nanochess

Just for the records, everything from MSX up to MSX2+ used only a single Z80 CPU. I'm wondering were Hitachi HD64180 was used. When MSX came up to the United States, the Colecovision already had the market, same graphics capabilities and MSX had the price too high, so it couldn't have been successful.

The Z80 machine code is higher level than 6502. Unless you have some macro capability in your 6502 assembler you're going to spend a lot of time repeating some small routines for 16-bit operations. In Z80 there are a lot more registers, instructions to move a block, search for a byte, output block to port, input port to block, adding/substraction 16 bits, adding/substraction without carry (in 6502 you've to clean Carry flag,) conditional returns/jumps/calls (saves a lot of code.) As said before the 6502 needed more help from peripherals, so there is the C64 where the VDP has pixel scrolling capability and the PSG could do FM style sound, everything without processor help, even the Atari had a lot of help with its associated chips. While the poor Z80 stuck with not so powerful graphics and sound, like the SG-1000, Colecovision and MSX, and the better were the Sega Master System, and MSX2 and MSX2+ (this one with FM sound) that came a little too late.

Indeed a great trouble. Many years ago I bought an offer of a hundred of used EPROMS and for some reason, half of them never could be erased properly, other quarter never could be programmed properly, so I ended with twenty or so functional EPROMS . It would have better to buy new EPROMS

Except when old appearance is required, like your Side Trak game that reused old Coleco cases to look like a classical release

You would be surprised, EPROM and PROM are still in great use all around the world for small appliances and industrial machines. These chips are more trustable than Flash chips for many applications.

In order to make a nice video there would be a need for a good script and somebody with a good voice. It could be interesting to do a documentary about development of Princess Quest or Zombie Near. I have backups per day of development so it could be showed how them were improving. I'll think about it.

In fact there are two books about Toledo Nanochess (my own chess program!!!,) one by Lambert Surhone and other by Jesse Russell. Both say "quality content provided by Wikipedia". What makes me to wonder because the Wikipedia entry for Toledo Nanochess barely fills a page for a book. These things should be prohibited because trigger people to think there is indeed a book about my chess program. Besides these pirates are earning dollars for each book (somewhere I've read one of these "editors" have 300,000 different books published based on Wikipedia articles) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDM_Publishing

I suspect you're right as Coleco was based in USA. Here at Mexico the metric system is the standard.

Pretty nice game! Congrats

My Zaxxon box measures 19x14x2.3 cm I hope this helps you.

I bought several Colecovision cartridges and everything was in great shape, also fast shipping

I've bought thirty Colecovision cartridges from him and I was absolutely delighted to see that them came fast, were packed carefully and were amazingly clean and looking as new. A+

It's pretty hard to learn programming because every person is different, but here are my suggestions: * Only one language at a time. The one that you feel most comfortable. * Start with very small games (Nim, Tic-Tac-Toe, Checkers) WITHOUT A.I. * Try to answer questions yourself (some people know this as: learn to think) * Don't leave until you get it working. * Dedicate a time everyday, same hour. * After mastering a step, put yourself new objectives. (slightly more complicated games) By the way, the "C programming language" is not good for beginners, it assumes that you know how to program, but it is necessary if you want to learn C. Go to your local library and check for the book with the tone that you most understand. In 80's and 90's magazines published programs that served as a reference to learn, but now the Internet is the resource, just search for small programs and try to understand how them work.

Oh my... I hope someday to get a loose cartridge of it for a more reasonable price.

I came to Colecovision searching for TMS9918 programming information while developing for MSX (2011, almost 29 years later) First was the challenge to make my games to work in Colecovision, then I knew I had to have one to test in the real hardware and I really liked it, so I started collecting loose cartridges. Now I've 80 cartridges, mostly standard releases, some homebrews, some repeated and of course various CIB. Maybe it is because when I was a kid I couldn't afford a game console, but certainly I'm having a lot of fun with it and it's my preferred over my other old consoles.

My favorite standard cartridges are: * Burgertime (really it's better than the arcade) * Q*Bert (very high quality for being 8K!!!) * Defender (smooth scrolling) * Gorf (I like to see it as several minigames )

I've found very helpful the explanation from tabachanker2.

Great to see this update! And of course I'm waiting for a new version of BlueMSX

I also prefer a black case.

. Just put me at the side of a pretty woman, trying to impress her "do you want to see the size of my chess program?" (side joke about my world's smallest chess program in C) or maybe a quote about Larry "hey guy! you're walking over my chess program" (a tiny stamp on floor) Just kidding.

Very well explained. I'll see if this time I code finally some Atari subroutines. Though I think my 6502 abilities are somewhat oxydized.

That's right. Besides the Game Boy allows 4-color sprites, effects by video line and scrolling with hardware aid that are hard to replicate with Coleco VDP processor.

Casually I was online! Great to see that finally Zombie Near is out!!!

I can say that after exploring carefully various sites the only way to get cheap MSX and games is to enter almost daily to the forums, the offers came up unexpectedly and the fastest one gets them. I got my MSX2+ Sony HB-F1XDJ from retroclasificados.com at a price of 200 euros. I can say that is a very nice machine, anyway I had to resolder a couple of cables of the RAM expansion someone did and recently I replaced two leaked capacitors that were muting the FM audio. Also I got a MSX1 for only USD$50 as an unexpected offer that I took immediately and included a Mopiranger cartridge with box. I had tried almost three times to get a loose Gradius cartridge before finally being able to order a Gradius, Gradius II and Vampire Killer CIB and that was because the other buyer didn't paid in time, it cost me 200 euros but I'm pretty happy with the three games and more after seeing the current eBay prices. But as everybody is saying, with these high prices is hard to think about ordering more cartridges, mostly because there are a lot of not so good games. The only way is to keep an eye in various sites. The hard thing is to have the time.