The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 328, September 2, 2023

Collected by L. Curtis Boyle

We have a schedule change for our interview with Mark P. & Charlie
from Portacoco.com; it is being bumped by one week (from September 9 to
September 16). 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.
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.

Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)

1) TRS-80 Retro Programing did another quick update to his picking up
of the Kung Fu game I started way back in 1986, showing how to draw the
Yin-Yang symbol with just a few BASIC graphics statements:
https://youtu.be/tMYW3t9slJQ?si=XsM3RjRXmjVzk-j1

2) CocoTown did a video on learning to access disk files from assembly
(in Disk BASIC – it is so much easier in OS9/NitrOS9):
https://youtu.be/ejBgfxHLuX8?si=YHngG8-HwFGKbRsn
He then did a followup on something he got wrong in the first video:
https://youtu.be/OKZMV4nvNPk?si=tYKn2AKhZys_lihK
A 3rd video showed how to use changing the start address of where the VDG
starts displaying lets you use it to watch the inner workings for Disk
BASIC. Inspired by our very own David Ladd!:
https://youtu.be/rjESvJ9gJBw?si=0hu0RXaAq2sYW5e8
And a 4th one where he shows how to use the tool by Eric Canales called
lst2cmt, which lets you view assembly source lines in the MAME debugger
but with your symbols and comments showing up right in the debugger:
https://youtu.be/IQ58d4nktwU?si=MjTMQTzEGo2epWKd

3) Paul Fiscarelli has released the first Alpha of his Sprite Compiler. This
is a Windows based utility that will take sprite data for the Coco and
generate the assembly code to make it a compiled sprite (optimized stores
from a single load, etc.):
Coco Discord -> PROGRAMMING AND DEVELOPMENT -> assembly for download
and screenshot

4) Bill Nobel showed some photos of a Symphony 12 system with keyboard that
he got this past week, after decades since he sold his original Symphony 12
and keyboard back in the late 1980’s. He has already been figuring out how
to program it, and even is planning on writing a driver for it for NitrOS9:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160869491752641/

5) As part of my contributions to SepTandy, I have scanned, OCR’d and
uploaded manuals for O-PAK for OS9 Level 1 (from Frank Hogg Labs), and
Word Power 3.2 and 3.3 addendum manuals (from Microcom Software) to the
Color Computer Archive. More to come in SepTandy!

6) ChibiAkumas released his 3rd lesson on assembly on the 6309 chip:
https://youtu.be/TNHsn-ZjxMA?si=P2oscbwFo4FuHB5r

7) The Coco Crew has released another interview, this time with Keith
Alphonso (of Alpha Software Technologies, who made the OS9 Level II BBS,
Data Windows and many other OS9 programs back in the late 1980’s/early
1990’s). Bill and I got to know him when we used some of his BBS tools
on our 8 terminal Coco 3 system at work (4 of which were powered by the
Comm-4 board that Keith sold):
https://youtu.be/ff_w3aTZf1E?si=Hzn20CJ9p3IMruBe

8) Alan over at AC’s 8-bit zone is starting SepTandy 2023 with a Roar –
literally. His first video announces that his CocoDV (DVI/HDMI output from
a Coco 1/2 plus graphics enhancements) is now available for the Dragon
32 and TANO Dragon. Bonus for Dragon 32 people – you can now do artifact
colors just like the Coco 1/2 did (and optionally turn that off):
https://youtu.be/9QUvEf44aVA?si=K1-IoNPXF-ThC66o

9) Another SepTandy video to start the month comes from Geek With Social
Skills on YouTube, who did a Tandy flavoured Pickups, Trades & Donations,
including a Coco 3, software and more. He also promises more SepTandy
videos this month on the Coco:
https://youtu.be/NY_UkoyA3a8?si=jBIf1v5BNglUu4zu

