The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 296, January 14, 2023
Collected by L. Curtis Boyle
Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)
——————————-
1) 48K RAM (Josh) did a livestream for the first time since he moved recently,
showing his new setup and showing some new hardware addons that he gets to test
for the first time – two of which are his new RetroRewind branded CocoSDC and
CocoMan’s Switch-a-Roo (Coco stuff starts around), and then runs some MOD files
through Sock Master’s 6309 MOD player (which he is pretty impressed by), and a
bit of gameplay with Zenix and Quest for Thelda. (Coco 3 stuff starts around
59:27):
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1703688192
2) “Joel Explores Tech” on YouTube did his “Digging for Tech Treasure #2”
episode, which shows some new acquisitions that he has gotten both on his own
and through donations from local friends. The very first thing up is an
Extended BASIC ROM upgrade for his older Coco 2. It works, so he hints he may
do a later video going into Extended BASIC:
https://youtu.be/yKG7uWuY_pw
3) Kenneth Udut on YouTube uploaded a couple of songs that he wrote/made back
when he was 13/14 years old, which he had done on a Coco 2 with the Orchestra-
90 stereo card:
This one has some distortion effects about half way through:
https://youtu.be/TmEf07El_XA
He labelled this one as using “Stereo Additive Synthesis” and as a test:
https://youtu.be/LSX0qjv2D3Y
4) The Lunduke Journal Podcast (also on YouTube) for their January 5 episode
did 8-Bit Week Day 1&2 Roundup, which covers a bunch of 8 bit related stories
(Coco stuff at 18:40).
Podcast link and show notes:
https://lunduke.substack.com/p/8-bit-week-day-1-and-2-roundup#details
YouTube version (audio only):
https://youtu.be/oB4tnegwrEI
5) Pedro Pana (Rocky Hill on YouTube) did a video on installing DriveWire 4 on
both Windows and Linux machines without the need to install Java or any of the
other dependencies:
https://youtu.be/G9ytOzB70Ls
6) John Linville is working on a vertical scrolling game engine for the Coco
1/2. He originally posted a video showing it in action, and then published a
blog post to explain how it works (using stack blasting):
https://vdgtricks.blogspot.com/2023/01/scrolling-engine.html
7) Randy Kindig, on his latest episode of the Floppy Days podcast, has Carlos
Camacho on to talk about a variety of Japanese computers, with the NEC PC-6001
being the main feature (I should mention this is a part 1 episode). Carlos has
been active in the Coco community for years, and because several of the
Japanese machines were either VDG based, or OS9/6809 based… the Coco comes up
a fair bit in this episode! Well worth a listen, and looking forward to part 2:
8) Some people were querying about using cheap “Sparkfun Joysticks” on a Coco.
It’s a 10KOhm analog controller that people were not sure if it would work
properly. John Parker on the Coco Facebook group decided to try it, and says
that it seems to work fine on his real Coco 2:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160404295217641/
9) Ron Klein announced that the newly released XRoar version 1.3 is now
available as an update on the CocoPi (and lists more of the changes to 1.3 than
I mentioned last week):
https://coco-pi.com/new-xroar-1-3-package-available-for-coco-pi/
10) Joel Ewy posted a quick video of animation file on his MM/1… which he
just labels as being “Sneak preview???”. It features an animated Avalon Hill
Microcomputer Games logo:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/3194643584094250/posts/4084759311749335/
MC-10
—–
1) Jim Gerrie uploaded a few non-game videos featuring the MC-10. The first one
is not even written by him, but by fellow MC-10 enthusiast Greg Dionne. It’s a
“twinkly graphics version” (128x96x4) of the Christmas star that was part of
the Logikar (sp?) contest the past couple of months:
https://youtu.be/GJDkn4_mQm0
He also added another low res graphic flag to his flag series – this time for
Brazil:
https://youtu.be/YibO8AfXo_c
And a really cool one is his showing a demonstration of Mark Dusk’s 3 button
“joystick” controller that plugs into the I/O port on the back of the MC-10.
