[Coco] The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 369, July 6, 2024

Sun Jul 7 10:45:52 EDT 2024

The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 369, July 6, 2024
===================================================================
Collected by L. Curtis Boyle

Upcoming conventions/trade shows of interest to Coco people:
------------------------------------------------------------
TRS-80 Trash Talk Live episode #40 is recording tonight at 9 PM Eastern Time:
  https://www.youtube.com/@TRS80TrashTalk

VCF-West looks to be happening August 2-3 (Fri-Sat) at the Computer History
Museum in Mountain View, California. This year they are a full partner with
the museum, so that admission for both the museum and VCF can be done with
one purchase, and the are taking people booking to be speakers/presenters
now as well.
CHM (Computer History Museum)
1401 N. Shoreline Blvd.
Mountain View, CA
  https://vcfed.org/2024/03/14/vcf-west/

VCF-Midwest has announced their new, larger venue for this year (#19)
- the Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center in Schaumburg, IL. Sept
7-8, 2024 (Sept 6 evening (Friday) is reserved for vendors, etc to set
up). Unfortunately, their original block of rooms already sold out in 3
hours after they announced yesterday. VCF is working with the hotel to
get more, but that won't happen until Monday)
  https://vcfmw.org/

Tandy Assembly for 2024 has been announced for Sep 27-29, 2024. UPDATE:
THEY HAVE STARTED POSTING EXHIBITORS ON THEIR WEBSITE
Courtyard by Marriott Springfield
Springfield, Ohio
  http://www.tandyassembly.com/

The Dragon Meetup will be October 12-13, 2024 at Cambridge in England. Not
sure which venue, though (Centre for Computing History or Museum of
Technology):

https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=11179&p=25389#p25389

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. NOTE: thanks to Randy Kindig, it is confirmed
that it is a 2 day show.

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

Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)
-------------------------------
1) CocoTown returns with his Game Revolutions cycle - now time to get the
moon buggy in his Moon Patrol clone jumping... and all of the pratfalls
along the way:
  https://youtu.be/Swn4NysyUWQ?si=9TIUw1heJ6--1hAb

2) George Janssen has released Parts 1 & 2 of Lesson 12 of his Coco 3
assembly language series - this time covering how to interface between BASIC
and assembly language programs, and also starts to cover handling interrupts
- particularly the GIME timer (including some primitive multi-tasking of a
machine language program while your BASIC program is actively running). He
also shows how DEFUSR works. Source code is available on his channel on
the Coco Discord to save you typing if you wish:
  https://youtu.be/yqQQV8f-nSE?si=PfQMenXj3RlcdaeN
Part 2, where George goes through the BASIC program and ML routines in
much more detail:
  https://youtu.be/PUfd6UgOXzQ?si=uJ6MWHERWSyUvO84

3) Tim Halloran has posted the 3rd video in his series on his YouTube
channel about restore a Coco 2 that he plans on showing at Tandy Assembly
2024. This episode goes into retrobriting to clean up the case:
  https://youtu.be/VvQl8L9BJOc?si=XQSkLsOIsn5ZhzKH

4) Jud Pratt, who recently joined the Coco Facebook group, posted about his
being a member of the Youngstown, Ohio Color Computer Club as a kid. He
also posted links to scans of an article from the July 1983 issue of
Color Computer Magazine, where they talk about Color Computer User groups,
how entire families would attend, and what was done at meetings:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161406011967641/

5) In honor of July 4th Independence Day celebrations in the USA, Bill
Sexton posted a rendition of the American flag, drawn in the original Coco
1/2 Deskmate:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161415856927641/

6) Matt Perkins uploaded a short Facebook Reels video showing his clockwork
uConsole (an ARM64 based machine) running an emulated Coco 3. It looks
to be a little larger than a GameBoy and with a full keyboard and joypad
style joystick controller built in:
  https://www.facebook.com/reel/486752480504842
Info on the hardware:
  https://www.clockworkpi.com/

7) Boisy Pitre added a couple of quick videos showing the speed of booting
OS9 Level 1 on the F256 - one for booting from the SD card, and the other
from the cartridge. The cartridge is slightly faster:
Both videos are this link (SD card is the top one, cartridge is the second):
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161406952442641/

8) pmig96 on X (formerly Twitter) showed what adding a 74HC4053 analog
multiplexer to a VDG (to switch chroma signals via software control can
do to expand the colors that the VDG can produce:
  https://x.com/pmig96/status/1509537145861644296

9) TRS-80 Retro Programing returns after a hiatus with a video called
"How to make a pixel follow a slope using just PPOINT":
  https://youtu.be/tYm-o3gD9jg?si=eUGhI3cKaa_-8K1J

10) Henry of The Break Key fame (and regular panelist on The Coco Nation
Show) put up a video about his working on reverse engineering the classic
Mark Data Products composite Universal Video driver, a hardware add on
that Mark Data sold back in the 80's so that people could hook up Coco
1's & 2's to composite monitors rather than just RF. He sleuths out how
he thinks it works:
  https://youtu.be/tbTfUFGUd3o?si=zWaedq8Y7smGOKeU

11) Gary Becker has uploaded a firmware update for the GIME-X, which is bug
fixes (some to make things more compatible). You can get it in the GIME-X
channel on the Coco Discord (I don't have details of specific bugs fixed).

