[Coco] The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 309, April 15, 2023

Sun Apr 16 11:56:55 EDT 2023

The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 309, April 15, 2023
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Collected by L. Curtis Boyle

Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)
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1) Eric Canales will make an early alpha version of 6dev09 available at
CocoFest, and has some details about it on his website. This is his cross
platform development system for the Coco that he showed us an early version
of a year or 2 ago, I think?:
  https://www.playpi.net

2) Tim Lindner has announced a change coming to MAME in how it handles
disk controllers and also disk ROM sets, enabling mix/matching ROM sets
combined with hardware sets, with details posted in the #mame channel in
the Coco Discord.

3) Richard Kelly posted a PDF to the Coco Facebook group doing an in-depth
look at how the code worked on the "Ants on a bridge" demo he released
about a month back. It also includes some cool tips for optimizing BASIC
programs as well as some pretty fiendish tricks:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160585838757641/

4) The Glenside Color Computer Club (hosts of CocoFest) have now added
group chat capability to their Facebook group:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/glensideccc/posts/10160766629766163/

5) Robson Franca has done another 4 voice Coco song with oscilliscope view -
Country Roads (which is the first 4 voice song on the Coco I ever heard back
in early 1982), and this one sounds pretty well dead on to what I remember:
  https://youtu.be/QHM2KA1-m4s

6) Tim Lindner posted an interesting side by side video of Dungeons
of Daggorath running on a Coco 2 and a Coco 3, and the subtle timing
differences between them (both running @ .895Mhz). Tim did mention in the
comments that the Coco 3 also had a 6309 in it, so it would be interesting
to know if the timing differences are due to the CPU, or the general Coco
3 design (or both):
  https://youtu.be/iu1rEklSyUk

7) Al's Geek Lab on YouTube posted video from the 3rd New Zealand Vintage
Computer Meetup from April 2, which feature a number of systems, including
a Coco 2 (and it's owner Matthew shows his Jumping Joey jewel case). The
outro credits also mention a Coco 3 being there, but it isn't shown running):
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHVQ2KDGyJw&t=1630s&ab_channel=Al%27sGeekLab

MC-10
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1) Brendan Donahe posted in the MC-10 group on Facebook that he is planning
to have some PiKey-10 adapters ready for sale at CocoFest. His daughter
is helping build them, and he is expecting them to sell for around $60.00
per installation kit. This allows the use of both a wired USB keyboard
and Atari joysticks to work on the MC-10:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/5968226289970810/

Dragon 32/64
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1) John Whitworth of Dragonplus Electronics posted an update to his
SuperRGB board, with him ordering some new boards with corrections and
all the prototyping/testing stuff removed (which I assumes means he pretty
well has it working properly now):
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3437631703163141/
He also posted that his lowercase daughterboards, which he had discontinued
since the ROM chips he was using quintupled in price, are back on again with
older 27256 EPROM's instead of Atmel 27C512. This cuts the cost back down,
although it only contains half of the character sets of the previous chip
(which is still several different ones). It also still gives true lowercase
and accented characters, supports inverse video, and user configurable
character switching.
Announcement in Dragon group on Facebook:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3436768959916082/
Order page for the Kit version:

https://www.dragonplus-electronics.co.uk/product/lower-case-text-upgrade-for-dragon-32-64-200-kit-version-2023/

2) Matt Kaye posted in the Dragon Facebook group that he now has Dragon
Disk Drive replacement stickers in stock and available:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3435324493393862/

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
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1) TRS-80 Retro Programming on YouTube did a full stage 1 walkthrough
video of his Extended BASIC Ghost Saga game (no commentary:
  https://youtu.be/WO25bhdSPxE

2) Jim Gerrie has been on a tear - after posting 4 games last Saturday
morning, he kept cranking them out:
"Citadelle: The Shield of Oran" originally by Pierre Faure in 1984 on
a Sanyo PHC-25. This is the first adventure in the Loriciels' Citadelle
text adventure series, and translated to english. It features some color
set changes and sound as well:
  https://youtu.be/CLB8MUAgewU
"Duke of Dragonfear" originally by Tim Hartnell in 1983 for the Dick Smith
VZ-200. This is an adventure game, but with single key responses based on
menus rather than having to type in verb/noun phrases:
  https://youtu.be/WXubYrQOhj8
"ABM" originally by A.E. Van Ververhoudt in 1981 for the TRS-80 Model 1/3
and is a Missile Command type game. It has some optimizations and color
added from the original. And since Jim is Canadian, it's all Canadian
cities being attacked (sorry Ken, but they are after Vancouver. I seem to
be save in Saskatoon):
  https://youtu.be/kQsDnzrG8BM
"Manticore", a text adventure game with a bit of RPG originally by Jon
Bradbury in 1980, originally for the PET:
  https://youtu.be/VhLWnh8WgXw

3) Jeff over at Chronologically Gaming finally completed 1981 this past
week with a fairly good number of Coco entries (my apologies for stretching
1981 by sending some last minute ones to him):
  https://youtu.be/ZeZZ16FQPC8
Vampire Castle (adventure) from Aardvark @ 18:30
Vegas Gamepak from Nelson Software Systems (later Softlaw with Colorquest
as their games division). Jeff purposely doesn't do longplays of gambling
games, but he does show a bit of Black Jack @ 37:18
And the final 1981 episode contains 4 Coco games in a row: Death Ship,
Gauntlet, Kosmic Kamizake and Space Intruders (1981 Adventure International
version, not Nick Marentes 1988 Coco 3 version):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xN2qpVFSv0Q&t=1869s&ab_channel=ChronologicallyGaming
(This may be time to show some video of the two 4K ML cassette games I
mentioned last week).

4) The only way is OLED display put up some more Dragon 32 longer play game
videos, this week including such classics as Back Track, Monsters, Fury,
Jet Boot Colin, The Sword and the Sorcerer and Buzzard Bait) (unfortunately
with a TV or Radio prominent in the sound, so if we play them, mute):
  https://www.youtube.com/@MaryWinstead32/videos

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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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-- 
Robert "Exile In Paradise" Murphey <exile at weylan-yutani.com>
Weylan-Yutani Corporation