The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 313, May 20, 2023

Collected by L. Curtis Boyle

1st, a correction from last week if you read our show notes – David Kroeker
let me know that the test program for Diecom Phaser gun adaptor was entirely
by Tim Lindner. My apologies for the mistake.

Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)

1) Ken of Canadian Retro Things has released his next post CocoFest video –
this time with our tour/interview with the Vintage Geek Museum:
https://youtu.be/YNz3j56sO1I
He also did a video showing the installation (and review of) Rick Ulland’s
KeyFix 3 – the quiet click version:
https://youtu.be/nykZJdapS6U

2) Coco Town put up a video showing some tips on animating graphical
patterns, with lots of examples:
https://youtu.be/eZY_402qkok
And a part 2 with different STEP rates for different graphical effects:
https://youtu.be/bvVRhL2KwE0

3) Allen Huffman posted a blog entry about inverse video on the Coco (the
light green on dark green text). He goes through the hardware options (a
bit on the T1 VDG, a pin on the original VDG) and then inverting characters
on the 32 column screen via a BASIC program – and various optimizations
he did along the way:
https://subethasoftware.com/2023/05/16/inverse-reverse-text-on-the-coco/

4) TRS-80 Retro Programing on YouTube put up a video of a little side
project he did (to take a break from his upgrading Tales of Suburbia),
animating a text based arrow on the screen in just a few lines of code.
https://youtu.be/kM8HYHgg0rU

5) The Wisconsin Computer Club put up a video walkthrough of CocoFest 31:
https://youtu.be/EO2lnleDvcI

6) 780tech.com put up a quick <3 minute video about this past CocoFest,
set to a custom song with screenshots (and some live singing with Taylor,
Amy & AJ):
https://youtu.be/FCBLjhkPoTo

7) Retro Dream on YouTube did an interesting video – using a 3D modeled
perspective to go through early Microcomputers from the Apple II through
the Amiga 1200 (each with some specs, release date and a model of what the
computer looked like… including the Coco 1 (well, specs wise – the model
is either a Coco 2 or TDP-100 by the looks of it). There are many mistakes
in it though – like what I just mentioned, and sales figures (they show
the Dragon 32/64 selling 50K units – it’s more like 350-400K for the two
combined). The Coco 3 isn’t even mentioned. So, cool effect… shame about
the facts (granted there was a lot of stuff to go through):
https://youtu.be/JdZ4XFEZFnc.

8) YaggieBoat on YouTube did a video showing him trying the Backbit Pro
on his Coco 2 (we covered the Coco version of the Backbit some months ago,
when they added disk support). It’s not as slick/easy to use as a CocoSDC

but with little adaptor cards, you can run the same Backbit on multiple
retro platforms:
https://youtu.be/AOrheII8DV0

9) TeePublic is apparently now selling “Mr. Coco” stickers:
https://www.teepublic.com/sticker/36292395-mr-coco

10) Michael Furman put up part 2 of his Flex VLOG series:
https://youtu.be/XD7kG-iluwE

11) Shawn Driscoll (whom I just recently got back in contact with decades
after we were both active on Compuserve & Fidonet back in the 1990’s),
put up a video talking about his history with the Coco 3 and OS-9 Level
II… and the GUIB library he wrote for it and then used in games like
the text adventure “Stranded… and out of gas!” and his BASIC09 version
of Shanghai. All 3 of these are included with EOU (although I have some
cosmetic fixes to make due to the line drawing algorithm having changed
since NitrOS9 went open source):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEiTbjiJ-TQ

12) Luciano Scharf put up some photos on the Coco Facebook group from the
XI RetroSC show – a multiplatform retro computer show that took place in
Blumenau, SC, Brazil on May 13:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160658055532641/

13) Paul Ripke posted in the Coco group on Facebook about his making an
assembly language version of Conway’s game of Life that he did during
CoVid, and the link to his Github for the projec. It supports 4 different
resolutions:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160657946447641/
GitHub:
https://github.com/stixpjr/cocolife

