TRS-80 MC-10

[Charlie_]

There was some talk of the TRS-80 MC-10 here lately. It got me to dig mine out and play with it. I "grew up" with the MC-10 and a few years ago got very much into it again. Wrote some silly games. Haven't played with it much in a long time though.

 

Anyone interested should check out the Yahoo groups, TRS80MC10GROUP. That is where users communicate. Great group of people who love this little computer. Jim Gerrie, who does lots of basic programming on the MC-10 has many programs uploaded there. I'm currently enjoying a game he did called "Dungeon Crawl". It is fantastic.

 

I also see Space Assault has been converted from the coco to the MC-10. This is fantastic as very few games use the higher res modes of the mc-10.

You can grab it from the Yahoo group, but I have also uploaded it to my mc-10 page. I'll be updating the page again, as I find more things I enjoy with the little computer.

 

Check it out: http://chazbeenhad.tripod.com

 

[JamesD]

Jim's been a busy man. Dungeon Crawl is an excellent game.

 

The port of Space Assault is excellent.

Frankly, the MC-10 version of Pac-Man is better than any of the CoCo 1/2 versions I've played.

[davidbrit2]

I saw one of these at MGC this year, and it was running both Pac-Man and Dungeon Crawl. Would love to pick one up. Will MC-10 games run on a CoCo 2, or are they fundamentally different?

[carlsson]

As far as I know, the MC-10 and CoCo are different creatures, sharing a few graphic modes. For instance they have different CPU's, the MC-10 has a 6803 while the CoCo series has 6809. Possibly simple BASIC programs would be portable, but then again simple BASIC programs tend to be portable among most home computers.

[JamesD]

The 6803 and 6809 are not binary compatible and they are only partially source code compatible as the 6809 supports many more instructions and addressing modes.

 

MC-10 BASIC is very similar to Non-Extended COLOR BASIC on the CoCo but I seem to remember the MC-10 having the ability to save or load arrays or something like that. Other differences would be with POKE addresses for the screen and hardware.

A few of the BASIC games for the MC-10 use machine code to speed some things up and that obviously wouldn't be compatible.

[Mr SQL]

Jim's been a busy man. Dungeon Crawl is an excellent game.

 

The port of Space Assault is excellent.

Frankly, the MC-10 version of Pac-Man is better than any of the CoCo 1/2 versions I've played.

That Pac-man looks awesome, like the Fairchild homebrew a bit

 

Does it play even better than Ms Maze James? That was an awesome port I really liked BITD!

 

The MC-10 shares the same 6847 VDG and SAM as the CoCo so I'm guessing the conversion of Space Assaunt/Colour invaders had minimal changes. Maybe really few if the original CoCo programmer was comming from a 6800 background and not flexing the 6809

[BassGuitari]

I saw one of these at MGC this year, and it was running both Pac-Man and Dungeon Crawl. Would love to pick one up. Will MC-10 games run on a CoCo 2, or are they fundamentally different?

That would be mine. Indeed, I ran a number of different games on it over the weekend, including Pac-Man and Dungeon Crawl. (But the biggest hit on the MC-10 was, predictably, Flappy Bird.)

 

Pac-Man blew my mind when I first saw it. All I'd seen up to that point were some clunky early BASIC games. I agree that it's better than any Pac-Clone on the Color Computer; it even has intermissions. Remappable keys would have been nice, though. The key configuration makes it hard to play.

 

I recently found out about Space Assault by pure accident. I expected more of an "interpretation" of it (like Gerrie's Lode Runner or Berzerk), but when I saw it was a M/L game, I got really excited. I fired it up in VMC-10 and lo and behold, it's a near carbon copy of the Color Computer title. Mind = blown all over again. It may even be more playable than the CoCo version since it has to forgo the squirrelly Radio Shack joystick for the more stable keyboard. Space Assault will definitely make an appearance at the next MGC. And it makes me wonder (and hope) if we'll see more Color Computer ports in the future.

 

Some of my other favorite MC-10 games include Dungeon Crawl, Grail of The Gods, Tetris, Meteor, Trek III, Adventureland, Space Rescue, and Breakout (from Microgames tape).

 

For the last week I've been playing the heck out of Adventureland and Star Trek III, as well as Space Assault.

Edited July 28, 2014 by BassGuitari

[JamesD]

That Pac-man looks awesome, like the Fairchild homebrew a bit

 

Does it play even better than Ms Maze James? That was an awesome port I really liked BITD!

...

MC-10 Pac-Man uses logic for the ghosts that follows the arcade better so it feels more like the arcade.

[carlsson]

IIRC, Space Assault is a direct conversion of the CoCo ML game by Darren, not a BASIC version by Jim. Thus carbon copy is the right term to use. On the mailing list, it has been discussed which other CoCo games that fit the criteria of memory and graphics mode would be possible to convert the machine code in the same manner, there might be others in the future.

[John_L]

Yep, the MC-10 is most certainly a "cousin" to the CoCo line. The device can do full "PMODE 4" graphics as long as you have the memory, the VDG register at $FF22 is located at $BFFF on the MC-10, other than that, the operation of the MC6847 VDG is identical to the coco as far as modes go, I'd assume even all the semi graphics are there as well, but I've not looked. The BASIC essentially covers the "Level I" BASIC in the CoCo (and others). No high res commands, no music functions, etc. Although the processors are not byte compatible, one could assume the '09 shares some DNA with the 6803. Luckily, there's an active community of users and developers making stuff for it, also, some guy out there has a working board that enables floppy usage, last I checked he was working on the dos extensions. Hopefully he's basing it on RSDOS. Would be cool to have at least a floppy drive for storage, although not sure why he wasn't going the flash memory route. Anyway, better than just cassette.

 

BTW, that was me that posted recently about the MC-10, I just bought one, but need a power adapter for it, it's sitting for now.

[JamesD]

Yep, the MC-10 is most certainly a "cousin" to the CoCo line. The device can do full "PMODE 4" graphics as long as you have the memory, the VDG register at $FF22 is located at $BFFF on the MC-10, other than that, the operation of the MC6847 VDG is identical to the coco as far as modes go, I'd assume even all the semi graphics are there as well, but I've not looked. The BASIC essentially covers the "Level I" BASIC in the CoCo

...

Actually, adding the external RAM expansion does not add PMODE 3 & 4 (CG6 & RG6) graphics modes.

The 6847 is only attached to internal RAM and one address line isn't even connected.

This means the 6847 can only address 4K rather than the 6K (hence the 6 in CG6 and RG6) modes.

You can hack the machine to add more RAM internally for a total of 8K and attach the additional address line but it does require some surgery.

The hack was posted in a magazine back in the day.

 

Not all semi-graphics modes from the CoCo are available since several depend on the SAM chip and the MC-10 doesn't have one.

All 6847 only modes are supported though if I remember right. I've only played with the CG and RG modes for what I've written for it.