News stories for February 22, 2020 show

News stories for February 22, 2020 show:

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1) Brian Palmer posted a link to Geronimus Vanden's video showing that an MC-10 will, when running a loop doing a PEEK(2) (after doing a POKE 0,0), will react to your hand moving close to the MC-10 itself (like a theramin does). John Laury tried this on his own real MC-10 - and it does work. He speculates that is has to do with the RF shielding in the MC-10: Original:

 https://youtu.be/o6zssRDSjuE

John Laury:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10157939309847641/

2) Simon Hardy announced that the direct link from the World of Dragon Archive to play Dragon software in XRoar is working. See the link in his Facebook post, pick a software company, then a program, and click "Play Now" on the far right side (currently Cassette games work, I think cartridge ones still have an issue):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/permalink/2539138523012468/

3) Nathan Lyke made a video showing how to do a 64k RAM UPGRADE on a Coco 1:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/permalink/2539138523012468/

4) Patrick Thomas did some graphics using the Coco 3 palette & resolution for the game Rick Dangerous. He is offering to help draw the graphics and make the music if someone else would like to write the code. Any takers? (Note: image won't zoom well)

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10157942336587641/

5) Paul Shoemaker had a pleasant surprise in a box of Coco 2 stuff he got this past week - the rare Wico Atari to Coco joystick adaptor (does both ports at once):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10157942824577641/

6) The first episode of Coco Collector (by Boisy Pitre) (episode 0), is about the 64K Coco (from Fall 1983):

 https://youtu.be/8SqOAWQZr6w

7) Episode 9 of The Coco Show was officially released on Wednesday, and features Doodle Bug, our Amigos/CocoTalk crossover game for the Game On Spotlight this week. Also, they show a cool gift from a viewer from Hawaii (play first 2 minutes, roughly, to show that gift)

 https://youtu.be/lLm2l3I4-4Q

8) Todd Wallace (LordDragon) has released the first version of SysInfo program for the Coco 3: Hardware Detection Program Demo For Tandy Color Computer 3

 https://youtu.be/EDI1GafjxYU

To download:

 https://tektodd.com/wp-content/CoCo-Downloads/sysinfo.zip

9) James Jones has written a blog post called "Towards a BASIC09 style", which gives some tips on writing BASIC09 programs, both in general and for legibility. https://www.facebook.com/notes/james-jones/towards-a-basic09-style/10157067791432014/

10) Dave Philipsen has posted both a preliminary WIKI entry for his CocoDev hardware, and a video demonstrating it. CocoDEV is an FPGA based piece of hardware that implements the 6809, but is not meant to be fully Coco compatible. Rather, it is meant to be similar to a Coco and can be programmed the same way. He already has the Tandy BASIC ROM's and NitrOS9 level 2 with hard text windows working on it. Sounds to be the same spirit as The 8 Bit Guys C64 project.

 http://www.davebiz.com/wiki/CoCoDEV
 https://youtu.be/-XeEjg0m-gM

11) Cyberhug Technologies on YouTube has a video showing his just received Dragon 32 (untested), which he had to some minor fixups on (and replace a missing chip). He also goes through the Dragon hardware and history a little bit.

 https://youtu.be/f1-T9WyeFbo

12) Jules Richardson posted a photo of what the official Dragon version of the OS-9 users guid and programming manuals look like, which I had not seen well before:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10157957069427641/

Game On segment videos:

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1) Jay Searle put up multiple videos showing his progress on his "IsoGame" that he is doing for the CocoFest Coco challenge (I will just show a bit of part 3):

 https://youtu.be/PvJv5IcRDO8  (Part 1)
 https://youtu.be/bL6PMz7jP7k  (Part 2)
 https://youtu.be/Ws5BgefMwYc  (Part 3)

2) Jim Gerrie did a port of the "Secret of Flagstone Manor" text adventure... which is supposedly Australia's first text adventure game.

 https://youtu.be/Uwwp_rnCnSk

He also ported "Shoplifting Boy" game, thought to be one of the very first stealth games, from the PC-6001 to the Coco, for the upcoming 2020 CocoFest Asimov Awards.

 https://youtu.be/uR4HXt95DMs

Jim is also making a games disk (with multiple games) for 2020 Asimov Awards. He did some minor updates to several of the games, which he shows in a new video (details in Youtube description):

 https://youtu.be/Sw8RBvC9WLM

He is also doing an entry for the Homputerirum 2020 BASIC 10 liner contest, based on the game Outhouse:

 https://youtu.be/bCKr1_En4UI

Contest (which includes other Jim Gerrie entries, and some other Coco entries):

 https://gkanold.wixsite.com/homeputerium

3) Guillaume Major has posted a demo of a Coco 3 only graphical adventure game called "Terror on Floor 51". He is wondering if anybody else has heard of it, or has a complete copy. I have not.

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10157939254212641/

4) Alanna Kelly is working on a Dragon 32, BASIC low-res Pacman game.

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/permalink/2540960849496902/

5) A discussion about mapping Coco adventure games happened on Facebook, and Fred Rique posted a shot of one he made for The Vortex Factor, done with screenshots of the game:

 https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=3178017112233044&set=p.3178017112233044&type=3

6) Diego just released Docket Master this morning:

 http://yaccs.info/PROGRAMAS/DOCK/dock.html

And the PDF manual for it:

 http://yaccs.info/PROGRAMAS/DOCK/Dock%20Master.pdf

7) Simon Hardy posted a rather interesting poll in the Dragon Facebook group - asking people to list the best Dragon games with their category (arcade, Platform, RPG, etc.). We can discuss their choices from a Coco perspective.

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/permalink/2543938925865761/