The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 297, January 21, 2023

Collected by L. Curtis Boyle

Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)
——————————-
1) TRS-80 Retro Programing put up a video of game he is developing using the
PCOPY technique he talked about in his previous video, which he is calling
Ghost Saga. He know has a player character that is animated and can be moved
around with the joystick:
https://youtu.be/RUIBuwAJQ8k

He then expanded on that, switching to a PMODE 1 screen (to get 4 colors), and
discovers some of quirks of fast GET/PUT:
https://youtu.be/Slr-OcrX_8k

2) Todd Wallace put up a video on the Coco group on Facebook showing his start
to an Apple II+/6502 emulator that runs on a Coco 3 with a 6309 and at least
512K of RAM. 40 column text mode and few other things are working now. He will
have a github with source code for it as well (broken at the time of this
writing):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160421482842641/

3) Allen Huffman did a quick five minute video, that he describes as “Sometimes
you just want to do some BASIC programming. I tried to remember the “string
art” program I played with 40 years ago…”, where he basically live programs
some PMODE 4 line art demos:
https://youtu.be/l8kgyohGCBQ

4) Michael Furman has been rather busy lately, but he posted an update VLOG on
pyDrivewire, in particular the fixes needed for the weather app in EOU 1.0.0 to
work properly. A quick summary is that he is in testing for the new version,
and hopes to have it out in about a week:
https://youtu.be/jWPPXTVgOjQ

5) Share Squid (who is also a member of our Discord) posted his latest Vectrex
video on his channel on YouTube. As part of the video, he compares how lines
are drawn between the Vectrex (vector based) vs. the Coco (raster based). Of
course, the Vectrex and the Coco shared something critical: the 6809 CPU:
https://youtu.be/N76Ey9vyDok

6) James Diffendaffer posted a quick port of a GW BASIC running cat animation
for the Coco 1/2, including the listing:
https://jdiffendaffer.blogspot.com/2023/01/blog-post.html

7) “This Got Made” on YouTube covers the DC Comics / Radio Shack crossover
comic, with the Coco 1, the TRS-80 Whiz kids, Superman and Wonder Woman vs. Lex
Luthor:
https://youtu.be/YirJOj2rPuI

8) La Coco Strangiato on YouTube posted a 10 minute “in depth” look at his
Color Computer 3P (portable) modifications (I like the fact he chose a MIDI
version of Canadian band Rush’s “La Villa Strangiato” song as the theme, and
also the basis of the channel name):
https://youtu.be/Zc0JbHvzOGk

9) Matt Perkins posted a screenshot of what his custom settings look like for
cool-retro-term on his Mac (also works on Linux/BSD). Aside from fitting more
text on the screen, it should look familiar…:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160426914692641/

10) Brenda Make posted in the NitrOS9 Facebook group some pictures of her
starting of the Coco X case top (This is “Coco 5” style project):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1929079184021683/posts/3319194838343437/

MC-10
—–
1) Following the cat animation video from James Diffendaffer we mentioned
previously, Jim Gerrie made a version for the MC-10 as well, in glorious SG4:
https://youtu.be/efQTa0rpWVo
Jim also released a video showing a simple draw program for the MC-10 (ported
from the ZX81):
https://youtu.be/Aj6hamFaJhk

2) Jamie’s Hack Shack on YouTube made a video about using MP3 files through the
cassette port on the MC-10. He even did JanuTandy / Tanduary hash tags… at
this rate, I expect that every month of the year will eventually be tied to
Tandy computers. He also goes through which bit rates work and don’t work for
MP’3 loading files:
https://youtu.be/YY_DdjPTcM0

3) Simon Jonassen uploaded a video to the MC-10 Facebook group a 2 voice song
that only takes 2.7K (if I understand right) and fits even on a 4K RAM MC-10:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/5709401479186627/

Dragon 32/64
————
1) John Whitworth laments that a bunch of prototype PCB’s showed up at his
house on Thursday (including the new RGB board he is working on)… but he is
still getting treatment and isn’t at home to work on them:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3375841969342115/

