[Coco] There was a CoCo 3 update to Zaxxon! Before Z-89

[Andrew]

That's a very interesting "find" by Roger - and I'm glad it's him and 
not me going thru all of that (what little I've done in the past was 
more than enough - though I still need to get back to my personal disk 
image re-archive project - sigh); he's probably far better for this task 
(plus, I had no way to bid on the lot anyhow - and I think my wife 
would've killed me had I somehow managed to try - lol).

Anyhow - what's strange about this particular revision is that it still 
looks like it is a 4-color screen? Is it our general "PMODE 4" screen 
with a different palette (definitely different colors than that mode)? 
Or is it some 4-color CoCo 3 mode (maybe one of the non-BASIC modes)? Or 
is it an actual 16-color mode, but only using 4 colors?

All speculation from me; Roger would know best, of course - but still, 
it doesn't look like 16-colors to me (just red, blue, white, and black)? 
That doesn't mean it wasn't in a mode to allow additional colors, but 
without seeing the source code (or a disassembly - but those "ASM" files 
seem like they are some kind of source code for something, since they 
are in ASCII format on the disk), all we (except for Roger, maybe) can 
go on is what the disks "say" (label?)...

Even so - just the fact that we have something is quite enough, though 
it would be interesting to know where this code fits in the "timeline"? 
Did it happen prior to say, 1992? Or after?

Or was it before Steve "dropped out" of the community (details of which 
I'm still not very clear about, but I know it had something to do with 
speculation on what a CoCo 4 should or could be, his efforts to "create" 
such a thing, whatever that meant, and his giving up on all of it 
because of...and that's where it gets a bit fuzzy to me - but maybe I'm 
completely daft on the whole thing).

Or did he dabble with this after that point?

Or maybe - as mentioned - it was just a precursor to Z-89 (a game I 
don't think I've played...yet - but I do recall its release and review 
in the Rainbow)...

This is all a bit exciting to me, though I wish it had been something he 
had done of his own accord, and not by others after his 
passing...because we can only speculate on what he really would have wanted.

...and given what I do recall about that prior flame-out with the 
community - I have this feeling - which is again, just unfounded 
speculation - that he kinda "disowned us", for whatever reason - but 
never updated his will - maybe always saying he'd "get 'round to it" - 
something I suspect we all do. I know I do, as I've already mentioned 
earlier about my own darn project(s)!

Regardless, I'm excited to see what comes next (much as I'm waiting for 
more info to come out about both the "CoCo 3 Prototype Board", and the 
"GIME decapping" research, though I suspect I'll be holding my breath on 
those until the day I die myself).

Andrew L. Ayers
Glendale, Arizona
phoenixgarage.org
github.com/andrew-ayers

On 3/19/24 10:18 PM, coco-request at maltedmedia.com wrote:

> Message: 1
> Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2024 21:46:17 -0500
> From: Allen Huffman <alsplace at pobox.com>
> To: coco at maltedmedia.com
> Subject: [Coco] There was a CoCo 3 update to Zaxxon! Before Z-89
> Message-ID: <67B2346A-00A8-487E-9C53-43F95DE520BB at pobox.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain;	charset=utf-8
> 
> Roger Taylor is going through the Bjork disks trying to carefully archive them. He has been trying to stay focused on getting all the disks properly imaged. He?s using some software I don?t understand, which shows graphical representations of the data on the disk and errors and such.
> 
> But every now and then, he finds something he has to look at?
> 
> https://www.patreon.com/posts/100701156?utm_campaign=postshare_fan
> 
> Apparently, Steve updated his 1983 Zaxxon to run on a CoCo 3 using a 16-color mode. The title screen now has the Zaxxon Arcade logo instead of just text, and the game runs faster. We can only speculate on what this was ? perhaps he planned to have it released as an official licensed Zaxxon update? Maybe it was just a test, and he decided it made more sense to write a dedicated CC3 version. Ultimately, he did that, but it was not an official Zaxxon.
> 
> Between this, and someone discovering his CoCo 3 compatible Audio Spectrum Analyzer on ROM paks sold by Radio Shack later, maybe these were all destined to be Radio Shack things?