[Coco] The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 351, February 17, 2024

Sun Feb 18 09:27:42 EST 2024

The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 351, February 17, 2024
===================================================================
Collected by L. Curtis Boyle

Special Guests today:
---------------------
Tim Lindner, Mark Siegel
David Kroeker, possibly D. Bruce Moore (but not until 2 hours in for Bruce)

Interviews schedule:
--------------------
None upcoming... yet.

Upcoming conventions/trade shows of interest to Coco people:
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VCF SoCal: Feb 17-18, 2024 in Orange, California ON RIGHT NOW! Hopefully
somebody was able to attend and take some pictures - Wayne Campbell was
unable to make it.
Hotel Fera - Events Center
100 The City Drive, Orange, CA 92868
  https://vcfsocal.com/index.html
It should be mentioned that Thomas Cherryhomes will be a speaker at the
show, going over Fujinet - including the Coco version that is currently
a work in progress. Randy Kindig is also confirmed as a speaker now as well.
Also, a couple of color computer exhibitors are now listed as well:
  https://www.vcfsocal.com/exhibitors

Interim Computer Festival: March 23-24.
Intraspace
3100 Airport Way South, Seattle, Washington
This is a pre-announcement for a retro computer show in the Pacific
Northwest Area.
  https://sdf.org/icf/

The Indy Classic Computer & Gaming Expo is April 13-14 in Indianapolis.
Crowne Plaza
Randy Kindig of the Floppy Days podcast helps with this one - and he was
our guest not too far back.
  https://indyclassic.org/

CocoFest: May 4-5, 2024 in Carol Stream, Illinois (near Chicago)
Holiday Inn & Suites
  https://www.glensideccc.com/cocofest/
Table bookings (the main hall is completely taken up now, and 1 of 14 has
been sold for the hall tables already):
  https://www.tandylist.com/

BoatFest 3: June 14-16, 2024
Social Event Space
Hurricane, WV

https://www.ticketsource.us/boatfest2024/boatfest-retro-computer-expo-2024/e-raedpb

VCF SouthWest: June 14-16, 2024 (same weekend as BoatFest)
Davidson-Gundy Alumni Center at University of Texas - Dallas
Dallas, Texas
  https://www.vcfsw.org/
UPDATES:
Also this year they are doing "Shows within the Show", and one of those
is a Tandy Assembly meetup:
  (scroll down on the main page)
Jeff Wires (the host of Chronologically Gaming) is also one of the speakers
at VCF-SW this year!
Speakers list:
  https://www.vcfsw.org/speakers

Tandy Assembly for 2024 has been announced for Sep 27-29, 2024.
Courtyard by Marriott Springfield
Springfield, Ohio
  http://www.tandyassembly.com/

Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)
-------------------------------
1) TRS-80 Retro Programing put up a video that shows a bit of how parenthesis
works with math operations:
  https://youtu.be/eoY4_0rarYg
He is also did a short video showing some sounds he is adding to Coco
Ultimate (like a high pitched one for a sword swing):
  https://youtu.be/KpO63HAsOaM

2) George Janssen released his final lesson for the 128 moving stars
assembly language tutorial (And the source is available on his channel in
the Coco Discord):
  https://youtu.be/rPxnRBIHww4

3) Frank of retrowind.ca has put up an ANSI BBS (one can log in with both
web and with an ANSI compatible terminal program - like Twilight Terminal
or Netmate on a Coco 3) that is running on an Amiga 4000. If you would
like to try it out:
  bbs.retrorewind.ca (on port 23)
or using an HTML5 client:
  https://bbs.retrorewind.ca/

4) A plug for those of you with MM/1's and need a replacement for your SCSI
drive - BlueSCSI's can be ordered from jcm-1.com (these are commonly used
on Mac's and other computers as well, but Joel Ewy is pretty pleased his
on his MM/1, and even has a file for 3d printing an SD card cover plate
to make it look clean). I would be interested to know if anyone has tried
this on a Coco yet, since we did have multiple SCSI drive systems (Kenton,
Diskmaster, etc.) on the Coco back in the 1980's.

5) As promised from his post last week, TJBChris has released an over half
hour video "Exploring the TRS-80 Network 3 controller, including getting it
working with a Coco (promised by Tandy when it was originally advertised,
but never implemented... until now):
  https://youtu.be/8r2dwGSPvjM?si=Waz-sl33k3zsO9ut

6) Coco Town has released part 3 of his assembly language sound on the
Coco 1/2 tutorial - this one covers using HSYNC for timing:
  https://youtu.be/GqQ6MzE35sc?si=PvUFOuD02AyrEboG

7) Michael Pittsley has posted a series of 16 videos of the Dorsett
Courseware Fractions for ages 4-8 on his YouTube channel, joining a lot of
other rare educational and multimedia software for the Coco that he has
on his channel. The best thing is that his include the audio portions of
the original tapes as well as the programs themselves:
  https://www.youtube.com/@michaelpittsley8323/videos

