[Coco] The Coco Nation Game On News stories for Episode 301 and 302, February 18 and 25, 2023

Tue Feb 28 13:43:09 EST 2023

Tons of great information here, as always, really surprised to not see any
reactions to this list.

Things like "Wow, I can't believe there is this much activity in the
community", or "Thank you for distilling this digest and sharing it with
us", but, as always, you're doing a great job getting the information out,
thank you for your service.

On Sun, Feb 26, 2023 at 7:09 PM Robert "Exile In Paradise" Murphey via Coco
<coco at maltedmedia.com> wrote:

> The Coco Nation Game On News stories for Episode 301, February 18, 2023
> ===============================================================
> Collected by L. Curtis Boyle
>
> 1) Jim Gerrie ported a type-in BASIC program originally by Esteban V.
> Aguilar
> Jr, that was published in Compute! magazine's June 1983 issue called
> "Hawkmen
> of Dindrin", to the MC-10:
>   https://youtu.be/zxZ4BePv13M
>
> He also ported "Gin Rummy" originally by Manhattan Software in 1980 for the
> TRS-80 Model 1/3:
>   https://youtu.be/eXdv0RRz7S4
>
> 2) Erico put up a video showing his work so far to enter the BASIC 10 liner
> contest, a game called "It Came from The West". It explains the purpose of
> the
> game, the screen layout and some sample play:
>   https://youtu.be/7uWoeCjNHLM
>
> 3) Chronologically Gaming covered some more early Coco games this past
> week:
> 4 in a row: Color Cubes, Color Invaders (Computerware), Color Space
> Invaders
> (later Cosmic Invaders) (Spectral), Color Space Traders:
>   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCgjfbm8SpE&t=1158s
>
> Conflict (the 2nd game for the Coco by Soft Sector Marketing, after
> Animated
> Hangman)
>   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUlKQCYL3DM&t=489s
>
> The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 302, February 25, 2023
> ===============================================================
> Collected by L. Curtis Boyle
>
> Two weeks of news, so buckle up... it's gonna be a *long* one!
>
> Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)
> -------------------------------
> 1) Pierre Sarrazin has released version 0.1.7) of BGraph, the C graphics
> library for his CMOC the offers functions similar to BASIC's LINE, DRAW,
> PAINT
> and CIRCLE commands (this doesn't call the BASIC routines, and BASIC is not
> required). The library also now supports clipping lines on a rectangle
> using
> the Cohen-Sutherland algorithm, and supports Catmull-Rom splines. You can
> download it from Pierre's CMOC site:
>   http://perso.b2b2c.ca/~sarrazip/dev/cmoc.html#bgraph
>
> 2) Henry Reitveld put a video up on his YouTube channel showing him using
> his
> new MIDI Maestro (from Retro Innovations) with his Casio keyboard, using
> the
> Coco 1/2 MIDI program Lyra:
>   https://youtu.be/nkVNtCnkKdM
>
> 3) TRS-80 Retro Programing posted a video about a problem he hit using
> PCOPY:
>   https://youtu.be/xGNRlFD-mgU
>
> He posted a followup video on Ghost Saga as well:
>   https://youtu.be/T_UsGfIOg3k
>
> And also working on a program to convert Base 10 to Base 5, part 1. Turns
> out
> to be a more difficult than he originally expected:
>   https://youtu.be/PESk7ZLJbkg
>
> He also showed the speed difference when changing his Tales of Suburbia to
> use
> PCOPY vs. the original non-byte aligned GET/PUT. It is both noticeably
> faster
> and also much smoother animation wise:
>   https://youtu.be/r5MRbIBhRbw
>
> 4) Allen Huffman posted a blog post about how the FILES command affects
> free
> memory in Disk Extended Color BASIC:
>
>
> https://subethasoftware.com/2023/02/14/coco-disk-basic-files-command-and-memory/
>
> He also posted on the extra bit flag options available on the T1 VDG chip
> for
> the Coco 2 - color set is on both VDG's, but true lowercase, inverse video
> and
> full border are only on the T1 VDG (and the Coco 3's GIME chip)):
>
>
> https://subethasoftware.com/2023/02/15/6847t1-test-program-for-late-model-coco-2s/
>
> He also did one on using the CIRCLE command to do spirals rather than
> concentric circles:
>
>
