The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 299, February 4, 2023
Collected by L. Curtis Boyle
Interview with Brian O’Neill & Chris Spry today
Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)
——————————-
1) TRS-80 Retro Programing has an update on his progress with his lower res
(128x96x4) Ghost Saga game that he is working on:
https://youtu.be/P6WoAIR94QY
And a second update, showing some hand to hand combat and using a double
buffering technique I had sent him earlier, to get rid of the flickering (no
background masking yet):
https://youtu.be/LDVJdUPwixs
2) Canadian Retro Things (you may also know him as Ken Waters from the Game on
Challenge) posted a video aimed at people who have just acquired a Coco 1 or 2
– what to do next. This includes learning what the ports are, a look at the
chips inside, how to to hook it up to modern TV’s, etc.:
https://youtu.be/pqaNQ5lh-b0
He then added a Part 2 on Friday:
https://youtu.be/KB4qv6RbtDY
3) Allen Huffman wrote a blog post on the differences of using WRITE and PRINT
in the Coco’s BASIC, including how they handle strings and comma (tab) style
printing:
https://subethasoftware.com/2023/01/31/coco-disk-basic-write-versus-print/
4) MaidenAriana posted a copy of live stream she did Christmas Day showing
unboxing of various retro gear – including a Coco 2 (starting 18:30 in):
https://youtu.be/Nl94_F5davE?t=1110
5) The CocoCrew episode 92 is up, including a spotlight on how to do full
screen scrolling, and a review of the game Destiny (a Jeopardy like game):
http://cococrew.org/cococrew-podcast-92.html
6) Voidstar Tech on YouTube (and also on the Coco Discord) has released a video
showing setting up RS-232 serial communications on the Coco 1 & 3 and testing
ANSI capability with a variety of terminal programs and speeds:
https://youtu.be/iD3fVowBuMk
7) AC’s 8 Bit Zone released a video on YouTube on using 28 pin ROM’s to replace
24 pin ROM’s in their sockets – but with an added twist – fitting 2 ROM’s onto
the one chip:
https://youtu.be/9qEdT6J4uh8
He also posted a video installing the Relocator board for the Coco 1, made by
Mike Rojas, which is to help adapt Alan’s CocoDV without having to cut posts:
https://youtu.be/kyM9iXJTBaA
8) Hey Birt! on YouTube did a video showing two different vintage pen plotter
printers, one of which is the CGP-115. He first compares and hows how they
work, and then works on replacing gears etc. to fix them:
https://youtu.be/DD29dklcD9E
9) Adrian’s Digital Basement did a video showing how to use 3-D printed parts
to repair the old Tandon full height drives (where the drive door mechanism
would break). Quiet a few Coco people back in the had these drives (including
me), so I thought it would be worthy to share for those who may still have
them, but have the problem mentioned:
https://youtu.be/KGuJ185u5f0
10) John Parker posted his PAL to NTSC conversion (which supports artifact
colors) to both Facebook and his blog:
https://ilike8bits.com/converting-a-pal-trs-colour-computer-to-ntsc/
11) Tony Licari posted a photo on Facebook of his modded Deluxe 2 button
joysticks. He describes them as Turbo modded controllers. I *think* the flip
switch is auto fire on/off, and the dial is to adjust the autofire speed?
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160453989747641/
12) Allen Huffman posted a file list of Coco software that was available on the
official Hayes (as in the modem people) BBS back in the early 1990’s. While I
recognize a few as being on the Color Computer Archive, I do recognize others
that I remember from back in the day, but I do not think are on the archive. If
anybody out there has an of those, please upload them to the archive if you
can:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160453854787641/
13) Paulo Garcia posted that the Vintageisthenewold.com has their 2023 BASIC 10
liner contest starting up again, and is encouraging Coco owners to participate:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160453820027641/
And his actual post on the vintageisthenewold.com, which has the categories and
rules:
https://www.vintageisthenewold.com/2023-basic-10liner-contest-is-on
14) Hugo Dufort uploaded a brief video to the Coco Facebook group showing a
program he wrote (back in 2018) to calculate Fibonacci sequences (in assembly),
and in this demo calculates 3262 terms:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160453792627641/
15) Danni O’Connor posted a 21 second video update for her new solo album Coco-
Musik, which shows her Coco 1 step sequencer running along with a ton of other
equipment, to the Coco Facebook group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160453016447641/
16) Erico Patricio Monteiro got Luciano to show what his “Double Dragon” screen
on a Coco 1/2 looks like on real hardware on a CRT, vs. the emulator simulation
shows:
Simulated in XRoar:
17) Todd Wallace posted that he finished assembling Don Barber’s Coco USB
Serial Cartridge, with some photos, to the Coco Facebook group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160447443372641/
18) Randy Kindig posted that part 2 of his interview with Carlos Camacho
(covering NEC PC-6001 and other Japanese computers) is now up as episode 122 of
his Floppy Days podcast. Part 1 had quite a bit of mention of the Coco and OS9,
thanks to machines like the Fujitsu FM-7/77. There is some more here, including
ports of some Coco games:
19) Pierre Serrazin announced on the Coco list that CMOC 0.181 has been
released, with this list of changes:
– fixes bugs in memcmp(), memicmp(), strcmp(), stricmp() for OS-9;
– fixes compilation problems when building CMOC on Cygwin;
– adds sqrt32() to CMOC’s standard library;
– provides some optimizations and minor fixes.
