The CoCo Nation News stories for Episode 290, November 26, 2022 ================================================ (November 20-25) Collected by L. Curtis Boyle Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform) ------------------------------- Color Computer Programming did a BASIC program to play part of "In My life" by the Beatles. He goes through transcribing the solo melody to the PLAY command, playing with volumes, tempos, and when octaves need to be changed): https://youtu.be/rOrVsTyyIfk Pedro Pena (Rocky Hill on YouTube) released a video of him assembling "Ralph" his duplication of a Coco 2B 26-3134B motherboard (this is the one Tandy sold late in the Coco 2's life that had the T1 VDG chip with true lowercase, inverse video and full border features added): https://youtu.be/u0PwnJCS3qc Getting into the holiday spirit, tclem1 on YouTube released a video that is almost an hour and a half of Christmas music (played on normal instruments) but with the kaleidoscope from the Coco's Audio Spectrum Analyzer cartridge: https://youtu.be/kFRSr6n4RTM 4) Don Barber mentioned in a few spots (Facebook Coco group shown here) about a USB serial pack to use with the Coco, which simulates the 6551 that the RS-232 pak used, so all the old software for the RS-232 pak still works. He released it as open source, so you can download it as well. As has been mentioned in the comments, it works with such classics as Sock Master's Twilight Terminal (the full color ANSI terminal program): https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160309647122641/ His project link on Github: https://github.com/barberd/cocousbserial Sheldon MacDonald posted a disk image to the Coco Facebook group that contains his Matrix demo that he wrote in assembly for the Coco 1/2/3 (he will be uploading sourcecode later): https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160307471882641/ Video: https://youtu.be/G_rnCg2eiao In a move that multiple retro computer podcasts are having to do, the Coco Crew has announced their switching to anchor.fm as their podcast host. Previously they were on cyberears, but cyberears is shutting down (this also affected the Retro Computing Roundtable podcast and many others): https://www.facebook.com/groups/1606095809633762/posts/3325181871058472/ Dave Veary (MrDave6309 on our Discord) has uploaded some tutorial videos for using EDTASM+ to his YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@MrDave6309/videos MC-10 ----- Jim Gerrie posted the Full program demo that we showed some of last week - the full "Decouvrez Alice" tutorial/demo. Almost 22 minutes long: https://youtu.be/xeAqAwQwxqY Jim also posted a link to a lengthy blog post that was released on October 31, on refurbishing an Alice 90 - from the website Quantum Bits. This was written by Fred Bellaiche, and has extensive pictures of the insides, keyboard assembly, etc. as he cleaned it up: https://www.quantum-bits.org/?p=4494 Dragon 32/64 ------------ Julian Brown released some pictures of his quick and dirty ROM replacement - which can handle 2 ROM's on a single chip, and includes jumpers to switch between them: https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3325804464345866/ He posted an update to the ROM adaptor as well, testing it on the Dragon Mk 2 boards (with pictures): https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3328154727444173/ Great news! John Whitworth has announced that DragonPlus Electronics is open for business again: https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3326267470966232/ Tim Gilberts has uploaded the information sheets for the Premier Dragon Disk Operating System (by Premier Publications) sold back in the day for the Dragon 32. This was a more advanced DOS than Disk Extended BASIC, including a wildcard FIND command for both sequential and random access files, a CONFIG command that allows one to change the step rate, sectors per track, number of tracks, number of heads, etc. for your drives, and more: Sheet 1 link (this is the price list for the controller as well as different combinations of drives): https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3326170380975941/ (use local "premier1".jpg to show) Sheet 2 link (command list): https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3326170534309259/ (use local "premier2.jpg" to show) Game On news (all Coco related platforms): ========================================== The latest episode of The Coco Show has been released, covering the early Coco 3 game release by Diecom, Grand Prix Challenge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=036tf2XEU5I Chris Poacher posted on his "Microdeal - The 8 bit years" Facebook page his newly aquired original tape and instructions for the Dragon 32 version of Syzygy (sold by Spectral Associates in the U.S.)... but this version has a bonus - the Hints sheet (normally sold separately via mail order from Microdeal themsleves) is included with this one. As Chris mentions, the cheat sheet itself has to be "solved" to get the clues - you don't just read them: https://www.facebook.com/groups/204334613785733/posts/1124041605148358/ Paul Shoemaker posted a video to the Coco Facebook group showing a game that he is fancying up from it's original Creative Computing magazine release, called "Camel". He shows a cool camel walking animation in this first experiment: https://www.facebook.com/100012520339402/videos/596384225619966?idorvanity=2359462640 He did a follow up yesterday with further animations: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160313974632641/ He also posted a quick video for his (he promises final!) version of Ghost Rush - Christmas Edition": https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160306198557641/ Jim Gerrie has released a Race Demo game which was also part of the "Decrouvrez Alice" demo/tutorial we showed last week for the Alice, which Jim translated to English and the MC-10. It's a 4K racing game, and Jim upgraded it a bit with better key controls an score keeping: https://youtu.be/xLaQsbDUiH4m Pere Serrat & Kees von Oss have released the next AGD enhanced for the SuperSprite FM+ board games pack out (#6) that has the following 4 games: Dirty Dozer Forward to the Past MAgic Able The Hair-raising Adventures of Mr Hair http://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11055 Erico Patricio Monteiro has been trying a cross platform isomorphic BASIC called "ugBasic", that compiles to many different 8 bit systems. As a test, he did a quick hack to his semigraphics fight game and upload it for the Dragon 64 to the Dragon group on Facebook. He plans on more extensive testing of this new cross platform BASIC in December: https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3326864814239831/ Tim and AJ released their next My Drunk Sibling game play video - this time playing Steve Bjork's Coco 1/2 version of One on One Basketball, sold by Tandy from Electronic Arts: https://youtu.be/kQAUJ5tigJA