[Coco] The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 371, July 20, 2024

Sun Jul 21 11:04:15 EDT 2024

The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 371, July 20, 2024
===================================================================
Collected by L. Curtis Boyle

Upcoming conventions/trade shows of interest to Coco people:
------------------------------------------------------------
CocoTech episode #006 - Nick Marentes and I will be presenting a
talk on fooling Extended BASIC into doing some graphics commands using
Semigraphics-12 or Semigraphics-24. This will happening July 22 at 7 pm EST,
and will include accompanying PDF version of the slideshow and a DSK image.

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/

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 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/

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. 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 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.

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) TRS-80 Retro Programing tried out (and really likes) the TRS-80GP emulator
(written by George Phillips. This is the one that started out for the Z80
based TRS-80's (Mode 1/2/3/4, etc.) and has added the Coco & MC-10 in recent
years as well. I think he is a bit unfair in his complaints about XRoar,
especially since things like pasting in source code into the emulator has
worked in XRoar for some time. I believe he was just frustrated with the
joysticks not reading properly (an issue I have on the Mac version with
Paul Fiscarelli's Coco <--> USB joystick adapter. Ciaran has sent me a new
test version to try, but I have been too busy this week to try it. Will
try it this weekend):
  https://youtu.be/3560JQJVnIQ?si=nLFKABKPldBtVOXH
He also did a short demo of "Mario's Magic Mushroom" that he pasted the
source code into the emulator from a text file, and it runs fine:
  https://youtu.be/BW1Kqo-ZmIU?si=ZekgaHRG_ihHkXZj

2) La Coco Strangiato (by regular panelist Bob Emery) on YouTube released
a follow up video to his previous one concerning the SVI-CAS hardware
unit he has, that replaces cassettes for a variety of systems including
the Coco. This is to see if the various updates that have been released
since his first video have fixed some of the issues that he had found
(including multi-media tapes, which he extensively demos):
  https://youtu.be/2vSSKphzvZU?si=iPldNp-vTrF5NFxd

3) CocoTown does another side tutorial video this week - this time around
explaining the math behind Two's complement:
  https://youtu.be/mEsAsRjeqto?si=W8KdBt_dhQ72ZSWF
And as a follow up video, he goes through the utility he wrote that lets
one far more easily visualize working with binary (that he showed near
the end of the previous video):
  https://youtu.be/wxeHAM090G0?si=TUSdhCh0niKj2sIc
And the download for the free tool can be found here:
  https://cocotownretro.wordpress.com/2024/07/18/binary-playground/

4) Microcore Labs (Ted) has announced the ML6809 - a drop in replacement
board based on a Teensy 4.1 that plugs into a 6809 socket and emulates a
cycle accurate 6809E. He has tested it in a Coco 2 and so far it seems
to be working with the ROM's and trying several BASIC programs. Also,
similar to the clock doubler circuit that John Kowalski (Sockmaster)
did back in the 1990's, he has an option to eliminate the VMA/dummy
bus cycles that a lot of the instructions have. Unlike Sock's original
which basically halved the time of those, Microlabs has eliminated them
entirely, so a lot of instructions take a cycle or more less (it's kind
of like native mode for the 6809). Something like MUL should run in less
than half the time. He is thinking of furthering acceleration by putting
RAM/ROM inside the Teensy itself (eliminating having to access it through
the Coco motherboard) which means accessing those could be up to 600 MHz:

https://microcorelabs.wordpress.com/2024/07/16/mcl6809-drop-in-motorola-6809e-emulator/
He now has the project files available on his github:
  https://github.com/MicroCoreLabs/Projects/tree/master/MCL6809
He also now has a demo video running it in his Coco 2 (this shows normal
speed, roughly double speed with no VMA cycles, and full blown speed
running from Teensy RAM (there is some video corruption on the last one):
  https://youtu.be/v15GEWrfFuQ?si=HzrckZZPKsjPExXb

5) Henry Strickland has also announced a new hardware project - the "tfr9",
which is a single board computer he has designed for the 6809E/6309E. As
he mentions on his github, he is going for using a genuine period correct
CPU, but using modern parts for just about everything else (full details
in the readme on the github). There is also active discussion about it on
the 6x09-sbc-units channel (under Hardware) on the Coco Discord:
  https://github.com/strickyak/tfr9

6) Boisy Pitre has released part 3 of his Foenix F256/6809 series covering
OS-9 - this time covering OS-9's I/O system:
  https://youtu.be/jMwS94xWgws?si=MJAI9mVCtG2e1-_I

