unreleased products, etc.):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3339947459598233/

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

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1) Paul Shoemaker, mere days after releasing Ghost Rush:Winter Edition... has also released the Camel game he was converting from an old text version from Creative Computing. You can get it on the Coco group on Facebook now, and the Color Computer Archive soon (if not already):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160331007192641/

2) MrDave6309 posted a video played from a ROM cartridge image he has made 2 old Coco 1/2 Challenge Software games on the same cartridge (Color Blast & Creature Feature) that also contain palette enhancements for the Coco 3:

 https://youtu.be/GpzilHAmrT4

3) The Video Game Magazines channel on YouTube has put up Electronic Games Issue 2, which again includes multiple Coco mentions (3:23 shows Space Assault & Polaris, as an example, and near the beginning showed Quasar Commander. Also Meteoroids by Spectral Associates, which became Microbes from Tandy later) is reviewed @ 6:46):

 https://youtu.be/QhvMr8x7CB4

4) Brian Joyce shared an interesting story on the Coco Facebook group - Airball (originally for the Dragon and Coco) has been ported to the Nintendo NES and the Game Boy Advance:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160337196457641/

5) YouTube channel "Chronologically Gaming" has hit 1980, and goes through games on various platforms (including arcade) that were copyrighted 1980 (this one starts alphabetically going through 1980 releases that don't have a firm release date during that year that the host could find) - including some of the earliest Coco 1 games, across multiple videos: "Rumble in the 80's" - Backgammon brief showing (39:28)

 https://youtu.be/gwFngkNDzY4

"We Go Berzerk!"- First appearance of Dino Wars (30:53)

 https://youtu.be/1dXaOPDEUJM

"Is Scott Adams Bob Rossi?" (Dino Wars is the first game - re-rating it from it's previous appearance):

 https://youtu.be/latL4-p1Jg8

He streams live on Twitch each weekday at 9 pm Central: https://www.twitch.tv/chronologicallygaming/