The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 325, August 12, 2023
The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 325, August 12, 2023
Collected by L. Curtis Boyle
- Today we have Matt Harper on (developer of Wizard’s Den sold by Tom Mix
Software) as our special interview guest! - The interview with Doug Masten (author of The Contras) with co-interviewee
Glen Dahlgren of Sundogs Systems that was originally going to happen
on August 19 is being postponed, due to a fairly major surgery. We are
shooting for around October/November depending on doctor’s orders. - September 9 we have Mark P. & Charlie from Portacoco.com. If you were
at the Fest, you would have seen them at their booth showing Coco’s (and
monitors) running wirelessly together and off batteries that do NOT require
modifications to a Coco case to attach.
Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)
1) Coco Town released a short 4 minute video that helps visualize how an
Insertion Sort works:
https://youtu.be/Pf3u3Ry4Ejc
And a more full length video about writing the initial 6809 insertion
sort… and how he tracked down a bug:
https://youtu.be/-zViO-90v4g
2) Michael Furman, who gave us live reports and interviews from VCF West
last week, put up a short 4 minute VLOG about the show as well:
https://youtu.be/hBGeJbq0fGg
He also released a video of a FLEX demo program showing some of the
graphic/text capabilities of FHL Flex version 5.0.4 – which he unfortunately
had not found before he hosted his Coco/Flex booth at VCF:
https://youtu.be/wuXskRsdOjg
3) Steve Batson did a nice writeup, including photos, of his visit to
VCF West:
(show vcfshownotes.pdf from my desktop)
4) Cathe Cita on Facebook has been posting the covers of various service
manuals for the Coco that they have found (and I presume will be scanning
any that aren’t already), including the much harder to find PAL versions
(this is actually somebody not Cathe, but I can’t remember their name off
the top of my head – Torsten, maybe?):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160827019037641/
5) Glen Hewlett has released some ML subroutines that you can call from BASIC
programs to scroll a section of the text screen in any of the 4 directions
(up, down, left right). He also released a video showing how to use it:
Video:
https://youtu.be/s8m6Owb0pw4
Source code, DSK image with samples, and some BASIC source:
https://github.com/nowhereman999/CoCo_Scroll
6) Simon Jonassen posted some pictures of mixing colors (both text and
semigraphics) on a Coco 1/2 to get more colors than normally possible:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160835278872641/
He also showed a video of it in action that Ron Delvaux tried on real
hardware:
https://www.facebook.com/reel/228812726802516
7) Carl Daugherty pointed (on Facebook) to an interesting video card project
meant to work with a variety of 8 bit systems as a modern type video card
(including 6809). Some information here:
https://feertech.com/microbeast/videobeast.html
8) Bill Nobel has finally gotten some free time from his new position at work
(after months!) and is getting back into things Coco related. The first is
he has made the Matchbox Coco/MiSTer version of NitrOS9/EOU Version 1.0.0
available from our website. This includes support for higher text modes
(up to 80×60):
http://www.lcurtisboyle.com/nitros9/nitros9.html
MC-10
1) Brendan Donahe uploaded a video showing a modification he is working
on for the MC-10, which will allow internal RAM expansion that is also
accessible for video (the highest such modification up until now has been
for 8K RAM internally). The video shows it working with 16K, and he is
working towards a full 32K:
https://youtu.be/usIhqL-vmS4
He also released an article on his site showing how to do an inverse video
modification (green on dark green/black letters) on the MC-10, which was
fairly common to do on Coco 1’s and early Coco 2’s back in the early 1980’s:
http://cocovga.com/documentation/mc-10-inverse-video-mod/
Dragon 32/64
1) Julian Brown has an update on his PCB for replacing a Dragon keyboard. He
now has the height of the keyboard about right (using 15 mm spacers), but
in getting that right he has noticed that there is a slight misalignment
of keys in both the X and Y positions (off by no more than 1.5 mm):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3518753521717625/
