The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 303, March 4, 2023
Collected by L. Curtis Boyle
Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)
——————————-
1) TRS-80 Retro Programming posted the second part of his Base 10 to Base 5,
based on comments and source supplied by a viewer that was done for Commodore
BASIC:
https://youtu.be/fT9da7lBSfA
He also posted an update to his much faster version of Tales of Suburbia, which
also includes improved graphics:
https://youtu.be/s3I0RFVaOFI
And a further updated on Tales of Suburbia:
https://youtu.be/uUf9kQCMswQ
2) John Zizolfo Has released more templates this week that you can download and
print out – this time for the blank page templates for Tandy’s “Electronic
Book” hardware:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160501627497641/
3) The Home Computer Museum (in the Netherlands, that we have mention before)
got a **huge** “barn find” of old computers – which even included some Coco’s:
(Play the intro, which explains what happened, and then faster forward to
around 9:!5 to see some of the Coco stuff (TRS-80 and Apples are before it):
https://youtu.be/f8TiqdUZLXo
4) Coco Crew episode 93 is out, and includes a discussion on “is retro still
cool” (that’s a silly question, given our respective audiences!) and Neil does
a review Carl England’s Backup Magic:
http://cococrew.org
5) Hot on the heels of the announcement that Darren Atkinson has released the
files to make the MCX-32SD expansion for the MC-10 – Frank at retrorewind.ca is
expecting to offer them for sale starting this upcoming week! Price should be
the same that it has been in the past.
retrorewind.ca
6) Tony Vincent posted a link in the Dragon group on Facebook to a place to get
a “Dial-A-ROM” – this allows a large ROM with multiple images to plug into an
existing ROM socket. While we have seen this before with dip switches to select
different ROM images within the large “master” ROM… this one actually has a
turnable switch:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3405576046368707/
MC-10
—–
1) James Host posted a ZIP file onto the MC-10 Facebook group that contains all
the remaining programs from the 20 programs book that Jim Gerrie had ported a
couple of recently:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/5843856145741159/
Dragon 32/64
————
1) Perry Andrews put up a picture of his Dragon replacement PSU that he got
from John Whitworth of Dragonplus Electronics that has been assembling:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3407994356126876/
He also took a photo of a display at the Science Museum in London – which
includes both a TRS-80 Model 1 and a Dragon 32 amongst a dozen more computers:
2) Matt Kaye posted about some removable blister packs with a card back that
his making, so that you can have a proper display for old cassette games with
brand new (but basically period correct) packaging, with full color covers. The
same he shows has Eddie Steady Go, Back Track & Cash Man:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3407113886214923/
3) French YouTube page “Chti’geek un jour! Chti’geek toujours!” (roughly
translates to “Geek one day! Geek always!” I think) put up a brief video
introducing the Dragon 32 he received:
https://youtu.be/RDUC9pjteuk
4) This is actually old (from March of 2020), but it’s author recently joined
our Discord. It’s a 3D graphics engine demo on a Dragon 32 where the program
only takes 1K, written by a demo scene coder who normally works with Atari 8
bit and other retro machines. It was supposed to be released at the “Forever”
demo party in Slovakia, but that event was cancelled due to Covid:
Post about it from back in 2020:
https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=85003
Brief video demo:
https://youtu.be/sviuSkciHAw
Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
==========================================
1) Jim Gerrie has been working on Erico’s Monteiro’s low res zombie game (that
we covered a few weeks ago) to the MC-10. For extra speed, he is using Greg
Dionne’s MCBASIC compiler on it as well:
https://youtu.be/IWZaj3_7qG8
He also entered in “Fall” that originally appeared in a programming book for
the French Alice computer (clone of the MC-10):
https://youtu.be/uf_XMYuivIY
He also ported “La Raquette” from the Alice:
https://youtu.be/ZLdsLQ8YWN0
He then expanded La Raquette, making it into more of a Popcorn style game and
compiling it with Greg Dionne’s MC-10 BASIC compiler (Jim mentions that it is
actually closer to a Vic20 game called Diamond Drop at this point). It features
skill levels 1-3 (which is how many pieces can fall at onces), and is now
compatible with the joypad device he has been using recently:
https://youtu.be/4eHpC9eu7uw
2) Paul Shoemaker posted a video of game side project that he is working on to
the Facebook Coco group; a platform game using the 32×16 text screen, inspired
by a CP/M game called “Ladder”:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160503449702641/
3) Episode 41 of The Coco Show From Aaron & Boat is out on YouTube – covering
the Spectral Associates game Module Man:
https://youtu.be/BrSGZ2zMFaw
4) PlayGames on YouTube seems to have finished their 30-40 second gameplay
video clips for the Dragon 32/64 – 400 in all:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLp7z5j6N5lhwyHnw_wqeAt_GZgMXqTnvI
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