Author: Allen Huffman

Updates: 2020-11-03 – Updated color from “pink” to “amber” per MiaM in the comments. What is the background color? Red? Maroon? I’m a guy, so I only see one shade of white, but going in to the paint store proves I am wrong. Recently, Robin from 8-Bit Show and Tell posted some YouTube videos covering easter eggs in various Radio…

Just announced at today’s Virtual CoCoFest is a new web-based version of the 1982 classic, Dungeons of Daggorath: http://daggorath.online/index.html It is a faithful recreation of the original TRS-80 Color Computer version, with some additions (including cheat modes). It even supports the ZLOAD and ZSAVE commands to save and restore the current game state to the browser. The project is open…

Last month, the Glenside Color Computer Club announced it would be rescheduling this year’s Chicago CoCoFEST! due to the Coronavirus/Covic-19 pandemic. This was unfortunate, because 2020 marks the 40th anniversary of the Radio Shack TRS-80 Color Computer, and the 29th annual “Last” Chicago CoCoFEST! event. As of this posting, no new date has been announced, but discussions have been had…

Has it really been forty years since Pac-Man first showed up? My, how time flies when you’re having fun (at the arcade). In honor of this milestone, another icon of the arcade era has returned. In 1981, during the height of the video arcade revolution, Bucker & Garcia released the now-iconic single Pac-Man Fever. The song was followed by a…

YouTube decided to show me a video by 8-Bit Show And Tell. It is a BASIC driving game called “10 PRINT RACER” for the Commodore PET. For those that don’t know, “10 PRINT” is a one line Commodore BASIC program that generates a maze by randomly printing slash and backslash PETASCII characters. 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10 There is…

Over in the Color Computer group on Facebook, there was a post by member Phill Harvey-Smith discussing CoCo ROMs and the ROMs of the CoCo clones. Another member, Cathe Cita, responded and provided a link to this cool article about the Microsoft BASIC ROM easter eggs: The Egg that Was – CLS I was already aware of the CoCo’s “clear screen” easter egg, likely…

Welcome to part 4 of a multi-part series on simple things you can do to speed up Microsoft BASIC on the Radio Shack Color Computer. These tips may be applicable to other systems with Microsoft (or other) BASICs. See also: Introduction, part 1 , part 2 and part 3. Part 4 – GOTO and GOSUB Unless you are writing a program that…

Welcome to part 3 of a multi-part series on simple things you can do to speed up Microsoft BASIC on the Radio Shack Color Computer. These tips may be applicable to other systems with Microsoft (or other) BASICs. See also: Introduction, part 1 and part 2. Part 3 – Variables Previously, we took a look at FOR/NEXT and numbers, and…

Updates: 2018-01-25 – fixed a typo in the &O17 octal reference. Thanks, Dennis! Welcome to part 2 of a multi-part series on simple things you can do to speed up Microsoft BASIC on the Radio Shack Color Computer. These tips may be applicable to other systems with Microsoft (or other) BASICs. See also: Introduction and Part 1. Part 2 – FOR/NEXT…

Welcome to part 1 of a multi-part series on simple things you can do to speed up Microsoft BASIC on the Radio Shack Color Computer. These tips may be applicable to other systems with Microsoft (or other) BASICs. See also: Introduction Part 1 – Spaces, Lines and Comments I mentioned in my rambling introduction that we would start our with…