The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 294, December 31, 2022
Collected by L. Curtis Boyle
Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)
——————————-
First up: Christmas related stories from the past few weeks:
Steve Boyko posted a video of his Coco 2 playing a little Frosty the
Snowman with a snowman graphic, that he and his son Nick did:
https://youtu.be/r4qAvRPj-mc
Ken of Canadian Retro Things has continued is “Ultimate Retro Advent
Calendar”, and added a few Coco related episodes:
Dec. 19 – Micro adventure books that include type in BASIC programs as
part of the stories:
https://youtu.be/X6yhb23wMX4
Dec. 21 – Coco 2
https://youtu.be/LtNvPpVC_Nw
Dec. 22 – BASIC game books – some cross platform, some Coco specific:
https://youtu.be/_2gtl-sfvmA
Dec. 23 – the CocoSDC
https://youtu.be/K_C5T3w4ajc
Dec. 25 – the Coco 3:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qaDsVDXAOA
He also did a Christmas demos video – with clips from a few different
Christmas demos:
https://youtu.be/0APiMTuSOrg
Also in the Christmas spirit, LGR (on his LGR Briebs channel on
YouTube) did a 16 minute video showing parts of a Coco 1 graphics &
music Christmas program (not the one he originally intended, but…):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QguVcB4HQCM
Paulo Garcia posted a quick camera phone video of Paul Shoemaker’s Coco
Christmas card 2022 (static picture and some multi-voice Christmas
music) on the Coco Facebook page, running on his actual Coco 3:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160373473532641/
The original cleaner video that Paul did with an emulator is here:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160364922037641/
George Rooney did a demo video of Christmas Fantasia II (the 1986
compilation from Speech Systems, which Ken also covered in his hour
long video) on the Facebook Coco group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160364213462641/
David Ladd has uploaded a video of improved quality of the Radio Shack
Extended BASIC demo that Radio used in 1981:
https://youtu.be/rRsB9WNlAX4
In the same vein, he also uploaded a video of the original Coco 3 demo
that Spectral Associates wrote for the Coco 3 and was used at the Coco
3’s official Tandy announcement in July 1986:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxruDuq18xo
He also put up some videos of Speech Systems Fantasia (1984) and
Fantasia II (1986) up – but with the Speech Systems Stereo Pack (use
headphones for best effect):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4IRTwA-Svc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJozwjEbYXw
Adrian of Adrian’s Digital Basement did his final (part 3) follow up to
his Coco 1 repacked into Model 3 case. In this case he gets the
monitor working, the floppy controller, etc. and gets it back in the
case. The original disk drives don’t properly work, but he swapped in a
newer one and it did work. And Tim Lindner (who got this machine to
Adrian, thanks to Brian Wieseler) makes and appearance as an interview
guest at the end, and even plugs NitrOS9 during the interview:
https://youtu.be/fFf3QM1XgnE
Color Computer Programing, now renamed to “TRS-80 Retro Programing”,
posted a video about an issue that he has hit with IF … OR … AND:
https://youtu.be/dTbqBfGyxUg
He also did some videos showing his prototype Morse Code generator for
the Coco:
1st video – 10 letters implemented (it converts dash/dot to both audio
and ASCII text):
https://youtu.be/Ie4aG_D_cUo
2nd video (no commentary) shows a sample message with all 26 characters
enabled:
https://youtu.be/Z2t-YO4kUbU
His 3rd video, called “Retro Ghost (beta)” is based on a viewer
request:
https://youtu.be/5HFMMbmRIRU
NitrOS9/EOU got a shoutout and talked about a bit on the Retro
Computing Roundtable podcast, which you can watch on YouTube as well:
https://youtu.be/0FwYRhGaD6s?t=2223
Pierre Serrazin has put up for download BSOUND 0.1.3 – a sound library
for his CMOC C like compiler. It now allows playing 6 bit samples at a
given frequency:
http://perso.b2b2c.ca/~sarrazip/dev/cmoc.html#BSound
Sad news that happened on December 18th: Bob “Gator” Swoger, a member
of the Glenside Color Computer Club for many years, and creator of
LogiCal for several systems including the Coco. A post from his wife
Annette:
“I just wanted to let you know that Bob went home to be with the Lord
this
afternoon around 3 pm. He was in the hospital and his body just started
shutting down. Bob’ daughter, granddaughter and son-in-law were with
me as
he passed. It was the way he wanted to go. We played all his favorite
songs, told Bob stories and prayed together. Bob’s granddaughter told
Grandpa that her best memory was playing Hunt the Wumpus with him. He
will
be cremated and a celebration of life will be held in about a month.
