[Coco] The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 374, August 10, 2024

Tue Aug 13 08:44:54 EDT 2024

Thank you for doing this. 

Thanks
Brian Wieseler

> On Aug 11, 2024, at 8:13 AM, R. Allen Murphey via Coco <coco at maltedmedia.com> wrote:
> 
> The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 374, August 10, 2024
> ===================================================================
> Collected by L. Curtis Boyle
> 
> Upcoming conventions/trade shows of interest to Coco people:
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> New England Classic Gaming is having an Electronics & Computer Retro Swap
> Meet on Aug. 24 starting at 9 AM CST, at the Norfolk Public Library in
> Norfolk, Massachusetts (2 Liberty Lane):
>  https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61557290357725
> 
> VCF-Midwest has moved (slightly) again to the 50,000 square foot "Convention
> North" space (they sold out of table space with the original "Exploration
> Hall" area which was 33,000 square feet at the Renaissance Schaumburg
> Convention Center in Schaumburg, IL. Sept 7-8, 2024 (Sept 6 evening (Friday)
> is reserved for vendors, etc to set up). They have added multiple hotels
> which people can book into, as the original sold out quickly.
>  https://vcfmw.org/
> 
> The World of Retro Computing 2024 is September 14-15 in Kitchener,
> Ontario, Canada (west of Toronto). This year it is located in the old
> Goudies Department Store, 8 Queen Street North. Free admission, and this
> covers all kinds of retro computers. Some people in the Coco community are
> planning on going, and I believe that Stacy Vetzal from the Coco Facebook
> group is planning on having a booth:
>  https://worldofretrocomputing.com/2024-worc-expo
> 
> Tandy Assembly for 2024 has been announced for Sep 27-29, 2024. An update
> from Pete on August 9 - they have now sold out of tables for the show!
> Courtyard by Marriott Springfield
> Springfield, Ohio
>  http://www.tandyassembly.com/
> 
> Also that weekend is the Amigos next live ICC (International Computer
> Club), which will be at 4 PM EST on September 28. This is for all retro
> computers & gaming consoles. It streams live on their Twitch channel and
> YouTube channels)
> 
> 
> The Dragon Meetup will be October 12-13, 2024 at the Museum of Technology
> in Cambridge, England:
>  https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=11179&start=10
> 
> Retro Computer Festival 2024: November 9-10, 2024
> Centre for Computing History, Cambridge, England
> In the early stages of planning for this year, this is (I believe) the
> largest general retro computing show in the UK (it's their VCF style show),
> covering all retro machines. Tickets can be ordered online for individual
> days or both days.
> All of their events (including separate entries for both days) at the
> bottom of this page:
>  https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/pages/30677/What-s-On/
> The Saturday event specifically:
> 
> https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/72253/Retro-Computer-Festival-2024-Saturday-9th-November/
> 
> VCF East dates for next year have been confirmed April 25-27, 2025 -
> same facility as this year. Info Age Science Museum, Wall, NJ.
