The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 293, December 17, 2022
(December 10-December 16)
Collected by L. Curtis Boyle
Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)
——————————-
Adrian of Adrian’s Digital Basement does a follow up episode to the
Coco that was repackaged in a Model 3 case – working on the Coco
motherboard this time:
https://youtu.be/lYpzxO75u2Y
He also put up a video on his second channel (Adrian’s Digital Basement
][) which is a mail call episode, but features a Coco 3 he received as
well and an “8 bit dance party” with some multi-voice music that
someone created for Adrian:
https://youtu.be/i08yBdvJ4kA
An interesting article from the Science Alert website, that “proves”
that the nuclear green screen default on the Coco’s is actually a
proven pain killer:
Steve Puls put up a YouTube video showing his Coco Christmas program
that he originally had published in the Fall 1992 issue of the T&D
magnazine (he did tweak it a bit). It includes multi-voice music and
Coco 3 graphics, and runs for 10 minutes:
https://youtu.be/B1CWLmTpCnU
Joel Ewy (pronounced Eevee) posted a video of his MM/1 in action,
getting it to play a 256 color animation sequence from Lord of Rings:
Allen Huffman continues his blogs on creating the Christmas star in as
little RAM as possible, using BASIC, with part 3:
https://subethasoftware.com/2022/12/13/tackling-the-logiker-2022-vintage-computing-christmas-challenge-part-3/
And part 4, where the chat.openai.com is asked for some help:
Don’t forget to vote on the new main logo for the show intro on The
Coco Nation page on Facebook:
https://thecoconation.com/vote-on-the-new-tcn-logo/
In the Christmas spirit, David Ladd posted a video of the Spectral
Associates created Coco 3 Christmas demo, that was played in Radio
Shack stores, and was written not long after their other Coco 3 demo
that was put in the stores at the launch of the Coco 3 in the fall of
1986:
https://youtu.be/dVX49J7dk7o
Frank at Retrorewind.ca has set up a Mastodon server for the retro
community at:
https://retrorewind.social/
You can also find them at @retrorewind@retrorewind.social
MC-10
—–
Jim Gerrie tackled the same Christmas Star in smallest BASIC code
challenge as Allen Huffman has been blogging about, and posted a video
of is 4 line MC-19 BASIC version:
https://youtu.be/uN7H_a4GSmU
Ken of Canadian Retro Things has been doing a series of short videos
all December, called the “Ultimate Retro Advent Calendar”, covering a
different piece of retro every day. If you are into general retro,
including consoles, home computers, electronic games, etc. you should
check out the whole series. On the Dec. 14 episode he covers the MC-10:
https://youtu.be/7UUQY5s1P2U
Robert Sieg posted a cassette C10 image for an inverse video utility to
the MC-10 group on Facebook:
Simon Jonassen is doing some timing hacking on the MC-10 to get the
equivalent of SG-12 (64×96 with all the colors), with a screenshot on
the Facebook MC-10 group. (In the comments he even shows an SG-24…
but for that to work properly, you have to have >4K RAM on the
motherboard which requires some hardware hackery to work – which is why
his image shows the image restarting 2/3 the way down – that’s when the
4K Video RAM max (on a stock MC-10) wraps back to the beginning for
displaying):
Dragon 32/64
————
“bluearcus” (Mike) on the World of Dragon forums has posted a Dragon
specific set of CocoSDC utilities for OS9/NitrOS9 on the Dragon 64.
It’s based on code written by Barry Nelson & Tim Lindner, but with some
re-organization and a new schd command. The zip includes source & an
instruction sheet. Available in the forums:
https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=10979
Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
==========================================
Chronologically Gaming continued with further episodes of computer,
console and arcade games from 1980, this time including a couple of the
cartridges that Radio Shack initially released with the Coco 1 –
Checkers (Checker King on the screen) (9:27) and Chess (20:00):
https://youtu.be/tf-ZCWkAqiY
He also did a more recent one that briefly showed Math Bingo, but since
he won’t be covering educational games on his channel, it wasn’t really
discussed.
Fabrizio Caruso has released his latest mega-multi platform game,
called “Verbix”… for over 200 machines (including the Coco, Dragon, &
MC-10/Alice). They are free to download, and he has both high res
graphics versions and low res versions, depending on the machine you
run it on. It’s a word game (see his description) and has play demo
videos:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160347215352641/
Mr. Dave 6309 has been busy with more palette hacks, etc. for older
Coco games. In addition to changing the colors of this weeks Game On
Challenge game, Robin Hood, he also did it to Racer Ball, which is what
Ghost Gobbler by Spectral Associates became when it was sold in the UK
for the Dragon (with some updated graphics – I think to avoid copyright
issues) He shows the original version (with CMP/RGB colors set up the
wrong way) but then shows the RGB palette mod that makes it look a lot
better:
https://youtu.be/pvA_OlgNdJE
Paul Shoemaker has now set up an itch.io page where people can “pick
their own price” (including free) for his various games – including the
just released Camel, 3 editions of Ghost Rush, 2 editions of Poker
Squares, and Dungeon Crawl 2.0.
Jim Gerrie ported “Treasure of the Enrakien Empire” from the Coco to
the MC-10 (originally published in the August 1983 Rainbow magazine, by
Ken Ostrer & Mike Smith), and includes a bugfix to the original load
routine (that would have been a problem on the Coco version as well).
Unlike most videos for ported adventure games that Jim has done, this
is a complete walkthrough… so spoiler alert!
https://youtu.be/6WZhfeLUjYY
Tim & AJ @ My Drunk Sibling have Coco Ghost Rush: Winter Edition as
their game this week. Hear them singing to figure out which song
snippet is in the game:
https://youtu.be/4jW9ENhgDJg
Gentleman’s Pixel Club did a video playing Jet Set Willy for the Dragon
32 on their MiSTer FPGA system (note – language warning. And if you
have every played Jet Set Willy…. you will know why). He is familiar
with the Spectrum, so he goes through finding some of the timing
differences and new screens unique to the Dragon version:
https://youtu.be/5EMO1BcBGGs
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:
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The CoCo Show monthly gaming video talk show by Boat and Aaron of
Amigos Retro Gaming,
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Tandy Color Computer,
TRS-80 Color Computer,
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