8) Guillaume Major has patched the Orchestra 90 software to use the DSKCON
routines - so you can now access the Orch-90 library with Drivewire, the
CocoSDC and DrivePak's (rather than hardcoded to the floppy controller). This
is available on the Color Computer Archive (It also uses Michael Pittsley's
recently released index for the Orch 90 files - 78 disks in all):
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161159423317641/

9) Carlos Camacho posted an interesting project link (on the Internet
archive) that the Air Force used - that included a Coco as a display
terminal:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161156374547641/

10) For those of you who have wanted a PDF version of the full version of
the original Coco Color BASIC manual - it's finally available on the the
archive. Much thanks to Tim Lindner for scanning and making the PDF:

https://colorcomputerarchive.com/repo/Documents/Manuals/Hardware/Getting%20Started%20With%20Color%20Basic%20-%20TRS-80%20Color%20Computer%202%20(Tandy).pdf

11) 8bitsinthebsement on YouTube has released a video showing his work in
learning Coco assembly language, and converting Bob and the alien fireflies
to the Coco, and explains the journey he took over the past few months in
doing so:
  https://youtu.be/ymiLb73U6uM?si=IajhXwLdW-Ip3UfV

12) Uno Caraway put up a video on working with BASIC for several computers
(different projects - a little beginners BASIC Coco, starting around
33:32). He has a real one, but does the demo using XRoar:
  https://youtu.be/75K_CeROXH8?si=yi12eg082aqneSIG

13) Primal-bits4777 did a youtube short about a Coco 2 that he has gotten
that has a keyboard problem - and he is going to do a full video including
try to fix it with a conductive pen and/or a replacement keyboard mylar:
  https://www.youtube.com/shorts/hIl_ryv7HbY

14) Bolling Holt (whom we covered recently when he got a Tandy DMP-133
printer) put up a video showing his logging into a BBS on a Color Computer 3
using another bit of hardware he had as a kid - the Direct Connect Modem Pak:
  https://youtu.be/YR7sXCdnlbM?si=vAeOvPOiMO1jRglL

MC-10
-----
1)

Dragon 32/64
------------
1) Julian Brown posted an update to his upgraded Dragon project - he is
working on a redesign of the PAL board:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3645092879083688/

2) TôBach on YouTube has a little graphics demo clip called Munch my
Bricks that is an ML program that is only 64 bytes long, that he did for
the lovebyte 2024 Demo competition, for his Dragon 32:
  https://youtu.be/g3udVipItwg?si=H4UaSlkkHfebkGFw

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
==========================================
1) CRPG Addict has released his lengthy review of the 1982 Coco game
Sceptre of Kzirgla. He was not too impressed:

https://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2024/02/game-502-scepter-of-kzirgla-1982-and.html

2) Jim Gerrie released an MC-10 port of "Swordsman" originally by H. Walwyn
in 1983 for the Coco and Dragon 32. Jim did some modifications from the
original as well:
  https://youtu.be/46n8jTyl3CY?si=Q6VTZ6iqMtaqzbuw
He also ported "The Wizard's Tower" CPRG from the Coco, originally by
Steven C. Mitchell in 1992:
  https://youtu.be/SioIs0KkBFM?si=_8Lydg-W3k6q7ajb

3) Chronologically Gaming covered the 2nd last September 1982 Coco entry
- and a game that I did not realize was the *1st* version of the game
released on a home computer (although multiple game consoles already had
versions)... Tennis from Tandy. I should also mention that he is now doing
1/2 hour episodes each weeknight (vs. full hour shows):
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKHl0Pefmik&t=561s

4) Tricob1974 (Richard Kelly) put up some long play videos of both
his Ladderman 2 game, and one of this week's challenge games, King
Tut. Unfortunately his version of MAME used to record them is quite old
and stretches the screen to twice it's normal width:
  https://www.youtube.com/@Tricob1974/videos

5) www.ElkSoft.com has released an updated Demon Attack X, which is a port
of the Coco version of Imagic's Demon Attack to modern machines. It now
includes a top 100 score table, 2 player simultaneous mode, new EGA color
mode and more. He released a video on YouTube showing it in action with
the new menu options (unfortunately it doesn't show an example of the 2
player simultaneous mode):
  https://youtu.be/xXKe7GyitNI?si=IHdP1VYnl2BtVj-O

6) Marco Spedaletti has released (on his itch.io page) the free download
for his entry for this years BASIC 10 liner contest, with a game called
"Falling Balls". He wrote it under the cross platform ugBASIC compiler,
so it is also available for other machines like the Atari 8 bit, and it
shows what he ugBASIC compiler is capable of:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161167116507641/
Download page:
  https://spotlessmind1975.itch.io/falling-balls-10liner

==============================================================================

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