There
we can all tell Bob stories. He passed very peacefully knowing he’d be
in
the arms of the angels tonight. As I work out details I’ll keep you
posted.”
Allen Huffman posted parts 5-7) on his version of the Logiker 2022
challenge:
Mike Miller also took on this challenge, and did a smaller star (13×13
instead of 17×17) in assembly language that took 65 bytes, and posted
it to the Facebook 6809/6309/6800 group (in the comments he got it down
to 56 bytes, losing some code “elegance”):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/6809assembly/posts/3047743885518973/
OGHugo did a video showing his Coco joystick adaptor working on his
Tandy 1000 HX:
https://youtu.be/Q6LINJqALcM
Paul Ripke posted 64K RAM test program he wrote to test the RAM on his
Coco 1, and posted it in the Facebook Coco group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160369540617641/
Craig Iannello did an interesting post (with a shot of the screen) of
using the Motorola MC6839 floating point math ROM. He discovered that
is a fair bit slower than the Microsoft BASIC floating point math
routines (although more accurate) – and he showed a Mandelbrot set
being drawn using it – about half done, and took at least half an hour:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160362024197641/
He also did a post showing a screen he produced on his homebrew 6309
based computer – running at 3.58MHz (which is faster than the GIME-X).
It can run Extended BASIC, but otherwise doesn’t have much to do with a
Coco. It does however have a Yamaha V9958 video card, sound chip, etc.
His photo of it running shows a screen he “borrowed” from an SNES game
“Seiken Densetsu 3”, to show off the graphics capability:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160379956922641/
Joe Grubbs posted a photo of a 3d printed placard that his brother
printed for him. Looks great!:
For those of you who want to set up NitrOS9/EOU in MAME, we now have an
illustrated quick start guid to setting it up, thanks to Dan Eicher:
http://lcurtisboyle.com/nitros9/EOUDOCS/Quick_Guide_to_starting_NitrOS_with_MAME.pdf
December’s Coco Crew is out, which is Christmas themed (including their
in house commercials), and includes a review of Nick’s Jumping Joey
game:
http://cococrew.org
Pedro Pana (Rocky Hill on YouTube) posted a video of him getting the
Drivewire 4 server software compiled and running with JAVA 17:
https://youtu.be/7fjNQZ2uRJI
Grant Leighty says the vendor, attendee and dinner ticket registrations
for CocoFest 2023 are now working at tandylist.com:
https://www.tandylist.com
MC-10
—–
Jim Gerrie did an updated Christmas star program to fix the shape (it
was a little off, spotted by Allen Huffman, who has been doing his blog
of his Coco version of the same programming challenge). So Jim fixed
his, and then made it from color blocks instead of just ‘*’ characters,
and some color changes (note that it is still 4 lines of BASIC code):
https://youtu.be/HiMne9wxPe0
Jim also released a video showing “Keyboard Fun” originally written by
Paul W. Meyers on 10/8/1983 – from the February 1984 issue of MICO, an
Australian magazine devoted to the MC-10:
https://youtu.be/Ja_2H2uoXgY
Robert Sieg did a picture of a 5 pointed star in SG6 (64×48) mode,
including uploading the cassette image to draw it):
Chris Poacher, on his Microdeal Facebook page, posted about this
month’s Retro Gamer magazine, which has a section about “Cheeky clone”
games. The Dragon 32 is represented by “Cuthbert in the Jungle”
(Trapfall in North America, and Pitfall by Activision being what it is
a clone of):
Verne’s Misadventures on YouTube did a video on the MC-10 called
“Introducing my TRS-80 MC-10: Making a Cable Adaptor and Writing a
Small Demo”. He shows how he made an RCA to Coax cable adapter for it,
and makes a quick demo program. He labels it as Part 1, so I assume
more videos about his MC-10 are coming:
https://youtu.be/u7QW1X2gMcg
Aaron Clement posted that he has 10 issues of the Australian “MiCo”
magazine (devoted to the MC-10 – which means that he has multiple
issues that are not up on the Color Computer Archive yet:
Dragon 32/64
————
WhatHoSnorkers channel on YouTube did a video showing a type in text
Christmas game that has you trying to give presents delivered to the