MC-10
-----
1) Olipix on YouTube has done another Alice video - this time a long one
covering the main French multiport extension - which supports ROM cartridges
(both manual and auto-starting), diagnostic cartridges, virtual USB hard
drives, dual classic Atari style joystick ports, as well as two expansion
slots for things like sound cards, etc (and demos of a lot of this stuff):
  https://youtu.be/XTrc-N3QPVQ?si=BR3UBTsoiGJnBExR

2) Jim Gerrie posted his MC-10 port of "Poem", originally written by
J. Victor Nahigian and William S. Hodges from the 1980 book "Announcing
Computer Games". It's actually not a game, but a program that creates
computer created poems:
  https://youtu.be/YY_3hhRdKAM?si=FqLQLgtCUsOuVq1_

Dragon 32/64
------------
1) John Whitworth posted a video in the Dragon group on Facebook showing
a modified SuperSprite FM+ board that uses Phil Antonio's V9958 FPGA
replacement. As John says, the video is looking good (and has direct HDMI
output) but the sound is still being worked on:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3742250346034607/

2) For anyone who can read German, the German Dragon newsletters we
mentioned last week are up on the World of Dragon archive (although they
need some cleanup of duplicate pages, etc.):
  https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11183
(can show some from my desktop copy of the archive)

3) Davy's Retro Corner on YouTube did a Moire/SQR patterns based on a C64
one liner program. Note that it takes some time to set up:
  https://youtu.be/oHkCrq4x7jE?si=ZSWzew1IbeLS2FY2

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
==========================================
1) Following up on last weeks talk about the loader for Rommel's Revenge,
David Ladd supplied a video:
  https://youtu.be/XgKGszbyGLY?si=nxjeS4YnEOE_8AGK

2) Marco Spedaletti, creator of ugBASIC, has released SOKO64+ - a port of
the Soko64 (Sokoban) game using his ugBASIC language for multiple platforms,
including the Coco:
NOTE: If you downloaded at the beginning of this past week, you may need to
re-download as there was some bug fixes (including fixing joystick controls):
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161406276737641/
His itch.io page entry, including downloads & screenshots for a variety
of platforms:
  https://spotlessmind1975.itch.io/soko64plus

3) Jeff Wires of Chronologically Gaming did a talk at VCF SW a few weeks
back, and that seminar is now up on YouTube. He mentions the Coco multiple
times during the talk, including near the end where he answers an audience
question about the earliest proto-3D shooter, which was the Coco's Phantom
Slayer:
  https://youtu.be/GjeWfEOb5Ro?si=KXOXcfTqxofAKhlq

4) Jim Gerrie ported the text adventure "CIA" by Susan Drake Lipscomb &
Margaret Ann Zuanich from the book "BASIC Fun With Adventure Games",
originally published in 1984 by Avon Camelot books:
  https://youtu.be/FeB5ntFf544?si=dAvbFD36_vYwjDXR
(Will mention again that Jim has moved all of his software downloads to
the Internet Archive)

5) Paul Shoemaker is working on Goop Rush, and posted a video showing his
progress as of this week:
  (show "Goop Rush (Paul Shoemaker) progress.mp4" from desktop)

6) Brent and Aaron review Sundog Systems "The Quest For Thelda" written
by Eric Wolf in 1989. Not long after it was recorded, Brent completed
the game, and it froze. Has anyone else completed it and see if this is
"normal", or maybe a bad copy because of copy protection, etc.?
  https://www.youtube.com/live/1z3oFmAmgdk?si=SfiDMnPl4Rdb0iXZ

7) Wayne Campbell is porting a Coco 3 graphics version of Sokoban (with
multiples sets of levels from different versions of Sokoban - so more levels
than the Tandy cartridge version or the existing OS9 text mode version)
that he originally wrote (with help from William Astle, author of LWASM)
in Coco 3 BASIC to BASIC09. He uploaded a progress video that shows the
splash screen, and some of the levels:
  (show "Sokoban1-OS9 (Wayne Campbell) progress.mp4" from desktop)

8) XperTek did his Spanish play/review of Tom Mix's The Frog on his real
Coco 2 with amber monitor:
  https://youtu.be/NVqdF1Q8SrQ?si=fWgBr3HV6skZcRV9
He also played Ghost Gobbler by Spectral Associates:
  https://youtu.be/wfk3NT6cJJM?si=z71SS7jo8d-5IXKn

9) Tim & AJ return to the Coco with Orbitron on the ust released episode
142 of Sibling Rivalry on their YouTube channel):
  https://youtu.be/nhWZipy-taA?si=1ZyzeSk0S-7cO4lS

10) Vintage Geek put up another Tano Dragon video this morning, this time
concentrating on the software that came bundled with it - the games in
particular. but he didn't have any instructions and is asking for some help:
  https://youtu.be/gbZGRzOXA3s?si=GvSonfW4bK1GhiwO

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

Speak your mind! Let us know what you think at:
    feedback at TheCoCoNation.com

If replying on a mailing list, please trim replies to the specific items.

Get connected with more of the CoCo, Dragon and MC-10 community here:
    https://thecoconation.com/community/

-- 
Robert "Exile In Paradise" Murphey <exile at weylan-yutani.com>
Weylan-Yutani Corporation