The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 302, February 25, 2023
Collected by L. Curtis Boyle
Two weeks of news, so buckle up… it’s gonna be a *long* one!
Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)
——————————-
1) Pierre Sarrazin has released version 0.1.7) of BGraph, the C graphics
library for his CMOC the offers functions similar to BASIC’s LINE, DRAW, PAINT
and CIRCLE commands (this doesn’t call the BASIC routines, and BASIC is not
required). The library also now supports clipping lines on a rectangle using
the Cohen-Sutherland algorithm, and supports Catmull-Rom splines. You can
download it from Pierre’s CMOC site:
http://perso.b2b2c.ca/~sarrazip/dev/cmoc.html#bgraph
2) Henry Reitveld put a video up on his YouTube channel showing him using his
new MIDI Maestro (from Retro Innovations) with his Casio keyboard, using the
Coco 1/2 MIDI program Lyra:
https://youtu.be/nkVNtCnkKdM
3) TRS-80 Retro Programing posted a video about a problem he hit using PCOPY:
https://youtu.be/xGNRlFD-mgU
He posted a followup video on Ghost Saga as well:
https://youtu.be/T_UsGfIOg3k
And also working on a program to convert Base 10 to Base 5, part 1. Turns out
to be a more difficult than he originally expected:
https://youtu.be/PESk7ZLJbkg
He also showed the speed difference when changing his Tales of Suburbia to use
PCOPY vs. the original non-byte aligned GET/PUT. It is both noticeably faster
and also much smoother animation wise:
https://youtu.be/r5MRbIBhRbw
4) Allen Huffman posted a blog post about how the FILES command affects free
memory in Disk Extended Color BASIC:
He also posted on the extra bit flag options available on the T1 VDG chip for
the Coco 2 – color set is on both VDG’s, but true lowercase, inverse video and
full border are only on the T1 VDG (and the Coco 3’s GIME chip)):
He also did one on using the CIRCLE command to do spirals rather than
concentric circles:
And one for users of XRoar 1.3.1 or later – how to configure the Coco 3 keys
(Alt, Ctrl, F1, F2), especially on the Mac OSX version:
The aid people who want to fiddle with these settings, he has also set up a
cocopedia page with configuration file examples that you can cut & paste, or
modify for the settings you want:
https://www.cocopedia.com/wiki/index.php/Xroar.conf
He also did a blog post about the DLOAD command and what it actually does on
the Coco 3 (and the POKE/EXEC equivalent):
https://subethasoftware.com/2023/02/21/poke-1130exec-40999-and-dload/
He also posted on the Coco Facebook group that he found some disks with buffer
saves from his calling the Hayes BBS (which had a Coco section). He is working
on getting them gathered up to post for the public in the future:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160487401037641/
5) Glen Hewlett put up a blog post covering some of the differences (and how to
adjust for them) between the 6502 and 6809 if you are transcoding:
6) Carl England gave an update of getting a new utility done to copy copy-
protected floppies to an SDC (and that also work), with some help from the
CocoSDC’s creator, Darren Atkinson:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160480525687641/
7) Terry Trapp returns with a Coco video showing a “broken” Coco 1 he acquired
at Goodwill:
https://youtu.be/5iU1nB2GoD8
8) John Zizolfo on Facebook (who posted the template for making double sided
disks last week) has uploaded 3 label layouts for floppies as well that you can
print out:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160483110462641/
9) Ron Klein posted that XRoar 1.3.1 is now available on the Coco Pi:
https://coco-pi.com/new-xroar-1-3-1-package-available-for-coco-pi/
And MAME 0.252:
https://coco-pi.com/new-mame-0-252-package-available-for-coco-pi/
10) Congrats to both the Coco Crew and The Coco Show for getting in the top 10%
of the “Listen” score according to Listen Notes:
11) YARC (Yet Another Retro Channel) on YouTube did a re-cap and composite mod
with universal video driver video:
https://youtu.be/Yy_WHm6sDuA
12) Canadian Retro Things (our very own Ken Waters!) released the 3rd video in
his series about getting a new Coco… now what do you do? This episode covers
the Coco 3 specifically (he covered this last week, but I wanted to give it a
quick mention this week as well):
https://youtu.be/9G8qgrvPsQc
13) Sheldon MacDonald posted that he has updated his SegaCoco IDE to version
0.12 (this is a an IDE / assembler he has been working on that will generate
