The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 300, February 11, 2023
Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)
——————————-
1) Allen Huffman did a blog post on how to avoid Disk Full & Input past End of
file errors in DECB:
2) La Coco Strangiato on YouTube (CocoNut Bob on the Coco Discord) has posted a
video “My Coco3 Repack… Unpacked!” where he goes through his Coco 3 repacked
into a PC tower case:
https://youtu.be/Ca8Hg8SwHCE
3) Michael Furman has put up instructions and downloads for pyDriveWire 06,
including special directions for Mac OSX:
Mac OSX install:
https://github.com/n6il/pyDriveWire/blob/v0.6/docs/pyDriveWire%20General%20Installation%20Instructions.md
He also did an update:
http://www.ocs.net/2023/02/10/pydrivewire-v0-6-windows-x64-binary-package-update/
4) ugBASIC: An isomorphic language for retrocomputers
“In essence, two things are isomorphic if you can translate losslessly back and
forth between them. It’s a formalisation of equivalence.” – Software design
isomorphisms by Mark Seemann
https://blog.ploeh.dk/2018/01/08/software-design-isomorphisms/
MarkO’s Take: A “common” BASIC that compiles/assembles to various targets.
I just have the initial post on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160459482107641/
ugBASIC Facebook Page:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/867151224158600
ugBASIC Homepage:
https://ugbasic.iwashere.eu/
Supported CPUs
NMOS 6502, Zilog Z80, Motorola 6809
Supported targets
Amstrad, Atari, ColecoVision, , Commodore, Dragon, MSX, Olivetti,
Radio Shack Color Computer, Thomson, SEGA, ZX Spectrum
Supported chain tools
CC65, Z88DK, ASM6809
Erico Patricio Monteiro “ericomont” on Discord has been asking the Author for a
CoCo version for a while now, since the Dragon Version was already in place..
This is an Open Source Project that will compile on Windows. Mac or Linux. It
is a CLI Tool. There is an IDE for Windows.
Pre-Built Binaries are avaliable for Download on the GitHub Repository, Windows
and Linux. ( Linux needs GLIBC_2.34 )
Functions like CHR$() are an ISO Generic, so No CoCo special characters and
CoCo’s UPPER/lower case are reversed.
No Floating Point Math.. SQR() Rounds Down to Integer..
4a) Ron Klein has made it part of the CoCo-Pi distribution.. Instructional
Video avaliable soon from Ron.
5) Alex Redman posted a video of a project he was working on around 1989 that
included some BASIC enhancements (like key repeat), and a freeform database he
was also working on at the time:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160468024457641/
6) Christopher Cromwell posted some photos of his customized Coco 3 which
includes a WiFi RS-232 interface originally designed by Dave Chesek:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160467963267641/
7) Brad Hartz asked chat.openai.com to write a poem about the Radio Shack TRS-
80 Color Computer… and this was the result:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160467105307641/
8) Nicolaas Ervik Groeneboom posted about TurboRascal now officially supporting
the Coco 3 in this ongoing multi-platform project, and included some videos.
This is very much a work in progress, but the videos look pretty darned
impressive! (Show all 3 videos since they are short)
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160466445307641/
9) John Zizolfo posted a template that one can print out to line up the timing
hole and write protect notches to make “Flippy” disks (you can flip the disk
and use the second side with a single sided drive):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160464894952641/
10) For those in the Indianapolis area the week after CocoFest in Chicago – the
Indy Classic Computer and Video Game Expo is happening April 29-30 (thanks to
Randy Kindig for posting about it!):
https://indyclassic.org/
11) Joel Ewy posted to the MM/1 group on Facebook what he is calling the “MM/1
Software Preservation Spreadsheet”, where he is trying to track down all
software made for the MM/1, and whether it has been found or not:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/3194643584094250/posts/4108510436040889/
12) The Clueless Engineer on YouTube posted a video of his voyage of
discovering in converting a U.S. NTSC Coco 2 to Australian. This is the first
Coco he has ever had. This is part 1:
https://youtu.be/9Z1eAEL_Dco
13) TJBChris did a 2nd bloopers reel – warning some foul language based on the
past few years of his videos (including multiple Coco related ones):
https://youtu.be/RA0gAnxRaGM
14) AC’s 8 bit Zone did a video showing how easy it is to upgrade an “F” board
Coco 1 (the last Coco 1 motherboard revision, also the one used in the TDP-100
I believe) to 64K RAM:
https://youtu.be/Xeli37AWe9w
15) Paul Shoemaker on Facebook showed some pictures of his installing of the
Mark Data Universal Video driver board that has been duplicated by Tom Dunk (it
lets you get composite out of a Coco 1 or 2):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160471315197641/
16) Dave Koss on Facebook linked to a short TikTok video from 1987 that shows a
mall and a Radio Shack store – including a Coco display near the end:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160471057377641/
17) Granger Meador on YouTube put up an hour long video detail his friend
Jeff’s and his creation of 15 BASIC programs involving Star Trek that they did
on the Coco 1 between 1982 and 1984:
https://youtu.be/ctklgahtPdM
MC-10
—–
1) Robert Sieg posted the MCX32-SD build files to the MC-10 group on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/5781967888596652/
Dragon 32/64
————
1) Mark Parry posted a photo of the Dragon cassette image he is working on for
Quickbeam’s Indoor Football, but this time with the high res loading screen
intact:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3392358724357106/
2) Julian Brown posted an update on his Dragon 32 motherboard recreation
project – he has the newest boards in, but ran out of some of components, which
he has on order. Hopefully this version won’t need any further revisions:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3392056234387355/
3) Melissa Wells did for the Dragon what Brad Hartz did for the Coco that we
mentioned earlier – write a poem about the Dragon 32 (note: a better one was
generated a little later in the comments):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3391112477815064/
4) Simon Hayne posted pictures of a couple of souvenir mugs that you can get
from the North West Computer Museum:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3393845577541754/
Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
==========================================
1) Jim Gerrie has released a version of Scrabble for the MC-10, originally
written by Joseph Roehrig in BYTE magazine December 1981 for the TRS-80 Model
1/3. Warning from Jim: Running on real hardware can take up to 15 minutes a
move; he shows it here with the emulator speed cranked up:
https://youtu.be/FTmI7mHGra4Nitros920
2) Allen Huffman showed game program that he is calling Grappling Hook (it
plays somewhat like The Electric Yoyo in the arcades and Beam Rider on the
Coco. He plans to enter this in the current 10 Line programming contest:
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1444997939364461
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