> 
> 
> Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)
> -------------------------------
> 1) William Astle has released LWTOOLS version 4.23. This update fixes a
> stack corruption bug, as well adds the ability to use a 0b or 0B prefix
> for binary constants:
>  http://www.lwtools.ca/
> 
> 2) Coco Town posted another Game Revolutions episode about his Moon Patrol
> style game - this time working on faster gravel scrolling part 2, where he
> goes through some suggestions from viewers, including one of mine (spoiler:
> I come in dead last as to how much of a speed increase the new routines get):
>  https://youtu.be/XBS8wV7sN88?si=Mv3OEFkyget8wsij
> He also posted a video showing some 6809 optimizations suggested by
> @BoscoRetro:
>  https://youtu.be/S3xCd3r5ayk?si=oh-KbEpE26095dwl
> 
> 3) Richard Kelly released "Blue/Red" version 1.1. This is a program to let
> one select which way the artifact colors are set on a Coco 1 or 2. It can
> be downloaded from the Coco Facebook group:
>  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161510031212641/
> 
> 4) Steve Batson posted some photos from VCF West, including some Coco and
> MC-10 things:
>  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161508847862641/
> 
> 5) Sheldon MacDonald posted a video about the new version 0.61 of his Dual
> IDE assembly language programming app. The 1st half of the video covers
> the 6809 changes with some samples (with the caveat that more extensive
> testing is still needed): the ability for IF/OR/ELSE statements directly
> in assembly code as well as index addressing into function calls. The
> 2nd half covers the Sega Genesis, including a couple of games that he is
> working on for that platform:
>  https://youtu.be/h2Src3sc6qc?si=4AZ4NOpxiQdZqisa
> 
> 6) Stacey Vetzal is planning on having a "prank" style program to show
> on her Coco at the World of Retro Computing Show in Kitchener, Ontario
> September 14-15. She posted a screenshot (and link to sourcecode) for how
> far she has gotten:
>  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161493989932641/
> 
> 7) Fabio Sturman posted pics of a 6809 based computer he built. It has a
> 6809, 68681 dual UART, 8K EEPROM, 128 KB of static RAM with a simple page
> memory unit, some other support chips and an 8 bit IDE port for Compact
> Flash card support. It includes S-BUG 1.8, and he said that Flex 9.1 is
> working but not fully tested:
> Announcement and a couple of photos:
>  https://www.facebook.com/groups/flexoperatingsystem/posts/1043333137156137/
> Photos of the board:
>  https://www.facebook.com/groups/flexoperatingsystem/posts/1043490793807038/
> 
> 8) tsbrownie on YouTube did a video about his history with Radio Shack and
> using their products, starting with electronics parts around 1972. About 5:28
> he goes into a bit of his history with a Coco 1, which he upgrade to 64K:
>  https://youtu.be/ttmbOSnLqVk?si=uegzT7zCeaRo3hE0
> 
> 9) Tim Halloran released his 4th video of restoring/upgrade his Coco 2 for
> September's Tandy Assembly, this time working on the keyboard and adding
> a 64K RAM upgrade:
>  https://youtu.be/t-FbOlZOCz8?si=ECQKvBawRw1quJ9N
> 
> 10) Danny's Vintage Computers on YouTube put up a short video showing the
> Radio Shack exhibit at the Computer Museum @ System Source in Maryland -
> which has a variety of machine including a Coco 3 (commentary doesn't
> really match what they are looking at, so mute the video):
>  https://youtu.be/byg7EYnObr8?si=0wjLd6srEzlbdpBi
> 
> 11) This is Retropolis (a Portuguese show from Brazil) episode 155 cover
> a few machines in the episode, including the Coco series. Unfortunately it
> doesn't seem to be set up for auto-translation (and it's audio only). Coco
> part starts at 32:55
>  https://youtu.be/dC6xkA4apkg?si=Fou4dc9FYwkPba0S&t=1975
> 
> 
> MC-10
> -----
> 1)
> 
> 
> Dragon 32/64
> ------------
> 1) Roy Coates, the original author of the Dragon ports of Manic Miner & Jet
> Set Willy, has been digging out boxes of historical things for the Dragon:
> a) He uploaded Rebellion.cas to the files area. This is a game cowritten with
> a student of his named Chris Larkin, dating before he ported Manic Miner. It
> was submitted to Microdeal, but was rejected. It requires a joystick:
>  https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3773006602958981/
> b) Rebellion download link:
>  https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3773004619625846/
> c) Roy found an award he received from Microdeal - "the broken dongle award"
> - for breaking the copy protection hardware dongle scheme that Microdeal
> used for their version of Buzzard Bait. And he tells the story about why
> he entered the contest and got the award...:
