[Index]
The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 317, June 17, 2023
===================================================================
Collected by L. Curtis Boyle
This week we have Dave, the man behind the new YouTube channel Coco Town,
on for an interview!
June 23, Ken and I will hopefully be reporting live from BoatFest while
Mark Overholser hosts the news, and Sloopy hosts the Game On Challenge.
August 12 we have Matt Harper on (developer of Wizard's Den sold by Tom
Mix Software).
August 19 we have a special treat - the original programmer of The Contras
for Sundog Systems, Doug Masten - and Glen Dahlgren who ran Sundog (and
who has been on the show several times before, including during our Dave
Dies interview) will be on to help co-interview Doug about one of the most
ambitious Coco 3 games done at that time (1991-1993)
Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)
-------------------------------
First, an reminder on behalf of Frank @ RetroRewind: Stock replenishment will
be slower for a month or two due to Frank recovering from wrist/hand surgery.
1) TRS-80 Retro Programing posted a Tales of Suburbia update, which adds
some new game elements: using a flashlight, and climbing a ladder (and
some bounds checking relate to this which is causing him problems) .
https://youtu.be/LuCRIIhX8io
He did a followup video solving his ladder problem in his upcoming game
"Tales of Suburbia", and goes into the now working code in detail:
https://youtu.be/tYpBugFGMd8
He did a second update yesterday with more graphics changes, adding stuff
into the attic, and some talk on BBSing and "other" computers:
https://youtu.be/f1w76emdmwY
And a couple of days ago he did a retrospective on one of his first programs
for the channel:
https://youtu.be/VISBRiX-94E
2) Michael Furman found an issue with MAME in trying to run Flex (as he
did earlier with XRoar). He submitted the proposed fix to the MAME devs,
and it was accepted. So for any of you that had issues getting Mikey's
FLEX disk images working with MAME - an upcoming update to MAME will fix it:
https://github.com/mamedev/mame/pull/11329
He also released episode 6 of his FLEX blog. This episode talks about both
his MAME updates (going into great technical detail on the original bug)
& a brief intro to Compusense FLEX on a Dragon 64:
https://youtu.be/reGGEcSioIc
3) Ron Klein has some more updates for the Coco Pi:
FHL Flex 5.0.4 (thanks to Michael Furman) is now available, since Michael
both fixed the Flex disk images AND MAME to handle them properly:
https://coco-pi.com/general-availability-of-fhl-color-flex-5-04-for-coco-pi/
He also has a blog post update on his converting the Coco Pi over to 64
bit (from it's current 32 bit), and he *is* going to attempt on getting
it working on the Pi3 (not just the Pi4 and Pi400):
https://coco-pi.com/coco-pi-64bit-project-update-2023-06-12/
He also announced that both the newest XRoar 1.4.235 WIP and ugBASIC 1.14
is available for download on the Pi:
https://coco-pi.com/new-xroar-1-4-235-wip-and-ugbasic-1-14-packages-available-for-coco-pi/
4) Our very own Ken of Canadian Retro Things posted a follow up video for
his installing a composite video mod (originally designed by Mark Data
Products), where he puts it in the case, and tries to fix the yellow band
he got on the left side of the screen:
https://youtu.be/jIRtdnAN2RU
5) Our guest today, Dave of Coco Town, released a video on looking how
BASIC storage works internally, and also how to program the start address
of the 32x16 text screen so that you get a "window" into looking at RAM
(and modifying BASIC by copying the ROM to RAM and then modifying the code
in RAM):
https://youtu.be/EuVOrydl4xo
He also released one about String conversion and printing using ROM routines
(both official and unofficial)... and a teaser that a future video will
be using what was learned here:
https://youtu.be/Uus19euCKP0
6) La Coco Strangiato (Bob) put up a video on diagnosing and fixing the
mylar for a Coco keyboard using conductive paint:
https://youtu.be/9oIQDRhOKYE
7) YARC - Yet Another Retro Channel (Todd Horch) did a run through of his
original Coco 3 that he had as a kid, going through the video output options,
the CocoSDC, and a few games. NOTE: The beginning part is him explaining
some issues he hit with his C-64 for the video he was originally planninghe:
https://youtu.be/-K30tEl7Jjk
8) Adrian's Digital Basement II on YouTube did a mail call, where he got
a low serial number Coco 1 and 1983 Radio Shack Computer Catalog (which
he goes through and is amazed at how expensive things were back then),
and a Timex Sinclair:
https://youtu.be/yBfHbGiTyYs
9) Lawrence Systems on YouTube did a live stream VLOG back on June 8 where
he got nostalgic and talked about his first computers - a Coco 2 and some
other Coco related ones (about halfway through the stream). He even finds
Allen Huffman's site and a post about OS-9 Level 1:
https://www.youtube.com/live/I0U6tP_KpMs?feature=share&t=3289
MC-10
-----
1) David Mitchell has taken the Forest Fire simulation he released a few
weeks ago for the MC-10, and compiled it with Greg Dionne's MC-10 BASIC
compiler so that it runs much faster (so now version 0.2):
https://youtu.be/NUjSaRHjhZE
2) Jim Gerrie released a One line BASIC Bouncing ball demo, compressed and
converted from the Commodore-64 BASIC manual (YouTube channel "8-Bit Show
And Tell" compressed it to one line for the C-64, and then Jim converted
that to the MC-10):
https://youtu.be/wFOoouG2NCQ
Dragon 32/64
------------
1) David Mitchell uploaded his low-res conversion of the Snowflake graphics
demo originally by Dr. Tim Langdell in his book "35 Programs for the Dragon
32". This also meant that he could convert it run on the MC-10 as well.
Video:
https://youtu.be/O4gBPTZ0t1w
Github source code download:
https://github.com/daftspaniel/RetroCornerRedux/tree/main/Dragon/TypeIns/Snowflake
Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
==========================================
1) The YouTube version of some lame ass Canadian being a guest on
Chronologically Gaming (ok, it was me, returning the favor from when Jeff
was our guest), where I had a lot of fun reviewing games - mostly not on
the Coco!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICZHkhmBDis&pp=ygUOInRycy04MCIgY29sb3I%3D
2) ?SN ERROR on YouTube did a live stream play video of two different
Space Shuttle games from 1993 - the Dragon 32 version of Tom Mix's Space
Shuttle Simulator, and the Atari VCS version as well. He even shows the full
manual before playing each version (link is for actual loading/gameplay,
manual is earlier). It should be noted that this channel ("Ancient video
games played badly") just started on June 8, and the Space Shuttle video
is only their 3rd one (the other 2 being PacMan from the VCS and Video
Olympics/Pong Sports on the VCS):
https://www.youtube.com/live/LEswhXyayfE?feature=share&t=782
3) Paul Shoemaker posted a new video update to his ML Video Poker game
for the MC-10, now including sound and some game play. He says it should
be out by the end of the month:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/6184312125028891/
NOTE: If you have an MC-10 (or MC-10 emulator) and want to test it, Paul
has posted it for download in both the MC-10 group on Facebook, and on
the Coco Discord in the #mc-10 channel, with some brief directions.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/6192168657576571/
4) ?SN ERROR on YouTube did a long play of one of my favourite Coco games
of all time - Phantom Slayer:
https://www.youtube.com/live/2yPLdtxmSrU?feature=share