The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 298, January 28, 2023
Collected by L. Curtis Boyle
Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)
——————————-
1) TJBChris did a video of his installing ComputerCoNect’s (Rick Ulland)
KeyFix2 – a replacement for the mylar in Coco 2 keyboards with a much
more robust circuit board. He goes through why it needs replacing, and
installing/testing it:
https://youtu.be/SDRkiHi3OEc
2) uscgpsu1 on YouTube did a video showing their upgrading a Coco 3 from
128K to 512K using Cloud 9’s Triad 512K static RAM upgrade board:
https://youtu.be/1JO6AX5Wer0
3) Nine Finger Tom on Youtube released a video showing the GIME-X running
through it’s VGA port (to an HDMI converter), showing a picture that is
288K long – it ends up being a 256×1151 pixel, 256 color picture (And Ron
Delvaux will like this one):
https://youtu.be/gC-GAmUh2Gg
4) Robert Emery (La Coco Strangiato on YouTube) released the first episode of
his upcoming series of shows called “Will It Coco?”. This episode shows him
testing an unmodified GBS-8200 on a Coco 3 (a CGA/EGA/etc. video converter
to VGA):
https://youtu.be/usJbL8xC_VI
5) Michael Furman has released a video on YouTube with how-to videos that
are also serving as testing for his upcoming 0.6 version of pyDrivewire
(which will fix Todd Wallace’s CocoWX weather app included on EOU). 1st
up is printing through pyDrivewire:
https://youtu.be/md7-FWv_NFM
2nd up is to show how to use SSH from the Coco.:
https://youtu.be/n2bTJDnU7wo
3rd up is using DLOAD with pyDriveWire:
https://youtu.be/_irvmqQxRww
4th is about using pyDrivewire on the Dragons (and particularly using it
with DOSPlus on the Dragons):
https://youtu.be/leBagagIEAY
He also opening the new 0.6 version of pyDrivewire for beta testers:
http://www.ocs.net/2023/01/28/pydrivewire-v0-6-ready-for-beta-testers/
6) Allen Huffman, inspired by a question on the Coco list email group,
posted an article on using Disk Extended BASIC with sequential and direct
(random) access files:
7) TRS-80 Retro Programming has another update to his playing with PCOPY,
etc. This time he starts trying out hit detection using PPOINT:
https://youtu.be/gj2ujDKNEbA
8) Erico Patricio Monteiro posted some really cool pictures of some
artifact color images that he is doing in photoshop (converting a higher
color image to the equivalent Coco rendition, including all the “extra”
artifact colors like purples and yellows that you can get with certain
red/blue/white patterns). On a real NTSC Coco they aren’t quite as sharp,
but the colors are pretty close:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160438379547641/
9) Tom Dunk has a few composite video boards left (as of this past mid-week)
for the Coco 1 and 2, which you would have to populate yourself, on the
Facebook page. The design is open, so one can also get it at PCBWay:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160439215012641/
UPDATE They are all sold. But you can still order the board from
PCBWay… but you will have to populate it yourself. The PCB way page
mentions that it works in the Coco 1 or 2 and is based on the Mark Data
Products Universal Video Driver from back in the 1980’s:
10) Pedro Pena posted an update on his Drivewire 4 port to modern versions
of Windows in the Coco list:
“After updating DriveWire 4 project to run with newer versions of Java I got
some feedback saying that it was occasionally crashing under Windows 10.
I narrowed the problem down to an older version of the Java RXTX serial
library. I’ve updated the project to use the Neuron Robotics nrjavaserial
serial libray. The Neuron Robotics nrjavaserial serial libray is an updated
and maintained fork of
the Java RXTX serial library so it was almost a drop in replacement.
In addition to the update, Aaron Wolfe graciously gave me access to the
sourceforge repository for the project and I’ve added the latest Java 17
release. Clicking on the green Download button will download the updated
version of DriveWire 4. This specific download requires the user to have
Java 17 or greater installed. Running the included scripts for your specific
64 bit OS should start DriveWire 4.
A link to my github repo has also been included in the sourceforge main
project page.
All of the original source code and releases are still available from the
sourceforge repo and I plan on updating the repo in the next several months.