2) Tony Jewell has committed to making a Dragon related post every day this
year, and had a really cool one this week, talking about two “future” Dragon
computers that never saw the light of day, and were not the Dragon Beta or
Professional. Both were mentioned in 1983 issues of Dragon User magazine. The
first one is a higher end Dragon (to compete with the BBC Micro). While it
sports some features known to exist in the Dragon Beta (including dual 6809’s)
it also mentions it only being 400 pounds (way cheaper than the Beta would have
been), having an improved BASIC, higher quality graphics and look different
than the Dragon 32. It also mentions a second machine aimed to compete with the
IBM PC, for around 2000 pounds, which was going to run 68000 AND 8086 software
individually or both together:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3372542429672069/

3) Julian Brown has a further update on his Dragon 32 motherboard duplication
project – he thinks he has all the bugs worked out, and has ordered 5 boards to
test with:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3371955489730763/

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
==========================================
1) Chronologically Gaming has gotten a couple of more Coco games up during his
5 times a week show, all from early in the Coco’s time (1981):
Pac-Tac (Computerware):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Un0sqC8D0f8&t=2554s

Starbase Attack (Illustrated Memory Banks):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmEbwasyZic&t=1999s

Also, just yesterday he covered Polaris:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1713672223?t=00h05m54s

2) Nick Marentes has updated his website, to make ordering his commercial games
a lot easier (And all in one place):
https://nickmarentes.com/

3) Also, if you have purchased his Jumping Joey game, there is a bug that was
found that caused the game to freeze if you managed to make it to the 6th
level. He shows the patch at the bottom of the Jumping Joey page – you just
have to type in 1 short line in the BASIC loading program that Joey comes with
to fix it:
https://nickmarentes.com/ProjectArchive/jumpingjoey.html

4) The Amigos live taping of The Coco Show (featuring Cocoban – and a live
interview with it’s author, Paul Thayer) was last night (it will also be on
YouTube shortly):
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1713389033?t=01h40m00s

GETTING CONNECTED TO THE COCO COMMUNITY
=======================================
Join hundreds of other “CoConuts” (or is that CoConauts?) on the CoCo Discord:
https://discord.com/invite/4J5nHXm

Tune into The CoCo Nation Show weekly Color Computer, Dragon, and MC-10 live
talk:
Website …….. https://thecoconation.com/
YouTube …….. https://www.youtube.com/@The_CoCo_Nation
Twitch ……… https://www.twitch.tv/thecoconationshow
FaceBook ……. https://www.facebook.com/groups/thecoconationshow/
Twitter …….. https://twitter.com/TheCoCoNation
Instagram …… https://www.instagram.com/thecoconationshow/
PodBean …….. https://thecoconation.podbean.com/
Apple ……….
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-coco-nation/id1657194167
iHeart Radio … https://iheart.com/podcast/105011302/
MeWe ……….. https://mewe.com/join/thecoconation
Spotify …….. https://open.spotify.com/show/0qx9Nx7UGTllsFXtvt01Ma
TikTok ……… https://www.tiktok.com/@the_coco_nation
Email ………. show@TheCoCoNation.com
Patreon …….. patreon.com/user?u=83010467

Watch the CoCo Show monthly gaming video talk by Boat and Aaron of Amigos Retro
Gaming:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-coco-show-a-trs-80-color-computer-podcast/id1480941752

Listen to the CoCo Crew monthly podcast of news, community, technical, and game
discussions:
http://cococrew.org

Kick it old school chat style with the #CoCo_Chat IRC channel:
Server: irc.libera.chat Channel: #coco_chat
Port: 6697 (TLS encrypted), 6667 (from NitrOS9, unencrypted)

Get into three MORE CoCo social networking groups on MeWe:
https://mewe.com/: Glenside Color Computer, Tandy Color Computer, TRS-80
Color Computer

Subscribe to The CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts
https://pairlist5.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/coco

Get four more CoCo and MC-10 group messages in your inbox:
https://groups.io: Color Computer, Retro About 64K, CoCo3FPGA, MC-10,

Join the Glenside Color Computer Club, purveyors of fine CoCoFESTS and more!
https://www.glensideccc.com