The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 334, October 14, 2023

Collected by L. Curtis Boyle

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.

Upcoming conventions/trade shows of interest to Coco people:

Portland Retro Gaming Expo: Portland, Oregon U.S.A.
OCT 15-18, 2023
https://www.retrogamingexpo.com/

VCF SoCal: Feb 17-18, 2024 in Orange, California
Hotel Fera – Events Center
100 The City Drive, Orange, CA 92868
https://vcfsocal.com/index.html

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

1) TRS-80 Retro Programing on YouTube has another video related to his
Coco Ultimate project – this time improving the spell selection menu and
using high bit CHR$() values to do graphic blocks:
https://youtu.be/0r6CyDuzdZc?si=Pgyi3Nz0rcbooi7F

2) ARC Javmaster received an unused Coco 3 still in box that we covered
in a previous video, and this time around he tries to upgrade it to a

Spoiler – something went wrong, so a follow up video is sure to be
forthcoming as he hunts down the problem:
https://youtu.be/HnTmgQ5Qla0?si=Jgx_ZwL84cqbUhGF

3) A fairly major find about Rainbowfests is now posted Glenside’s
YouTube channel: Jason Timmons (of VCF-MW) inherited a lot of Bob Swogers
electronics, computers and related things after Bob passed away. While
going through it, he and Jim Leonard of VCF-MW found a DVD copied over
from a VHS tape over a 1/2 hour in length that covers RainbowFest, so they
converted the tape over and edited it to give it a better quality picture
and sound, and posted it to YouTube. They are looking for some help in
identifying people in the video, and also are wondering if anyone may
have the original VHS tape that the DVD was made from; if someone does,
they can probably increase the quality more:
https://youtu.be/07FsJwL0jw0?si=LlRqtbkK8gpxazJp

4) The Coco Pi project has another update this week: an update to Alan
Cox’s CC6303 compiler (which is used for the CROSSLIB project that is used
for massively crossplatform games (including the MC10) that Fabrizio Caruso
does (and whom we have covered before).
https://coco-pi.com/new-update-for-cc6303-compiler-for-mc-10/

5) Marco Spedaletti, author of ugBASIC and it’s IDE, announced on the Coco
Facebook group that it has been upgraded to version 1.15, which officially
includes Coco 3 support now.
Announcement:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10160966755622641/?mibextid=S66gvF
Installer:
https://ugbasic.iwashere.eu/install
IDE installer:
https://spotlessmind1975.itch.io/ugbasic-ide

6) And speaking of ugBASIC, Erico Patricio Monteiro released an animated
GIF of a little low res test program he wrote for the Coco 1/2 using ugBASIC:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160962243832641/
DSK image download:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1trDOVkwXUB-XViqVw8_Wp-7p0kELc0KO/view

7) MrDave6309 has released a 10 minute video demonstrating the various
options available with his new HSPRITE command that he used to replace
the HCIRCLE command. He has some more to add yet, and then it will be a
free download for Coco 3 BASIC programmers
Notes from Dave:
“Im not sure if i will be around this afternoon… but I replaced hcircle
in ram and in name.
And the commands are sticky.. ie don’t need to be called each loop ,,
once a spite is set in motion it will stay in motion.. or you can adjust
position each frame if you wish.. i just want to add collision detection
and a few more directions and it will be ready for release.
You can hold up to 320k off hi res backgrounds and sprites .. uses the same
double buffering as last demo..now fully available from basis as soon as
hscreen 2 is invoked”
Video demo:
https://youtu.be/DHiuJ9sF2H8?si=RrpWtyghLDo_LeGL

8) Richard Kelly has released a revised disk image of a variety of programs
that he has written (mostly games but also some utilities) for all 3 Coco’s
that you can download form the Coco Facebook group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10160956566492641/

9) For those interested in building their own computers from scratch,
the Motorola 6809/6309/6800 Facebook page has been featuring a project by
David Collins. He issued several updates this week of the 63C09 (3 MHz 6309)
that he mentioned in the Facebook group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/6809assembly/posts/3233997406893619/
His hackaday.io project page:
https://hackaday.io/project/193108-hb6309m-uitx-63c09-form-factor-computer