> https://subethasoftware.com/2023/02/15/high-resolution-spiraling-in-extended-basic/
>
> And one for users of XRoar 1.3.1 or later - how to configure the Coco 3
> keys
> (Alt, Ctrl, F1, F2), especially on the Mac OSX version:
>
>
> https://subethasoftware.com/2023/02/18/xroar-emulator-ctrl-alt-f1-f2-keyboard-config-for-coco-3/
>
> The aid people who want to fiddle with these settings, he has also set up a
> cocopedia page with configuration file examples that you can cut & paste,
> or
> modify for the settings you want:
>   https://www.cocopedia.com/wiki/index.php/Xroar.conf
>
> He also did a blog post about the DLOAD command and what it actually does
> on
> the Coco 3 (and the POKE/EXEC equivalent):
>   https://subethasoftware.com/2023/02/21/poke-1130exec-40999-and-dload/
>
> He also posted on the Coco Facebook group that he found some disks with
> buffer
> saves from his calling the Hayes BBS (which had a Coco section). He is
> working
> on getting them gathered up to post for the public in the future:
>   https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160487401037641/
>
> 5) Glen Hewlett put up a blog post covering some of the differences (and
> how to
> adjust for them) between the 6502 and 6809 if you are transcoding:
>
>
> https://nowhereman999.wordpress.com/2023/02/15/mos-6502-to-motorola-6809-assembly-language-transcoding/
>
> 6) Carl England gave an update of getting a new utility done to copy copy-
> protected floppies to an SDC (and that also work), with some help from the
> CocoSDC's creator, Darren Atkinson:
>   https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160480525687641/
>
> 7) Terry Trapp returns with a Coco video showing a "broken" Coco 1 he
> acquired
> at Goodwill:
>   https://youtu.be/5iU1nB2GoD8
>
> 8) John Zizolfo on Facebook (who posted the template for making double
> sided
> disks last week) has uploaded 3 label layouts for floppies as well that
> you can
> print out:
>   https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160483110462641/
>
> 9) Ron Klein posted that XRoar 1.3.1 is now available on the Coco Pi:
>   https://coco-pi.com/new-xroar-1-3-1-package-available-for-coco-pi/
>
> And MAME 0.252:
>   https://coco-pi.com/new-mame-0-252-package-available-for-coco-pi/
>
> 10) Congrats to both the Coco Crew and The Coco Show for getting in the
> top 10%
> of the "Listen" score according to Listen Notes:
>
>
> https://www.listennotes.com/search/?q=coco&sort_by_date=0&scope=podcast&offset=10&language=Any%20language&len_min=0&ecount_min=0
>
> 11) YARC (Yet Another Retro Channel) on YouTube did a re-cap and composite
> mod
> with universal video driver video:
>   https://youtu.be/Yy_WHm6sDuA
>
> 12) Canadian Retro Things (our very own Ken Waters!) released the 3rd
> video in
> his series about getting a new Coco... now what do you do? This episode
> covers
> the Coco 3 specifically (he covered this last week, but I wanted to give
> it a
> quick mention this week as well):
>   https://youtu.be/9G8qgrvPsQc
>
> 13) Sheldon MacDonald posted that he has updated his SegaCoco IDE to
> version
> 0.12 (this is a an IDE / assembler he has been working on that will
> generate
> code and run it in emulators for both a Coco and the Sega Genesis). This
> update
> even includes a demo program for the Genesis called "chicken dance":
>   https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160498458207641/
>
> 14) Richard Kelly did a cool demo in semigraphics called the "Ants on
> Bridge"
> demo. This features moving the "ants" across bridges that is flicker free
> and
> the ants go under or over bridges. All in BASIC with no ML suborutines at
> all,
> and it can be downloaded from the Coco Facebook group:
>   https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160489832037641/
>
>
> MC-10
> -----
> 1) Jim Gerrie found an MC-10 video has been released for the "In it's own
> Words" video series (may want to mute the sound):
>   https://youtu.be/EcoKaclt1sU
>
> 2) Verne's Misadventures on YouTube release part 2 of his MC-10 video:
> Setting
> up & learning to use the MCX32-SD:
>   https://youtu.be/TxTd4P7O3Gc
>
> Dragon 32/64
> ------------