12) MrDave6309 had released a couple of videos about converting PMODE 4
machine language games to PMODE 3 (for PAL/RGB systems, and then further on
changing palettes for Coco 3 to play such games in color on an RGB monitor.
1st video – how to look for graphics mode settings in ML games and how to
change them (using POKE’s after LOADMing):
https://youtu.be/L6vod1RfBMQ
2nd video – how to do this from BASIC:
https://youtu.be/OzexdHHpt9A

MC-10

1) David Mitchell posted a program to draw a sphere on the MC-10, ported
from a ZX-81 program:
https://youtu.be/mGzes-4ByEQ

2) Robert Sieg has continued his updating of his algorithms for converting
high color pictures to the MC-10 4 color palette:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/173737063356725/posts/1335288630534890/

Dragon 32/64

1) David Mitchell posted a program from the book “35 Programs for the
Dragon 32″ by Dr. Tim Langdell that is a Weave graphics demo, but with some
changes: he added a title screen, added repeat when the screen is finished,
and varies the radius and foreground color:
https://youtu.be/WdSlsYLhm50

2) Kamil Gorgh Trzaska posted a link in the Dragon group on Facebook
to a Python wrapper he did to give a GUI to Rolf Michelson’s DragonDOS
disk utility:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3459116354348009/
Google drive link:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1asTinG8cp78BxaJs4kv5mJWFh7NKSeiy/view?usp=sharing

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

1) Jim Gerrie game updates for the week:
3D Mc-Chase (compiled with Greg Dionne’s BASIC compiler) is an update to
one he did a few years back, now adding MC-10 joypad support and key repeat:
https://youtu.be/Oy906DkSEj8
He also updated his own Missile Attack, with the 2nd palette of SG6 mode,
and full 8 way (vs. the original 4 way) movement of the cursor in this
Missile Command inspired game:
https://youtu.be/4FZEO5pY_Cs
He did an updated version of his Frogger game as well, featuring the new
key input routine, some speedups & adding a jump sound:
https://youtu.be/2zzNRoiHqdU

2) Chronologically gaming has hit a few games for the Coco this past week
for March 1982:
Amazing (Chromasette), Card Games (Tandy), Color Computer Dancing Devil
(Tom Mix), Cosmic Superbowl (Spectral):
https://youtu.be/AgPOKWY97w0
He also did a special episode going through an early issue of Electronic
Games magazine issue #2 – which had their picks for the best games of

Jeff’s own choices are often quite different… and feature a couple
Coco games!
https://youtu.be/KH4dTZDvFro
He also covered Ken Kalish’s 1st Coco game (Escape), Scepter of Kzirgla
and Space Raiders:
https://youtu.be/afX3z7YGHx8
And finally, Tower of Fear by The Programmer’s Guild (Charles Forsythe):
https://youtu.be/n5BDYEcECTw

3) Jeo Papas has released more game play videos this week, including 3
versions of Fahrfall:
Pandemic version on Dragon 32 by John Linville:
https://youtu.be/GuYFR3XBXYk
MC-10 4K version by Jim Gerrie:
https://youtu.be/QYfjlTEGZiM
Coco (I presume 4K as well) version by Jim Gerrie:
https://youtu.be/ZDjLofVHEZc

4) Jerry Young on YouTube did a gameplay video of his Haunted House for
the MC-10, originally from the book “Computer Games To Play and Write”
from 1983 by Dan Isaaman:
https://youtu.be/wnGMUGVETRQ

5) The only way is Cuthbert, GA posted many more longer play Dragon
game videos:
https://www.youtube.com/@MaryWinstead32/videos

6) Tim & AJ try out the Coco game Buzz Worm on Episode 83 of Sibling Rivalry
(recorded before CocoFest):
https://youtu.be/hEkBHVqhyaQ

7) David Mitchell posted a type in game from the book “The Power of the
Dragon” by John Sharp and David Bolton – City Bomber:
https://youtu.be/h1zccjrx8M4

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Get connected with more of the CoCo, Dragon and MC-10 community here:
https://thecoconation.com/community/

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