MC-10

Dragon 32/64

1) 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/

2) John Whitworth of Dragon Plus Electronics has announced that the
SuperRGB and companion boards are now available on his store. This board
works on the Dragon 32/64 and Coco 1/2’s, and in the Coco 2’s case, both
the original VDG and the lowercase enhanced T1 variant. It also works with
either PAL or NTSC. It provides RGB output from these machines rather than
RF or composite, meant to plug into a SCART adaptor (like the Switch-a-Roo
on the Coco 3 does).:
https://www.dragonplus-electronics.co.uk/product/superrgb-6×09-for-dragon-and-coco-computers/

3) David Mitchel of Davy’s Retro Corner on YouTube put up a video of the
program “Planets” which was from the book “Best of PCW: Software for the
Dragon 32″, originally written by Simon Strong in 1983. David did tweak
the code a bit. I think it displays rough positions of the inner planets
around the sun, in proportional real time:
https://youtu.be/iQk5AjlGS40?si=pV4lrtv3B4GIyXL7
As usual, you can download the source as well from his github:
https://github.com/daftspaniel/RetroCornerRedux/tree/main/Dragon/TypeIns/Planets

4) Julian Brown put up multiple updates on his keyboard upgrade – he still
has bit of work left to do on the software side of things (some special
key combinations not working properly yet):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3538588209734156/

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

1) Paul Thayer posted another video update on Facebook for his upcoming
“Schmup You Up!” space shooter game – this time showing him creating
compiled sprites through utilities like GIMP and the Sprite Compiler app:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160870424582641/

2) Brian Palmer has released screenshots & the DSK image to a type in game
originally by Nick Kostarelas in 1983 for an Coco magazine in Australia
in 1983 called Laser Mirror Maze, to the Coco group on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160868688757641/

3) Dino Diego, who has a YouTube page that is all about dinosaurs, just
released a video that goes through the very earliest Dinosaur based video
games. The Coco’s game Dino Wars is the earliest one he has found, and he
covers 3 games from the early 1980’s in total:
https://youtu.be/2duDVFoxMCM?si=Rbs2iWPaf8BC6fVg

4) Jim Gerrie released an update to his original game “Romulan Warbirds”
for the MC-10. It now works with multiple keys pressed at once, so it now
allows for diagonal movement:
https://youtu.be/tRxfoXIkWcI?si=eyJsWNmaW9Ffuo-z

5) Our very own Bob put up a 9.5 minute gameplay video of Hopman (our
recent Challenge game for the Coco 1,2,3 & MC-10) on his YouTube channel,
La Coco Strangiato. But, he shows two gameplays at once – one with the
stock Coco 3 game loaded, and the other playing the Coco 3 version with
the double speed POKE (POKE 65497,0) enabled for comparison. He does better
with the sped up version, getting up to level 5:
https://youtu.be/NbqXxC6liFA?si=oDFKCpRMbkCfs1oW

6) paulisthebest3uk on YouTube continued posting Dragon game play video
this past week, including Flipper, Brickout, Duck Shoot, Sky Diver and
Demolition Derby:
https://www.youtube.com/@paulisthebest3uk/videos

7) Spanish YouTube channel XperTek actually did two gameplay videos this week
for the same game (on his amber monitor): Sailor Man. The earlier one covers
level 4, and the 2nd level 5 (where new gameplay elements are introduced):
https://www.youtube.com/@xpertek258/videos

8) Brown Robin Bird released his video of playing Sock’s Donkey Kong
transcode (I think this was supposed to originally be live, but as he
explains in the description, he had to pre-record it. (I also think the
original plan was to play Remix, not the original transcode):
https://youtu.be/kpfrMEyDxQc?si=tgWhcLpVbmfkgQsj

9) YaggieBoat is doing some gameplay videos for SepTandy. First up: Checkers:
https://youtu.be/L7AiESH8pyg?si=a0S5GAyWG-V1KEj5

10) CrossGenPlay did a 2+ hour gameplay stream on YouTube yesterday called
“Tandy Color Classics: A Gameplay Showcase!” Obviously he was new to some
of the games and hadn’t downloaded manuals, but he had a few Coco 3 games
mixed in with some Coco 1/2 ones:
https://www.youtube.com/live/dd9hoU9GgoY?si=ObddLWuWIibT9B6U

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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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