>  https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3772091476383827/
> d) Roy found notes and data for Jet Set Willy II - which he never finished
> porting back in the day. If his old system will boot and disks can be used,
> he is seriously considering finishing it now:
>  https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3771220156470959/
> e) Boxes of stuff he found:
>  Box #4 - original cassettes with inserts - including a game he wrote
>  that had not been previously archived - Stargate sold by Abacus software
>  (in the comments he posted a picture of the letter from Abacus):
>    https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3768749020051406/
>  Box #5 has a bunch of paper - hand written notes, graphics designs,
>  notes on games, etc.:
>    (sprite structure table, screen table information)
>    https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3768758906717084/
>    (graphics for Manic Miner hand drawn from looking at the Spectrum
>    version):
>    https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3768758080050500/
>    (source listings for Jetset Willy, Manic Miner, The Talisman):
>    https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3768756893383952/
>  Box #6 (The Holy Grail as Roy calls it): about 200 floppy disks,
>  including commercial disks for things like the Flex operating system,
>  BASIC utilities, Flex C compiler, assemblers, editors, diagnostics and
>  much more):
>    https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3768808636712111/
> 
> 2) Phil Harvey-Smith uploaded some photos of a new Dragon 64, based on
> Ciaran's Dragon 64 motherboard and Julian Brown's keyboard, with photos:
>  https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3772986126294362/
> 
> 3) Richard Harding, Dragon historian, has uploaded scans and pictures of
> the Dragon Data dealer application pack, including multipage full color
> artwork for a variety of programs and games... and even including the
> dealer price list:
>  dragondata.co.uk/adverts/Dealer-app-pack/index.html
> 
> 
> Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
> ==========================================
> 1) Jim Gerrie continues porting games to the MC-10. This week, he ported
> Laser Tank, originally written by John P. Grillo & J.D. Robertson in
> 1983 in their book Color Computer Applications for the Coco. Jim added
> some features to the original, including target direction from commander,
> decreasing that amount of enemy fire as enemies are eliminated, turret speed
> readout, adding scoring (and keeping track of the high score for the current
> session), in game instructions, and game re-start at the end of a round:
>  https://youtu.be/32vzvyhA5Bg?si=by1113jq65bE3kxP
> He also ported the Coco game Wheel of Fortune (originally by Harold Schneider
> in Rainbow magazine's April 1984 issue. He did some minor edits and fixed a
> bug (if one guessed the same consonant twice), and also changed it so the
> screen background colors are assigned specifically assigned to player #'s
> (up to 8), rather than being random. He also sped up the wheel rotation &
> added a simple title screen:
>  https://youtu.be/bLej3fsN2Z0?si=1WndkF549bH1Qkcf
> And updates as well: Jim updated his MC-10 port of Nightmare Park (originally
> by Bob Chappel in 1980, likely for the PET). Jim added his improved inverse
> video text routine:
>  https://youtu.be/_8g_6D6UzoQ?si=XBvHLlwyuwnLFJTB
> 
> 2) Lee Perkins has released a video showing his current progress on his
> 6309/2 MB RAM Coco 3 version of Cloud Kingdoms that he is ported from
> PC/VGA. This shows the 9 way scrolling, animated characters and several maps:
>  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpFaeTvC-YA
> 
> 3) Tim & AJ cover the new game Goop Rush (which just finished being our
> Game On Challenge the past two weeks) on their Sibling Rivalry show. AJ
> has been on a streak lately; will it continue?
>  https://youtu.be/JFa5rj5zFS4?si=XCXmPC-TWzhQ-YVM
> 
> 4) XperTek does his Coco 2/amber monitor thing and tries out King Tut from
> Tom Mix Software:
>  https://youtu.be/bMPbX6xfR60?si=23Ro3RhsL2AG0WMa
> 
> 5) R. Allen Murphey let me know that Stefan Vogt has a devlog started to
> Hibernated 2 - a sequel to his Infocom engine game Hibernated one which
> was available for the Coco:
>  https://8bitgames.itch.io/hibernated1/devlog/779289/hibernated-2-devlog
> 
> 
> ==============================================================================
> 
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> 
> --
> R. Allen Murphey <exile at weylan-yutani.com>
> Weylan-Yutani Corporation
> 
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