Please download and try it. You can scroll down past the project files
and there will be links to run it on several systems without the need to
install java if you don’t want to.
https://github.com/qbancoffee/drivewire4
I’ve tested on the following 64 bit OS’s:
Ubuntu linux Raspberry pi OS (debian based) Windows 10
Here is a link to the original repository with updated links.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/drivewireserver/
Thanks,
Pedro”
and a little addendum:
“I forgot to add that included in the main release and the Linux releases
is a bash script that will “install” DriveWire 4 in your $HOME and will
include a *.desktop file in $HOME/.local/share/applications.
So now under linux, you can launch DriveWire 4 from a nice little icon. I
plan on creating an installer for Windows as well.
I’m not an artist and I used kolour paint, so the icon isn’t great but it
gets the job done.”
11) Tony Licari on the Coco Facebook group showed some pictures of his
hacked Coco 3, which has an RS-232 installed under the motherboard, and
a connector and switches for controlling the baud rate for a printer:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160440757767641/
12) Stéphane Motschwiller posted some photos of his French (France,
not Quebec) Colour Computer 2 (which we knew as the 64K Color Computer in
North America), SECAM version (photo of the video SECAM video connector
in the comments):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160439889682641/
13) Although not strictly Coco, a cool video was posted in the Motorola 6x0x
group on Facebook – controlling a synthesizer from an SWTPC (a 6809 based
computer that predates the Coco, that also ran Flex or OS9 back in the day):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/6809assembly/posts/3074778119482216/
MC-10
—–
1) Bits & Bytes on YouTube released a YouTube short about booting and using
an MC-10 for the first time (lower the sound volume). He is capturing from
a real one and getting a lot of RF noise – he notes that he plans to try
and fix that:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/g0F6sn5glhs
2) Simon Jonassen posted an update about his porting of Frogger from the
Gakken to MC10 – because of some hardware differences between the Gakken’s
embedded 6801 and the MC-10’s 6803, he is thinking of rewriting the game
code from scratch and just keeping the assets instead:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/5736227183170723/
Dragon 32/64
————
1) 8bit-shack on Youtube did an unboxing of a “loft find” – a Dragon 32
unboxing that has been stored for around 35 years:
https://youtu.be/-NyKnAukn8E
2) Julian Brown posted on Thursday morning (North American time) that he
has received his latest revision PCB’s for his recreating the Dragon 32
motherboard project – about a week ahead of schedule:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3381105522149093/
3) Tony Vincent posted in the Dragon group on Facebook that the Northwest
Computer Museum had it’s 1st day opening today. He includes a picture of
the Coco 1 and Dragon 32 side by side:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3382667965326182/
Mitsoyama on the Amigos Discord also posted photos from the same opening
(show pictures from Community -> #local-meetups on their Discord)
Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
==========================================
1) Jim Gerrie released a video showing 5 of his games redone (and compiled)
that use the new MC-10 “joystick” that he did a separate video on that
we showed recently. The games are Deepscan, Caveraid, Boarder, Mt. Fuji
and Brickwall:
https://youtu.be/t_mnSwJPcBM
He then added his INVADER to the list – both compiled and now with Joypad
support:
https://youtu.be/nhR_1OxMe0k
2) Paul Shoemaker uploaded a video to the Facebook Coco group showing his
further progress for his RPG game:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160433373827641/
3) The latest episode of The Coco Show (episode 40) features Paul Thayer’s
new game, CocoBan. They give a review and Paul even joins them for an
interview about the game, how he programmed it, the Pico platform (where
the inspiration came from), and even his current project:
https://youtu.be/867gPIMMWZw
4) Jim Gerrie updated another of his MC-10 games – Boarder – for smooth
scroll thanks to Greg Dionne (it now works with the MCX-32SD). It also
runs with his joystick/keypad controller:
https://youtu.be/SDwvBzmHk_Q
5) John Linville posted his next video on the game that he is working on
(looks like a River Raid clone, maybe?). It is now updated with a plane
graphic and river that widens and narrows as it scrolls:
https://youtu.be/cSFkOibQv9c
6) Chronologically Gaming on YouTube and Twitch continues his journey
through games released in 1981, including some Coco games:
November 1981 – Mark Data Products: The Black Sanctum & Calixto Island
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgyynGLnS-k&t=2622s
December 1981 – Aardvark Technical Systems’ Quest, and Mark Data Products
Color Berserk (before the forced name change)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R804oDr8BKo&t=21s
December 1981 – Star Trek III from Adventure International:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiMEPvnI_vk&t=2800s
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