News stories for March 14, 2020 show

News stories for March 14, 2020 show:

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1) After testing by Brian Schubring passed with flying colours, Jim Gerrie @ Retro Innovations has the MIDI Maestro card available for pre-order. It has MIDI In, Out and Through connectors, and is compatible with various MIDI supporting software already available for the Coco, like Lyra (Coco 1/2), Ultimuse III (Coco 3/(Nitr)OS-9, and Coco MIDI Pro. Price is $60.00, and it is expected to be released at CocoFest on April 18th.

 https://store.go4retro.com/tandy/midi-maestro/

2) The 8-Bit Guy (who has been a guest on our show) is looking for information on the old Phillips CD-I platform (CD Interactive) from the 1990's. This happened to run a custom version of OS-9, so anybody watching or listening here that may have worked for or with Microware at the time, please get in contact with David Murray, and help him get some of the original development background.

 https://www.facebook.com/the8bitguy/posts/2760535584001787

3) Canadian Retro Things opens up his Coco 2 on his latest episode, checking for any obvious issues, and identifying all of the chips.

 https://youtu.be/JdOQWtj7p0M

4) Ron Klein posted some details on how to use the debugger in Ciaran Anscombe's XRoar emulator, which requires some addition companion applications be installed first.

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158017641002641/

5) Jim Brain has his next article in using DMA from the cartridge slot on a Coco 1/2, which has working code. He has it able to transfer memory between the Coco and RAM on the card, in both directions, and I/O port style access.

 http://www.go4retro.com/2020/03/12/coco-dma-invisible-ram/

6) Allen Huffman has a challenge to BASIC programmers to optimize a ECB program that draws a varying sized (and scaled 4:3) box on the screen. There are multiple responses already, too.

https://subethasoftware.com/2020/03/10/color-basic-optimization-challenge-scaling/

7) Pere Serrat shared a screenshot of Foggy's Quest (which we have seen before under the AGD engine that lets Pere convert Spectrum games to the Coco 1/2) in a new 16 color mode that is supported by the Dragon's WordPak 2+ card:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/permalink/2561633330762987/

8) John Whitworth posted in the Dragon group on Facebook that has a small number of his new lower case daughterboards available that work in the Dragon 32, 64 and 200 (I presume the Tano Dragon as well?), which supports multiple font configurations out of the box (show screenshots of some of the built in fonts at the bottom) (Actually, he might be out of stock again):

 https://www.dragonplus-electronics.co.uk/?product=lower-case-text-upgrade-for-dragon-32-64-200

9) Dave Veary, whom we had on last week, has been doing some more hacking on his Coco, to the VDG this time:

 https://youtu.be/ZTau3m63GjQ

Game On segment videos:

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Mention that Spotlight/Challenge, when we do the crossover episodes once per month with Amigos Retro Gaming, that we will time them to have the announcements immediately follow (Friday for them, Saturday for us), rather than a week apart like we did this last one (there was confusion on their Discord over the game that was announced on their show during the live stream last Friday, and the official release this past Wednesday, since we were doing a completely different game this past week).

1) Joseph Chambers put a screenshot up of the win screen for Super Pitfall:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158000827612641/

2) Jim Gerrie has a video showing his port of "Rock Hopper" from the Amstrad CPC464 (from Amstrad User Magazine June, 1985 issue) to the MC-10: Here is a video he did showing how to complete level 5.

 https://youtu.be/MAGO6OMZNqw

3) Jay Searle has released beta 0.3 of CocoGrow for testing:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158004197122641/

And, probably his last VLOG:

 https://youtu.be/SmQ8m6LY-Ug

4) Miyagami Noriko is looking for the Coco version of "Dog Star Adventure" by Adventure International. She has found ads for it in old Adventure International catalogs, but can not seem to find the Coco version of the game itself anywheres. Has anybody seen it?

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158005964302641/

5) gorgh Atari on YouTube has a Dragon 32 demo called "Day Flight", which appears to be a 3D engine demo?

 https://youtu.be/sviuSkciHAw

6) Erico Patricio Monteiro has another animated GIF concept art for an extended Outhouse game using Semigraphics-4:

 https://i.ibb.co/sjXL9S4/GIF2.gif

7) Erin Hibbard is playing Caladuril on his Coco 1 (A game originally put out by Diecom, and then I think Sundog), and he is stuck at a certain point. Can anyone help him?

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10158019556017641/

8) Episode 11 of The Coco Show, featuring their new intro, features Starship Chameleon, which is also this next weeks Game On Spotlight featured game.

 https://youtu.be/vfr4hhu86vU