Jim hints that he may converting some of his games to run with the joystick (it
basically is a separate unit with left/right and fire buttons):
https://youtu.be/ZzsGst8HAiI
2) Robert Sieg released a video showing his MCX32-SD with his new menu program
that we mentioned last week being demoed and it’s various features, as well as
some of his other programs running from it (over 1/2 an hour) :
https://youtu.be/MQiNAXGEtdE
He also posted a little challenge, with a cryptic message about it. Has anyone
tried this one yet?
https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/5702152566578185/
Dragon 32/64
————
1) 8-Bit Shack on YouTube uploaded a video where he tests a Dragon 32 PSU that
he found in a loft:
https://youtu.be/JB1EswIqb88
2) John Whitworth posted an update on himself and DragonPlus Electronics in
both the Coco and Dragon Facebook groups. I will read his post verbatim (from
the Facebook link):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160403490432641/
3) Julian Brown posted an update to his duplicating the Dragon 32 motherboard
in the Dragon group on Facebook, including getting the joystick working:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3370880876504891/
4) Ciaran Anscomb (sixxie) who has been doing his own Dragon 64 motherboard
duplication project, received an edge connector and reset switch from Julian,
and posted a quick video showing his progress – including show gameplay of his
Tetris style game Blockdown)
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3370066073253038/
5) Gareth Hamer posted a photo of a Dragon controller for the Sega Megadrive.
While the logo *is* the Dragon logo from the 80’s…it has nothing to do with
Dragon or Dragon Data, and was basically just ripped off since they were out of
business:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3368593560066956/
Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
==========================================
1) Jim Gerrie released a port of a 1987 Klondike Solitaire that was originally
written in GWBasic. This is a re-release of an earlier version that he did,
with some suggestions form Greg Dionne and some colour changes:
https://youtu.be/a44lS5n1a10
2) Dave Veary posted a few videos that are game related this week. One is some
Coco 3 palette hacks he did for this weeks new game, Slay the Nereis (a
Centipede clone):
https://youtu.be/gQnw8O0-dsw
His other videos show game play of the much maligned Coco 3 version of Predator
(based on the NES version), that is frustratingly difficult at the beginning.
But Dave gets through the dastardly first level to show some of the new and
cool things that happen on later levels (since there are 4 videos, going to
just show his YouTube Videos page: https://www.youtube.com/@MrDave6309/videos):
Part 1 (Stage 1) (note he doesn’t get past it here, either):
https://youtu.be/pbXZxlu6sfo
Part 2 (Stages 2-3) Dave says that these are much easier. Stage 3 lets you get
a laser, and you can shoot through some of the terrain:
https://youtu.be/E9SWtDyszZw
Part 3 (Stage 4). Daves main note here is “Butterflies… and Grenades!” A
worthwhile combination:
https://youtu.be/EWMj1PnKvAg
Part 4 (Stages 5&6):
https://youtu.be/DyOQjAEFQ1o
3) Kame Sennin 13 posted a video of gameplay of Dragon Fire on his actual Coco
2 hardware:
https://youtu.be/SlWQIr6PaGc
4) Sheldon MacDonald has release a free version of his Treasure Island Defence
game (1.1) that does not need a sound chip, but uses the 6 bit DAC. It requires
a Coco 3 OR a Coco 1/2 with a CocoVGA and SAM accelerator (it may work, albeit
slower, w/o the accelerator?). You can download it from the Coco Facebook group
(and I presume later on the Archive):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160409510762641/
6) Tim & AJ dropped their latest episode of Sibling Rivalry on YouTube – this
week featuring the Coco classic Mega-Bug (known as Dung Beetles on some other
platforms):
https://youtu.be/yvz5GFKJDc4
7) And finally, for the insomniacs out there, or *major* Coco game lovers – The
Amigos have started doing long play feeds amalgamating a lot of their shows for
specific computers, and playing them as a “TV channel” type stream. They
release their Coco related one this past week, and it’s almost 18 hours
straight of Coco game playing goodness, including The Coco Show episodes, ARG
Presents episodes, Friday Night Disaster Streams & raw gameplay footage from
when they do research:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1704897354?sr=a&t=3s
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