The new version can be downloaded at:
http://sarrazip.com/dev/cmoc.html
20) Michael Furman has released pyDrivewire 0.6 as of today, which fixes some
bugs, adds new features (including one that fixes Todd Wallace’s Weather app
included in EOU 1.0.0):
http://www.ocs.net/2023/02/04/pydrivewire-v0-6-release-update-february-4-2023/
MC-10
—–
1) Robert Sieg announced that Darren Atkinson has released the MCXSD-32 Project
files so that people capable of building such hardware, can:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/5748963841897057/
ZIP file link:
Robert also posted a little BASIC program (for the MCX-128 Extended BASIC style
ROM) to help convert graphics from a Commodore-64 to the MC-10 (it requires
another program as well, I believe):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/5754784584648316/
2) Brendan Donahe posted a video showing his MC-10 USB keyboard adaptor – which
now also supports Pi Pico and Atari style joysticks:
https://youtu.be/99ZEi2LOrEA
3) Robert Sieg announced that the Facebook MC-10 group has reached a milestone:
647 members. Why is this significant? They have now officially passed the # of
users that the original Yahoo MC-10 group had:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/5769182313208543/
Dragon 32/64
————
1) On the World of Dragon forums, answering a question, Ciaran revealed how to
get XRoar Online to work with an emulated 6309 rather than it’s default 6809.
There is UI option for it yet, but you can embed it in the URL:
https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?p=24669#p24669
https://www.6809.org.uk/xroar/online/?-machine=coco3&-machine-cpu=6309
Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
==========================================
1) Jim Gerrie has updated his MC-10 Scramble game – both to be compiled using
Greg Dionne’s MC-10 BASIC compiler, and to use the Joypad:
https://youtu.be/cjVgDbiZSOc
And also his Lander game:
https://youtu.be/-BfRngWpxXU
2) Esparanto Arcade did a spanish video showcasing the the Coco using Hyperspin
to show a number of Coco games in quick little hits, covering Coco 1 through 3
(They don’t always have their emulator settings right with RGB vs. composite,
artifacting on/off, etc. – they used VCC):
https://youtu.be/R2_YDRtggzc
3) Sibling Rivalry (Tim & AJ) put up their latest episode – covering the Coco
1/2 classic, Doubleback by Dale Lear. Like Tim, it is one of my favorite Coco
games of all time:
https://youtu.be/tZjxDD8o01k
4) Thanks to some of my research for channel Chronologically Gaming (more from
them in a bit), I did some updates on my games website, and in particular I
want to point out the corrections and additions to the Timeline page, which now
covers most/all of the commercial Coco released from the Coco’s launch through
to the end of 1981:
http://www.lcurtisboyle.com/nitros9/timeline.html
(this involved me adding 6 more games to the general list)
5) As mentioned, Chronologically Gaming on Twitch/YouTube continues going
through 1981 game releases. Coco ones that are covered this week:
Alcatraz II (30:58)
Star Blaster (51:12)
https://youtu.be/oY63iw9yF4E
A special episode going through the first issue of Electronic Games magazine,
which included some Coco coverage (see 21:11 for an article on the Coco):
https://youtu.be/LOAs8fx_mGU
The Adventure Trilogy by Nelson Software Systems (later Softlaw & ColorQuest –
most famous for VIP Library):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bB8ft7ygQM&t=2457s
6) Retromantra posted one of their cross-platform game comparison videos; this
time comparing Robocop (including the Coco 3 version). Unfortunately the
emulator they used seems to have issues with sound for the Coco 3:
https://youtu.be/JPakRAtZHNc
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