7) Ken of Canadian Retro Things is a guest in a video by 8-Bit Show and
Tell, talking about some of the weirdness that happened labelling floppy
disk sizes in Canada:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Pw-4kXWBD8&t=20s
Ken also released his own video of trying out the Coco Fujinet
cartridge. This is the soon to be obsoleted version with the serial bitbanger
port being used as well as the cartridge slot; the final one should run as
a pure cartridge. But he demonstrates it's SD card reading functionality,
logging into a server through the net and running games over the net as well:
  https://youtu.be/1TaCxBKO3pw?si=qoBEEAPluId249wC

8) Spotlessmind1975 on the Coco Discord has released multiple updates
to ugBASIC the past week, leading up to 1.16.3. This includes some VDG
bugfixes, some FOR/NEXT fixes when multithreading, fixed the BIT instruction
when running on a 6809, and numerous other fixes. There is a beta version
available as well, which adds support for analog joysticks (like the Coco)
amongst other things.
  https://ugbasic.iwashere.eu/?news=1

9) David Collins released an update (including schematic) for his 6309
based homebrew computer:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/6809assembly/posts/3412457535714271/

10) VCC 2.1.9.0 pre-release came out this past week, which adds a few things
(listed on EJ's github). Since this is a pre-release, it may still have
some bugs, so if helping report bugs is not your thing, I would stick with
the latest official release (2.1.8.3 from January) for now:
  https://github.com/VCCE/VCC/releases/

MC-10
-----
1) Olipix released another video about the MC-10, this time about the thermal
printer that Metra sold (a red clone of the TP-10 that Tandy sold for the
MC-10). He demos it with text, graphics, control characters, etc. He even
shows a video demo of a hacked MC-10 at the end that handled hi-res graphics:
  https://youtu.be/a4Do6LXfoSs?si=znDAemtRTtGd9rAi

Dragon 32/64
------------
1) Julian Brown posted a nicely succinct summary of his various Dragon
projects on the World of Dragon archive forums (includes links):
 https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=11184

2) Richard Harding now has high res scans available of the original
concept artwork for the unreleased Dragon Alpha (aka Professional) and
Beta prototypes, at 600 dpi:
  http://dragondata.co.uk/hardware/Gallery/Concept-art/index.html

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
==========================================
1) Lee Perkins has uploaded a video to YouTube showing the current state
of his port of Cloud Kingdoms from the PC to the Coco 3 - now having the
main character moving around the 8 way scrolling screen, and using double
buffering (and change to standard 4 pixel/2 byte scrolling):
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QfeXAeNqBY

2) Paul Shoemaker has released a video showing his "Goop Rush", a Ghost
Rush game but themed around a radioactive wasteland - and possibly a more
modern game. The mechanics are a bit different as well - hitting an enemy
doesn't install kill you, but increases your radiation exposure (a health
bar, basically). You can drop the radiation level a tiny bit collecting
the rad-away pills. He also has it available as a free download from his
itch.io page:
Video:
  https://youtu.be/FpgICmg4BD8?si=DcA9IOpuV__dMWVU
itch.io download page:
  https://pshoemaker70.itch.io/goop-rush

3) Jim Gerrie ported the game "Ark Royal", originally for the ZX81 from
the December 1981 of Your Computer magazine in England. Easily fits in 4K:
  https://youtu.be/8HzzMps3YXU?si=xfHeLxIoUZgssXrU
Source code & the original article are on his github:
  https://github.com/jggames/trs80mc10/tree/master/quicktype/Arcade/4K/ArkRoyal
He also ported Inspector Clew-so", originally by Ron Carlson in the June 1979
issue of Creative Computing magazine. It is based on the board game Clue:
  https://youtu.be/ypsAxMUyf0c?si=ikyAQO-yxTtKw7q4
And Jim also ported Dang It! during todays show:
  https://youtu.be/Yl4WkSfbHTM?si=9ZTj1ElrU5TJuC5x
And then he ported another Richard Ramella game - X-Ski from the first
issue of Hot Coco:
  https://youtu.be/CHcu4iXTilQ?si=E3At469ZPyMgKTla

4) And of course, make sure to pick up the updated version of the number
puzzle game 2048 by George Janssen (featured the past two weeks in the
Game On Challenge), that fixes the score so that it is possible to record
>10,000 points without it wrapping around. Available on the Coco Discord
in the Game-on-challenge channel and soon on the Color Computer Archive.

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

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