code and run it in emulators for both a Coco and the Sega Genesis). This update
even includes a demo program for the Genesis called “chicken dance”:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160498458207641/
14) Richard Kelly did a cool demo in semigraphics called the “Ants on Bridge”
demo. This features moving the “ants” across bridges that is flicker free and
the ants go under or over bridges. All in BASIC with no ML suborutines at all,
and it can be downloaded from the Coco Facebook group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160489832037641/
MC-10
—–
1) Jim Gerrie found an MC-10 video has been released for the “In it’s own
Words” video series (may want to mute the sound):
https://youtu.be/EcoKaclt1sU
2) Verne’s Misadventures on YouTube release part 2 of his MC-10 video: Setting
up & learning to use the MCX32-SD:
https://youtu.be/TxTd4P7O3Gc
Dragon 32/64
————
1) John Whitworth posted an update about his RGB boards, now that he is out of
the hospital: Prototype boards sent off to the PCB assembly company:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3396823717243940/
He also has EPROM converters:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3396178373975141/
He also put up a video on YouTube showing his Dragon Beta/128 fixed up, and
runs the BASIC09 graphics demo that uses the enhanced graphics and text in a
640×540 multicolor mode:
https://youtu.be/fl_m6Mn0m_Q
2) The Clueless Engineer released a 3 part video series about the Dragon 32 on
YouTube:
Part 1:
https://youtu.be/72LvEHGdzIQ
Part 2:
https://youtu.be/1_USfg3G3Tw
Part 3:
https://youtu.be/o0xAoE05nHc
3) 8-Bit Shack released a video on his YouTube channel showing how to build a
composite Video lead for his Dragon 32 “loft find”:
https://youtu.be/PmbEFJPBqeU
4) ToBach on YouTube posted a short video of his entry for the Lovebyte 256
byte oldskool intro combo, which place 16th out of 22. It’s a low res color
swirling effect:
https://youtu.be/21TCSpsS1gs
5) Captain Commodore on YouTube released a video showing how to build and
install a Dragon 32 Power Supply Unit (PSU) from Dragonplus Electronics:
https://youtu.be/-2Tvoa_Jses
6) Phil Harvey-Smith posted on the Dragon Facebook group about the hardware
modification that he did to get Paul Shoemaker’s Ghost Rush to work on a Dragon
32 that has 16 chips to get 32K (I assume that this is similar in principal to
a stacked 16K RAM upgrade on a Coco – the VDG /SAM could not normally use the
upper 16K of RAM for video):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3403534279906217/
Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
==========================================
1) Jim Gerrie ported a 1980 Gin Rummy 2.5 program originally written by S.
Silverman for the TRS-80 Model I/III, and released both a video and a blog post
about it:
Video:
https://youtu.be/kqffNZim5vY
Blogpost:
http://jimgerrie.blogspot.com/2023/02/gin-rummy-by-s-silverman-1980.html
2) As promised, Sheldon MacDonald has released the source code to his Treasure
Island Defense (6 bit DAC sound version). It is included with his IDE project
(link at top):
https://www.softmotion3d.ca/index.php?topic=6.0
3) Tim & AJ released episode 71 of Sibling Rivalry – this time playing Diecom’s
Coco 3 game, Gantelet II. This was one my favorites, and the only Coco game I
know of that could have 4 simultaneous players.
https://youtu.be/fToF_-4qxDU
4) Chronologically gaming took a quick look at some real old Spectral
Associates games for the Coco from 1981 – both written in BASIC – including
Battlefleet (Battleship with some twists) and Artillery Duel – Artillery in
real time against the computer. The latter only took 4K RAM.
https://youtu.be/6SOCuoGTXlQ
Also he went over Tandy’s Crosswords cartridge game:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8NcoLqUC9g&t=3545s
5) A new channel on YouTube (in Portuguese) is making videos of Dragon games in
quick 30-40 second clips. For some reason, many are zoomed in so that you can’t
see the whole screen. He seems to be going in roughly alphabetical order –
currently on the D’s as of Friday. This includes some that I haven’t seen
before:
https://www.youtube.com/@user-zr2tz2ig2e/videos
6) Happy Coding (a regular streaming partner with the Amigos who works on the
Spectrum) posted a video to YouTube showing the current status of Pere Serrat’s
porting Happy’s Asteroids RX Spectrum game to the Dragon 32:
https://youtu.be/97mBx2nINY0
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