[Coco] The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 372, July 27, 2024

Sun Jul 28 08:41:10 EDT 2024

The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 372, July 27, 2024
===================================================================
Collected by L. Curtis Boyle

Special Guests today:
---------------------
 Wayne Campbell with his OS9 version of Sokoban - enhanced from the Coco
 3 Super Extended BASIC version

 Also, wondering who all caught this past Monday's CocoTech, and if anyone
 has had a chance to try the demo's or start working on their own programs
 to use the SG12/24 modes in BASIC. Also, any questions?

One other mention - for those of you who speak (or at least understand)
Spanish, Spanish YouTube channel "La Meca del Clásico" is doing a live
stream this morning starting 45 minutes before our show starts (it may
still be going on?) titled "First romhacker translations into Spanish in
history ~ on a Tandy CoCo ~ with LuisCoCo!"
Luis Fernandez & Rod Merida are the presenter and host:
  https://www.youtube.com/live/U4OIIWCKnOY?si=LASh-oBraQctJtO0

Interview schedule:
--------------------
 None

Upcoming conventions/trade shows of interest to Coco people:
------------------------------------------------------------
VCF-West is next weekend (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.
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) Bob Emery released a video on his La CoCo Strangiato YouTube channel
introducing his VDG breakout board. This works with multiple VDG & Coco 1/2
motherboard designs, and requires far less soldering than other solutions:
  https://youtu.be/vqmq6Az9_48

2) TRS-80 Retro Programing did an update video to his earlier "Mario's
Magic Mushroom" graphic demo, and talks about his working with the TRS80GP
emulator, running under Windows 11. There are some issues he is hitting:
  https://youtu.be/QhN8yytOSes?si=kwA-FR15hUWhO1xQ
Following up on the Mario theme, he also made a Luigi character to animate,
and posted the source code in the description.
  https://youtu.be/frbk4WZQvwM?si=3dl-gGqT8hlMgF2E

3) Coco Town returns to his Moon Patrol style game - this time round
explaining how he used physics and math to improve how the buggy jumps:
  https://youtu.be/-WgtfF1h-pM?si=GHn1LzdzGFuvG_Ne

4) Randy Kindig (of Floppy Days podcast fame) had a seminar on modern
storage and video output options for retro computers, where he covered 24
different platforms, including both the Coco 1/2/3 and the MC-10. Since
he had so many to cover, he only covers a few options for each machine,
usually ones that he has in his possession. (Coco section linked here):
  https://youtu.be/pk3vv-IhJTI?si=HdN49sw0iaFAz-nc&t=1981

5) A bit of a teaser for an upcoming video (hopefully within the next two
weeks) from TJBChris. To quote his post on the Tandy Discord:
"Hey all, I’ve been following up with my experimental Network 3 network
with a 8” system as host and CoCos as the clients.  To that end, I ported
over my old prototype XENIX dload server to CP/M (handling keyboard and
serial IO myself via the Z80 ports for the CTC, SIO, etc. as z88dk doesn’t
support the serial port for MII CP/M).
Unlike the Model III/4 implementation, you have to select ports Network
2-style as the CoCo lacks the serial handshake lines for determining
service needs, but it works and lets you access resources on the 12 from
a CoCo over the DLOAD protocol.  Hopefully I’ll get a video up in the
next couple weeks…busy times"

6) Jason Reighard uploaded his Day Two video for BoatFest that took place
last month in Hurricane, West Virginia:
  https://youtu.be/8ElFzSOOf9o

7) The Capixaba Computer Museum in Brazil posted some ad copy for the
Codimex cd 6809 (A Coco clone from Brazil) on it's birthday to the Coco
Facebook group:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161463441077641/

8) Glen Hewlett has uploaded a video showing his Coco 1/2 BASIC
cross-compiler in action, using Scott Cooper's (Tazman) Maze generator
program (I don't know if you will be able to hear Glen - his audio is very
quiet on the clip).
  https://youtu.be/47dkLLUU9OQ
And just this morning he has uploaded the compiler and installation
instructions. This is still considered a beta at this point, and also
requires some 3rd party packages installed as well (namely William Astle's
fantastic LWASM as well as QB64pe (Phenix Edition):
His blog entry which explains the compiler and it's current
limitations/differences from regular Extended BASIC
  https://nowhereman999.wordpress.com/2024/07/27/coco-basic-to-6809-compiler/

