The CoCo Nation News stories for Episode 290, November 26, 2022
(November 20-25)
Collected by L. Curtis Boyle
Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)
Color Computer Programming did a BASIC program to play part of “In My
life” by the Beatles. He goes through transcribing the solo melody to
the PLAY command, playing with volumes, tempos, and when octaves need
to be changed):
https://youtu.be/rOrVsTyyIfk
Pedro Pena (Rocky Hill on YouTube) released a video of him assembling
“Ralph” his duplication of a Coco 2B 26-3134B motherboard (this is the
one Tandy sold late in the Coco 2’s life that had the T1 VDG chip with
true lowercase, inverse video and full border features added):
https://youtu.be/u0PwnJCS3qc
Getting into the holiday spirit, tclem1 on YouTube released a video
that is almost an hour and a half of Christmas music (played on normal
instruments) but with the kaleidoscope from the Coco’s Audio Spectrum
Analyzer cartridge:
https://youtu.be/kFRSr6n4RTM
4) Don Barber mentioned in a few spots (Facebook Coco group shown here)
about a USB serial pack to use with the Coco, which simulates the 6551
that the RS-232 pak used, so all the old software for the RS-232 pak
still works. He released it as open source, so you can download it as
well. As has been mentioned in the comments, it works with such
classics as Sock Master’s Twilight Terminal (the full color ANSI
terminal program):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160309647122641/
His project link on Github:
https://github.com/barberd/cocousbserial
Sheldon MacDonald posted a disk image to the Coco Facebook group that
contains his Matrix demo that he wrote in assembly for the Coco 1/2/3
(he will be uploading sourcecode later):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160307471882641/
Video:
https://youtu.be/G_rnCg2eiao
In a move that multiple retro computer podcasts are having to do, the
Coco Crew has announced their switching to anchor.fm as their podcast
host. Previously they were on cyberears, but cyberears is shutting down
(this also affected the Retro Computing Roundtable podcast and many
others):
Dave Veary (MrDave6309 on our Discord) has uploaded some tutorial
videos for using EDTASM+ to his YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/@MrDave6309/videos
MC-10
Jim Gerrie posted the Full program demo that we showed some of last
week – the full “Decouvrez Alice”
tutorial/demo. Almost 22 minutes long:
https://youtu.be/xeAqAwQwxqY
Jim also posted a link to a lengthy blog post that was released on
October 31, on refurbishing an Alice 90 – from the website Quantum
Bits. This was written by Fred Bellaiche, and has extensive pictures of
the insides, keyboard assembly, etc. as he cleaned it up:
https://www.quantum-bits.org/?p=4494
Dragon 32/64
Julian Brown released some pictures of his quick and dirty ROM
replacement – which can handle 2 ROM’s on a single chip, and includes
jumpers to switch between them:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3325804464345866/
He posted an update to the ROM adaptor as well, testing it on the
Dragon Mk 2 boards (with pictures):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3328154727444173/
Great news! John Whitworth has announced that DragonPlus Electronics is
open for business again:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3326267470966232/
Tim Gilberts has uploaded the information sheets for the Premier Dragon
Disk Operating System (by Premier Publications) sold back in the day
for the Dragon 32. This was a more advanced DOS than Disk Extended
BASIC, including a wildcard FIND command for both sequential and random
access files, a CONFIG command that allows one to change the step rate,
sectors per track, number of tracks, number of heads, etc. for your
drives, and more:
Sheet 1 link (this is the price list for the controller as well as
different combinations of drives):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3326170380975941/
(use local “premier1”.jpg to show)
Sheet 2 link (command list):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3326170534309259/
(use local “premier2.jpg” to show)
Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
The latest episode of The Coco Show has been released, covering the
early Coco 3 game release by Diecom, Grand Prix Challenge:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=036tf2XEU5I
Chris Poacher posted on his “Microdeal – The 8 bit years” Facebook page
his newly aquired original tape and instructions for the Dragon 32
version of Syzygy (sold by Spectral Associates in the U.S.)… but this
version has a bonus – the Hints sheet (normally sold separately via
mail order from Microdeal themsleves) is included with this one. As
Chris mentions, the cheat sheet itself has to be “solved” to get the
clues – you don’t just read them:
Paul Shoemaker posted a video to the Coco Facebook group showing a game
that he is fancying up from it’s original Creative Computing magazine
release, called “Camel”. He shows a cool camel walking animation in
this first experiment:
He did a follow up yesterday with further animations:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160313974632641/
He also posted a quick video for his (he promises final!) version of
Ghost Rush – Christmas Edition”:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160306198557641/
Jim Gerrie has released a Race Demo game which was also part of the
“Decrouvrez Alice” demo/tutorial we showed last week for the Alice,
which Jim translated to English and the MC-10. It’s a 4K racing game,
and Jim upgraded it a bit with better key controls an score keeping:
https://youtu.be/xLaQsbDUiH4m
Pere Serrat & Kees von Oss have released the next AGD enhanced for the
SuperSprite FM+ board games pack out (#6) that has the following 4
games:
Dirty Dozer
Forward to the Past
MAgic Able
The Hair-raising Adventures of Mr Hair
http://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11055
Erico Patricio Monteiro has been trying a cross platform isomorphic
BASIC called “ugBasic”, that compiles to many different 8 bit systems.
As a test, he did a quick hack to his semigraphics fight game and
upload it for the Dragon 64 to the Dragon group on Facebook. He plans
on more extensive testing of this new cross platform BASIC in December:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3326864814239831/
Tim and AJ released their next My Drunk Sibling game play video – this
time playing Steve Bjork’s Coco 1/2 version of One on One Basketball,
sold by Tandy from Electronic Arts:
https://youtu.be/kQAUJ5tigJA
Getting Connected
Join hundreds of other “CoConuts” (or is that CoConauts?) on the CoCo
Discord:
https://discord.com/invite/4J5nHXm
New to Discord? Get started quickly with this video introduction:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2POVhc5NvQ
Learn more about everything old and new for the Color Computer by
tuning in to:
The CoCo Nation Show – a weekly Color Computer, Dragon, and MC-10 talk
live:
https://thecoconation.com/
The CoCo Show monthly gaming video talk show by Boat and Aaron of
Amigos Retro Gaming,
Three different CoCo groups on https://mewe.com/:
Glenside Color Computer Group,
Tandy Color Computer,
TRS-80 Color Computer,
Four different CoCo and MC-10 groups on https://groups.io:
Color Computer,
Retro About 64K,
CoCo3FPGA,
MC-10,
The CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts
https://pairlist5.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/coco
—
Robert “Exile In Paradise” Murphey exile@weylan-yutani.com
Weylan-Yutani Corporation