2) John Whitworth now has the details and pricing for his SuperRGB board
for Dragon and Coco’s. This plugs into the 6847 (VDG) socket (both normal
and T1 variant) and provides RGB output for both Coco 1/2’s and Dragon
32/64’s. It is kit style, and has some optional extras as well:
https://www.dragonplus-electronics.co.uk/product/superrgb-6×09-for-dragon-and-coco-computers/
3) A reminder: This year’s Dragon Meetup (the 6th one) is October 7 & 8 at
the Center for Computing History in Cambridge. This years theme is software,
including a lot of games and competing for high scores. Details here:
https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/71156/dragon-meetup—-7th-8th-october-2023/
Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
1) Chronologically gaming covered multiple Coco games on this past Friday’s
stream (covering May 1982):
Android Attack (formerly Robot Battle):
https://www.youtube.com/live/_6Mc11ARefY?feature=share&t=1131
Colorout:
https://www.youtube.com/live/_6Mc11ARefY?feature=share&t=3394
Dark Castle Game System:
https://www.youtube.com/live/_6Mc11ARefY?feature=share&t=3648
He also covered Ghost Gobbler on his Monday stream:
https://youtu.be/XjnuSHKP04k?t=23
On Thursday he covered:
Oxxo:
https://youtu.be/dJT6wuQ1E-A?t=648
Shrink:
https://youtu.be/dJT6wuQ1E-A?t=2537
Sir Eggbert Jumper:
https://youtu.be/dJT6wuQ1E-A?t=2710
2) Jim Gerrie did an interesting video – he ported Randy Miller’s 1976 Altair
BASIC program CHESS to the MC-10. So far, that’s pretty normal for Jim. But
then Jim’s son Charlie pitted it against chess.com’s lowest rated AI “Coach
Danny” to see how competitive it was (NOTE: The video is greatly sped up
as moves at regular speed can take minutes). In Jim’s words… “Miller’s
program loses, but it doesn’t go down without a fight.” (note this is
completely text based; there is no board displayed):
https://youtu.be/5-JGWK5jNFE
He also ported Road Runner, originally by Philip Oliver of the Oliver
Brothers (who created the “Dizzy” game series) for Computer and Video Games
Magazine in 1984. They were paid 10 pounds for this on the Dragon, from which
Jim converted it to the MC-10 and applied some speedups. It runs in 4K RAM:
https://youtu.be/g_1TdKizjBo
Jim also did an update to an earlier MC-10 port he did for “Drive”,
originally by Dino Dini in 1981 for the Acorn Atom. His new version adds
Joypad support:
https://youtu.be/bJIx76W_qq4
3) David Mitchell of Davy’s Retro Corner on YouTube released a video of
a type in game called “Space Station” that originally appeared in INPUT
magazine volume 1, issue #5. David enhanced it a bit, adding both a title
screen and an animated explosion:
https://youtu.be/7ySjS1HuI9k
Link to the original magazine:
https://archive.org/details/Input_Vol_1_No_05_1997_Marshall_Cavendish_GB/page/n1/mode/2up
Link for BASIC source code:
https://github.com/daftspaniel/RetroCornerRedux/tree/main/Dragon/TypeIns/SpaceStation
4) Tim & AJ of Sibling Rivalry take a crack at Rally-SG on the Coco by
Nick Marentes:
https://youtu.be/F75qam3hF28
5) The YouTube channel “Brown Robin Bird !!!” is planning a live stream
at 6:15 pm Eastern time, August 22 of playing Sock Master’s Donkey Kong
Remixed from VCC. He has over 6,000 subscribers so it will be interesting
to monitor the chat during the live stream:
https://www.youtube.com/live/9QDM-wEY20o?feature=share
6) Paulisthebest3uk channel on YouTube has done some 5-10 minute gameplay &
review videos of a variety of Dragon games the last few weeks:
https://www.youtube.com/@paulisthebest3uk/videos
7) XperTek has done some more Spanish gameplay video on his amber Coco 2
system this past week:
https://www.youtube.com/@xpertek258/videos
8) Hikikomori Style on YouTube did part 2 of his Pairing Dragon 32 games
that have some common things (genre, etc). This one does pairings showing
the pari theme and cassette covers only:
https://youtu.be/P8-PQtNyHDc
and part 3:
https://youtu.be/2LKf8uJvkfM
9) Holymolygames Ireland on YouTube is making a Dragon 32/64 Main Menu Theme
for the emulator front end called Hyperspin, featuring video (with audio)
clips of a variety of Dragon games:
https://youtu.be/DOoFydTgapE
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Get connected with more of the CoCo, Dragon and MC-10 community here:
https://thecoconation.com/community/
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