9) And speaking of BASIC compilers - microgames BASIC (ugBASIC) also had
updates this past week. The beta branch has had several sets of updates,
including things like:
  added D!POKE & D!PEEK (I assume that this is 16 bit word POKE/PEEK?)
  added PROC, NRM, AT, SWAP (swapping strings), KEYGET, DO NULL
The official release is now up to v1.16.3, which is primarily bug fixes
(and most for the other platforms that ugBASIC supports)
Main branch updates:
  https://ugbasic.iwashere.eu/changelog/main
Beta branch updates:
  https://ugbasic.iwashere.eu/changelog/beta

10) And now, an update to a FORTH compiler (in ROM). Henry Gernhardt III
posted his next FORTH ROM update on his "The Break Key" channel on YouTube,
this time he has gotten variables, constants & data memory working. There
is a also a shoutout to his mom and her birthday this weekend... and she
used to be a Tandy engineer:
  https://youtu.be/bF-MC-9azIM?si=Klj8leNxnCGI-NpS
(she called while he was recording - his funny reaction is around 38:49 in,
and also his shoutout to her and the Coco Nation, so play that)

11) Portuguese speaking YouTube channel did a short video talking about
the 6809 and it's history, which machines it was in, etc. (includes the
Coco). It does have some mistakes unfortunately (like showing a TRS-80
Model 1 instead of a Coco):
  https://youtu.be/5ksc7sV32Wg?si=QebnT8lAXaHrUEkZ

12) Pascal Vrancken posted a scan of an ad for a Coco 16K standard BASIC
bundle, including the tape recorder and black beauty joysticks. But this
is in French and is from Tandy's 1985 catalog in Belgium:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161468533777641/

13) New channel on YouTube "Recycled Game Room" released his first video
entitled "Small bedroom turned to Game Room! - Game Room Tour 2024". He
is obviously big into console gaming, but he also has tucked away a
Coco 2 and a Commodore-64, as shown in the clip. Might he do some game
demonstrations/reviews in the future?
  https://youtu.be/kg5YCT1yzHc?si=xQ8MeIS6v_2VdEx9&t=1013

MC-10
-----
1)

Dragon 32/64
------------
1) Julian Brown has a Dragon RAM updates:
Issue 6/Mk2 board - SRAM upgrade up to 64K on a late model Dragon 32
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3760328360893472/

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
==========================================
1) Jim Gerrie, literally a few hours after he converted *2* games over
to the MC-10 while our show was live, did an update to "The 6 Lilies" 3d
adventure game that was originally published by Infogrames for the Alice
(and in French). This video is also a complete walkthru, if you worry
about spoilers:
  https://youtu.be/PdQDy7yIHbs?si=wlI551sgm2MQiphg
He also ported the game "Shut up, and follow me" (with some enhancements)
originally for the Japanese NEC PC-6001, and published in the March 1990
issue of MiComBASIC magazine in Japan. His son Charlie helped translate
the original Japanese to English:
  https://youtu.be/CQWp-wdDEq4?si=Ia-uCRywfpJ0nOok
And of course, he converted the Game challenge game, converting "Dang
It!" originally by Richard Ramella from his column in Hot Coco magazine,
during last weeks show. Now with a video to show it in action:
  https://youtu.be/Yl4WkSfbHTM?si=1NrNJD44zrFcBEwT
He also converted the Coco game Devastator (written by Charles Brannon in
COMPUTE! magazine, August 1984) from the Coco to the MC-10. He did do some
modifications (speeding it up, high score feature, etc.). Also note on
the program listing the fact that BASIC handles multiple CHR$'s in a row
without semi-colons; this works on the Coco as well (and I had forgotten
about this trick!):
  https://youtu.be/_K0fl_MIygs?si=023QlQzs1C9Bnifm

2) Jim Mullis has a video update to his DC Comics based Super Powers game,
using Sundog's GrafExpress 2.0 package. He also shows off some of the new
hero animations that it has (Note, fast forward past loading screens for
the latter 2):
Firestorm:
  https://youtu.be/hh7m6vlTZxg?si=tUTD7r5Y9OSD-lrE
Green Lantern:
  https://youtu.be/F0PTwUz95EE?si=uvDKS31JcHOwa0e_
Martian Manhunter:
  https://youtu.be/V8Y8aWoRP5o?si=qWq1MwI81uLVeVBp

3) Italian YouTube page RetroTrailer-2 put up a quick video showing
Computerware's Q*Bert clone, Blochead:
  https://youtu.be/LyxwrSWZe7s?si=5K-sFmlg1uF0_7wr

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

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-- 
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Weylan-Yutani Corporation
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