The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 297, January 21, 2023 =============================================================== Collected by L. Curtis Boyle Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform) ------------------------------- 1) TRS-80 Retro Programing put up a video of game he is developing using the PCOPY technique he talked about in his previous video, which he is calling Ghost Saga. He know has a player character that is animated and can be moved around with the joystick: https://youtu.be/RUIBuwAJQ8k He then expanded on that, switching to a PMODE 1 screen (to get 4 colors), and discovers some of quirks of fast GET/PUT: https://youtu.be/Slr-OcrX_8k 2) Todd Wallace put up a video on the Coco group on Facebook showing his start to an Apple II+/6502 emulator that runs on a Coco 3 with a 6309 and at least 512K of RAM. 40 column text mode and few other things are working now. He will have a github with source code for it as well (broken at the time of this writing): https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160421482842641/ 3) Allen Huffman did a quick five minute video, that he describes as "Sometimes you just want to do some BASIC programming. I tried to remember the "string art" program I played with 40 years ago...", where he basically live programs some PMODE 4 line art demos: https://youtu.be/l8kgyohGCBQ 4) Michael Furman has been rather busy lately, but he posted an update VLOG on pyDrivewire, in particular the fixes needed for the weather app in EOU 1.0.0 to work properly. A quick summary is that he is in testing for the new version, and hopes to have it out in about a week: https://youtu.be/jWPPXTVgOjQ 5) Share Squid (who is also a member of our Discord) posted his latest Vectrex video on his channel on YouTube. As part of the video, he compares how lines are drawn between the Vectrex (vector based) vs. the Coco (raster based). Of course, the Vectrex and the Coco shared something critical: the 6809 CPU: https://youtu.be/N76Ey9vyDok 6) James Diffendaffer posted a quick port of a GW BASIC running cat animation for the Coco 1/2, including the listing: https://jdiffendaffer.blogspot.com/2023/01/blog-post.html 7) "This Got Made" on YouTube covers the DC Comics / Radio Shack crossover comic, with the Coco 1, the TRS-80 Whiz kids, Superman and Wonder Woman vs. Lex Luthor: https://youtu.be/YirJOj2rPuI 8) La Coco Strangiato on YouTube posted a 10 minute "in depth" look at his Color Computer 3P (portable) modifications (I like the fact he chose a MIDI version of Canadian band Rush's "La Villa Strangiato" song as the theme, and also the basis of the channel name): https://youtu.be/Zc0JbHvzOGk 9) Matt Perkins posted a screenshot of what his custom settings look like for cool-retro-term on his Mac (also works on Linux/BSD). Aside from fitting more text on the screen, it should look familiar...: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160426914692641/ 10) Brenda Make posted in the NitrOS9 Facebook group some pictures of her starting of the Coco X case top (This is "Coco 5" style project): https://www.facebook.com/groups/1929079184021683/posts/3319194838343437/ MC-10 ----- 1) Following the cat animation video from James Diffendaffer we mentioned previously, Jim Gerrie made a version for the MC-10 as well, in glorious SG4: https://youtu.be/efQTa0rpWVo Jim also released a video showing a simple draw program for the MC-10 (ported from the ZX81): https://youtu.be/Aj6hamFaJhk 2) Jamie's Hack Shack on YouTube made a video about using MP3 files through the cassette port on the MC-10. He even did JanuTandy / Tanduary hash tags... at this rate, I expect that every month of the year will eventually be tied to Tandy computers. He also goes through which bit rates work and don't work for MP'3 loading files: https://youtu.be/YY_DdjPTcM0 3) Simon Jonassen uploaded a video to the MC-10 Facebook group a 2 voice song that only takes 2.7K (if I understand right) and fits even on a 4K RAM MC-10: https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/5709401479186627/ Dragon 32/64 ------------ 1) John Whitworth laments that a bunch of prototype PCB's showed up at his house on Thursday (including the new RGB board he is working on)... but he is still getting treatment and isn't at home to work on them: https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3375841969342115/ 2) Tony Jewell has committed to making a Dragon related post every day this year, and had a really cool one this week, talking about two "future" Dragon computers that never saw the light of day, and were not the Dragon Beta or Professional. Both were mentioned in 1983 issues of Dragon User magazine. The first one is a higher end Dragon (to compete with the BBC Micro). While it sports some features known to exist in the Dragon Beta (including dual 6809's) it also mentions it only being 400 pounds (way cheaper than the Beta would have been), having an improved BASIC, higher quality graphics and look different than the Dragon 32. It also mentions a second machine aimed to compete with the IBM PC, for around 2000 pounds, which was going to run 68000 AND 8086 software individually or both together: https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3372542429672069/ 3) Julian Brown has a further update on his Dragon 32 motherboard duplication project - he thinks he has all the bugs worked out, and has ordered 5 boards to test with: https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3371955489730763/ Game On news (all Coco related platforms): ========================================== 1) Chronologically Gaming has gotten a couple of more Coco games up during his 5 times a week show, all from early in the Coco's time (1981): Pac-Tac (Computerware): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Un0sqC8D0f8&t=2554s Starbase Attack (Illustrated Memory Banks): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmEbwasyZic&t=1999s Also, just yesterday he covered Polaris: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1713672223?t=00h05m54s 2) Nick Marentes has updated his website, to make ordering his commercial games a lot easier (And all in one place): https://nickmarentes.com/ 3) Also, if you have purchased his Jumping Joey game, there is a bug that was found that caused the game to freeze if you managed to make it to the 6th level. He shows the patch at the bottom of the Jumping Joey page - you just have to type in 1 short line in the BASIC loading program that Joey comes with to fix it: https://nickmarentes.com/ProjectArchive/jumpingjoey.html 4) The Amigos live taping of The Coco Show (featuring Cocoban - and a live interview with it's author, Paul Thayer) was last night (it will also be on YouTube shortly): https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1713389033?t=01h40m00s