> 1) John Whitworth posted an update about his RGB boards, now that he is
> out of
> the hospital: Prototype boards sent off to the PCB assembly company:
>   https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3396823717243940/
>
> He also has EPROM converters:
>   https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3396178373975141/
>
> He also put up a video on YouTube showing his Dragon Beta/128 fixed up, and
> runs the BASIC09 graphics demo that uses the enhanced graphics and text in
> a
> 640x540 multicolor mode:
>   https://youtu.be/fl_m6Mn0m_Q
>
> 2) The Clueless Engineer released a 3 part video series about the Dragon
> 32 on
> YouTube:
> Part 1:
>   https://youtu.be/72LvEHGdzIQ
>
> Part 2:
>   https://youtu.be/1_USfg3G3Tw
>
> Part 3:
>   https://youtu.be/o0xAoE05nHc
>
> 3) 8-Bit Shack released a video on his YouTube channel showing how to
> build a
> composite Video lead for his Dragon 32 "loft find":
>   https://youtu.be/PmbEFJPBqeU
>
> 4) ToBach on YouTube posted a short video of his entry for the Lovebyte 256
> byte oldskool intro combo, which place 16th out of 22. It's a low res color
> swirling effect:
>   https://youtu.be/21TCSpsS1gs
>
> 5) Captain Commodore on YouTube released a video showing how to build and
> install a Dragon 32 Power Supply Unit (PSU) from Dragonplus Electronics:
>   https://youtu.be/-2Tvoa_Jses
>
> 6) Phil Harvey-Smith posted on the Dragon Facebook group about the hardware
> modification that he did to get Paul Shoemaker's Ghost Rush to work on a
> Dragon
> 32 that has 16 chips to get 32K (I assume that this is similar in
> principal to
> a stacked 16K RAM upgrade on a Coco - the VDG /SAM could not normally use
> the
> upper 16K of RAM for video):
>   https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3403534279906217/
>
>
>
> Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
> ==========================================
> 1) Jim Gerrie ported a 1980 Gin Rummy 2.5 program originally written by S.
> Silverman for the TRS-80 Model I/III, and released both a video and a blog
> post
> about it:
> Video:
>   https://youtu.be/kqffNZim5vY
>
> Blogpost:
>   http://jimgerrie.blogspot.com/2023/02/gin-rummy-by-s-silverman-1980.html
>
> 2) As promised, Sheldon MacDonald has released the source code to his
> Treasure
> Island Defense (6 bit DAC sound version). It is included with his IDE
> project
> (link at top):
>   https://www.softmotion3d.ca/index.php?topic=6.0
>
> 3) Tim & AJ released episode 71 of Sibling Rivalry - this time playing
> Diecom's
> Coco 3 game, Gantelet II. This was one my favorites, and the only Coco
> game I
> know of that could have 4 simultaneous players.
>   https://youtu.be/fToF_-4qxDU
>
> 4) Chronologically gaming took a quick look at some real old Spectral
> Associates games for the Coco from 1981 - both written in BASIC - including
> Battlefleet (Battleship with some twists) and Artillery Duel - Artillery in
> real time against the computer. The latter only took 4K RAM.
>   https://youtu.be/6SOCuoGTXlQ
>
> Also he went over Tandy's Crosswords cartridge game:
>   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8NcoLqUC9g&t=3545s
>
> 5) A new channel on YouTube (in Portuguese) is making videos of Dragon
> games in
> quick 30-40 second clips. For some reason, many are zoomed in so that you
> can't
> see the whole screen. He seems to be going in roughly alphabetical order -
> currently on the D's as of Friday. This includes some that I haven't seen
> before:
>   https://www.youtube.com/@user-zr2tz2ig2e/videos
>
> 6) Happy Coding (a regular streaming partner with the Amigos who works on
> the
> Spectrum) posted a video to YouTube showing the current status of Pere
> Serrat's
> porting Happy's Asteroids RX Spectrum game to the Dragon 32:
>   https://youtu.be/97mBx2nINY0
>
>
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>
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>
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> --
> Robert "Exile In Paradise" Murphey <exile at weylan-yutani.com>
> Weylan-Yutani Corporation
>
>
> --
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>