10) Justin D. Morgan on YouTube revisited his Coco 2 (which still had the
“yellow bar” problem even after replacing the 555 chip that is the most
common cause), and managed to fix it:
https://www.youtube.com/live/aPzTTe8vFv4?si=VCRGShJegbmrBjI8&t=13384

11) George B. Janssen uploaded a DSK image of some graphics demo’s in
assembly that he was working on during the CoVid shutdown. If there is
enough interest, he can upload the assembly source too:
(show a couple of demos from folder on my desktop)

MC-10

1) Johan Koelman has released an initial v1.00 of his project of emulating
an MC-10 on a Spectrum, released on the MC-10 Facebook group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/6577052742421492/

Dragon 32/64

1) Luigi Ruffolo posted a link to an unreleased Dragon 32 game – but it
actually has a screenshot from when it was shown and covered in Dragon
magazine in the June 1986 issue. It was going to be a Dr. Who related game:
Facebook post:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3565801550346155/
Games that Weren’t website (this is their first ever Dragon entry):
https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/2023/10/time-lord/

2) More photos from last weekend’s Dragon Meetup at the Cambridge Museum
of Technology are now in the Dragon Facebook page (from Richard Atkinson):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3564176457175331/
Video of a SECAM version of the Dragon (from Richard Atkinson):
https://www.facebook.com/100081327375590/videos/1075622163862406?idorvanity=1602723113320685
And photos of the SECAM version:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3564148643844779/
** SIDE NOTE: Parts numbers for various Coco’s including SECAM from
Torsten **:
Local save
Richard Harding photos:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3563934050532905/
The 4 winners in the quiz contest (Ciaran on the left!)
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3563471530579157/

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

1) One of the talks from VCF-MW that was released on video on YouTube this
past week is the fascinating history of Imagic – from their founding until
their current being stuck in a legal limbo even now (and since 1986). The
status of the limbo means that copyrights, etc. appear to be suspended,
so it sounds like Demon Attack and Dragonfire could (fuzzily) be legal to
copy right now. The speaker, Ken Van Mersbergen even shows the Coco Imagic
releases, and points out one of the unique things about the Coco version
of Dragonfire – and it has nothing to do with the palette tricks unique
to that game:
https://youtu.be/g7OzAC8Jz1s?si=C3GlwdJUBx0cbqKf

2) Paul Shoemaker put up a new video on YouTube showing his further progress
with porting Erico Monteiro’s Fire Playtest VII to the Coco. It features
improved parallax scrolling, grey scale color motif to match Erico’s
original version (that would be Coco 3 or CocoVGA only) and a moving truck:
https://youtu.be/IH5IVvdSxVc?si=LT6uWhycw3oFiLZO

3) Stewart Orchard has made a DMK file that will run under XRoar that
contains the original Colossal Cave Adventure originally published by
Compusense Ltd. in 1985. Requires 64K RAM, and the reason it needs a full DMK
file is that it uses a custom sector numbering scheme and mixes single and
double density on the same disk. Available on the World of Dragon forums,
in the Uploads section:
https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11132

4) CrossGenGameplay put up multiple Coco gameplay videos on real hardware
this week:
https://www.youtube.com/@crossgengameplay/videos

5) Chronologically Gaming covered some more early Coco titles (from July
1982) this past week:
3D-Ghostmania:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkmjNRq8NgU&t=710s
Astro Blast:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkmjNRq8NgU&t=1330s
Katerpillar Attack:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiF3cltJ8Tc&t=617s
Pack Maze:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiF3cltJ8Tc&t=1571s

6) Share Squid on YouTube released an update on a Vectrex game programming
project that he is working on. At the beginning, he mentions a couple of
Coco games that helped start him down this path:
https://youtu.be/Bif7EQusKW0?si=JWHukcdXew76BuXj

7) For those of you participating in the Game On Challenge this upcoming
week, I have put up a DSK image of Dungeon Raid with some 6309 optimizations
for people to try (and test). It is in the game-on-challenge channel on
the Coco Discord. If it seem to work for everybody, I will upload it to
the archive.

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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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