News stories for February 29, 2020 show

News stories for February 29, 2020 show:

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1) Jim Gerrie has a blog up about programming for both the 2020 Basic 10 Liner contest, and the Asimov awards, and about porting some of his vast MC-10 work to the Coco 1/2 and Dragon:

 https://jimgerrie.blogspot.com/2020/02/2020-basic-10-liner-entries-and-asimov.html

2) John Linville shared a photo of his populated 6809 SBC board (designed by Grant Searle). This is a small, 6 chip 1.84 MHz 6809 computer based on the ROM from the Coco 2 (with functions not supported on the SBC removed - ie graphics, cassette, joystick support), that has 16K ROM, 32K RAM, and a 115.2 Kbaud serial port:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10157960748452641/

Link to Grant's original description:

 http://searle.x10host.com/6809/Simple6809.html

3) Richard Kelly has posted the disk image in the Facebook Coco group of his 22 frame text animation demo. I believe it populates 22 32x16 screens and then displays them to animate.

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10157961057282641/

4) Richard has also released a DSK image on the Coco Facebook group that gathers the T&D Software (cassette magazine from back in the day) ML tutorials:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10157964759957641/

5) Carlos Camacho found a book, "Fundamentals of Microcomputer Programming", which not only feature the 6809, but the Coco 1 itself:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10157976358037641/

6) Matt Kay has posted some possible label designs for the Dragon 64+:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/permalink/2548028575456796/

7) [REDACTED] has posted up his design idea for a cartridge board he is calling CoTendo. (Details in link below):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10157976719317641/

8) CanadianRetroThings on YouTube, has an unboxing of Coco items that he just received through ebay (his first computer was a 16K Coco 2). Includes a 2 button deluxe joystick (of which he mentioned CocoTalk's discussion of 3d replacement parts for), Daggorath cartridge, Zaxxon cassette, and more.

 https://youtu.be/_tq5dzXGmso

9) Jim Brain posted a picture of an experimental board called "DrivePlexer", which would allow up to 8 floppy drives on one disk controller. He has 5 boards available for people who want to test it.

 https://www.facebook.com/go4retro/photos/a.386509271508869/1504266799733105/?type=3

9) Jim Brain at Retro Innovations has posted an article talking about the possibility of DMA on the Coco 1/2 on his site:

 http://www.go4retro.com/2020/02/26/direct-memory-access-possibilities-on-the-tandy-color-computer/

And his just released second article:

 http://www.go4retro.com/2020/02/28/coco-dma-early-efforts/

Game On segment videos:

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1) Patrick Thomas (a talented artist!) has been doing PMODE 3/Coco 1/2/Dragon graphics mockups using the built in 4 color palette of various arcade games, to show what could be done. Some very nice looking concepts here!

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10157967476977641/   (PacLand)
 https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10158306016724994&set=p.10158306016724994&type=3   (Ghosts and Goblins)

2) Jay Searle has uploaded is 4th VLOG for his farmville type game for the Coco 3:

 https://youtu.be/Q8zkpBni4jE

3) More from Jim Gerrie this week: Tut-Tut - a port of Jim's MC-10 version of a Spectrum game (whew!) to the Coco 1/2:

 https://youtu.be/j3526Njtk7Y

Maze of Argon - port to Coco from his MC-10 version, which was from the Dick Smith VZ-200 originally. (An escape the 3D Maze game)

 https://youtu.be/MgU1H2Ex560

4) The Coco Show episode 10 is out - and this episode they review Super Pitfall (and another Coco related surprise from their friend in Hawaii):

 https://youtu.be/d4tmBbOVa8k?t=263   (to show the second surprise from Hawaii)

5) Evan Wright has released a video showing his progress on porting the Sinclair ZX-80/81 game 3D Monster Maze to the Coco - and it will be ready for CocoFest:

 https://youtu.be/BZ_4_wGUUOI

6) Rob's Retro Rambles on YouTube tries out Eddie Steady Go! on the Dragon 32 (loading time is 3:30, but show the loading splash screen before jumping ahead to 10:00). It is a sequel to Back Trax, where the main character Eddie has appeared before (it was the really cool top view 3D maze game).

 https://youtu.be/HN43ngTWCS4

7) Nick Marentes put up a comical ad for his upcoming Gunstar on Facebook:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10157969524502641/

Oh... and Nick has surprise, new teaser graphic he just sent me:

 (load gunstar_teaser.png from my desktop)