right houses. You are only given the name, and when you approach the
house (if it’s not the right one), the house owner will give you a
couple of clues – what their name is, and how many doors down the
person you are looking for is. He shows a few different versions
including the Dragon 32 (and a “Welsh” version as well, the original
birthplace of the Dragon):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxjCtvbfLNc&t=235s
Richard Harding has posted both a summary and full detail version of
his exploring the history of Dragon (we covered this a few weeks ago
when he shared some things on Facebook that he found in the National
Archives). This includes some financial details, a few products that
never came out, and other really cool things:
http://www.dragondata.co.uk/history/WDA/index.html
Julian Brown hit some snags in his duplicating the Dragon 32
motherboard… but after a short pause, he appears to be making
progress again, as shown in his latest update on the Dragon Facebook
page:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3360001720926140/
Ciaran Anscomb (sixxie in chat) is also working on remake of the Dragon
motherboar, and gave a status update as well:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3359358500990462/
Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
==========================================
Nick Marentes 2020 game Rally SG got a thorough playthrough and review
by the Gentleman’s Pixel Club (who just did Jet Set Willy recently as
well) on the MiSTer:
https://youtu.be/xEm8QF0obgc
Episode 39 of The Coco Show is now on YouTube, featuring Jumping Joey
by Nick Marentes:
https://youtu.be/nKWhvmLFow8
DrmarkB on the World of Dragon forums posted some photos of his grade 7
and 8 students trying retro gaming on the Dragon (through Ciaran’s
online version of XRoar) playing the Flappy Bird clone Flagon Bird by
Steve Bamford. They said the game was “really hard”, with the highest
score being 21 (which beats most of mine!):
Chronologically Gaming finished of his 1980 releases, 2 which featured
Coco games.
Pinball and Quasar Commander:
https://youtu.be/m0VghLLAPOs
And another episode does Super Bustout:
https://youtu.be/p16k1douYcM
He has started the 1981 videos, several of which feature Coco games:
Skiing (Unfortunately the copy he has is a PMODE 4 artifact color hack
that looks worse than the stock cartridge):
https://youtu.be/dmMcAxhC2WQ
Since he does the show live on Twitch the day before his YouTube
releases, and he actually interacts with the chat, this next link is
from his Twitch stream on Thursday night which featured a couple of
early 3rd party Coco games (one froze, unfortunately):
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1692565243
(Color Meteoroids – which partly played @ 11:05, Space War – 44:22)
Steven Hertz posted that the SoCal (Southern California) Vintage
Computer Gaming Group has another free even happening on February 5,
2023 – from noon until 8 PM in Claremont, CA. They even have a Coco 3
in their photo of retro computers:
https://www.facebook.com/events/471399894937872/
Robert Sieg has been busy making graphical versions of some of Jim
Gerrie’s games, using his graphics library that we have talked about
before, for the MC-10 with MCX-BASIC and a RAM upgrade. He posted some
videos of them in action in the MC-10 Facebook group:
PITMAN:
BANDIT:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/5649158308544278/
(note this video was broke when I tried it in December)
He also posted some pictures that he converted to the 128x96x4 screen
size for the MC-10 (note: load times have been sped up in the emulator
he is using):
Jim Gerrie “spiffed up” the title screen for Lance Micklus’ “Dog-Star
Adventure” from 1979:
He also released Dr. Who Adventure (originally by James Smith in 1982
for the TRS-80 Model 1):
https://youtu.be/kuCE3ZRSj7I
Jim also lamented that the Compact Vision TV Boy (a Japanese gaming
console that uses the same 6847 video chip as the MC-10/Coco uses)
version of Frogger had gotten a start on being ported to the MC-10, but
was never completed. Simon Jonassen is on it, and has been putting up
status reports on his port efforts. The video here is to show the
original port, as far as it had gotten:
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