[Coco] The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 367, June 22, 2024

Mon Jun 24 08:41:25 EDT 2024

The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 367, June 22, 2024
===================================================================
Collected by L. Curtis Boyle and Mark Overholser

Special Guests today:
---------------------

Interview schedule:
--------------------
 No official interview, but hopefully Marc Bosley, Ken Waters, Jason
 Reighard, etc. can talk and share photos/videos from their experiences
 with both BoatFest and VCF-SW (Dallas/Fort Worth) this past weekend
Eddie Malphrus site - shows pics from VCF-SW:
  https://tandyshowcase.com/events

Upcoming conventions/trade shows of interest to Coco people:
------------------------------------------------------------
Retro-Computing Expo '24 is on June 22 from 11 am until 7 pm at Anvil Center
in New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada. It is actually 2 shows in one:
the Retro-Computing Expo and the Retro-Gaming Expo. They already several
presenters lined up, including 4 people to talk about the NABU, including
Leo Binkowski who was an engineer at NABU. George Philips, the author of
the TRS-80GP emulator and a regular on the TRS-80 Trash Talk podcast is
also presenting, amongst others. This is supported by the Chilliwack Retro
Computing Club, which has it's own Facebook Group:
  (show the copy of the "poster" that I was sent from my local desktop -
  "Retro-Computing_Expo_24.jpg").
Facebook group:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/ChilliwackRetro/

The Canberra Vintage Computer Exhibition 2024 (supported by VCF) takes
place in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia is a 1 day event
from 10 am to 3 pm on June 29 at Radford College. They are going to have a
wide variety of machines on display, and Ian Maveric (of the Trash Talkers
podcast, Coco RS-232 pak clones,etc.) is one of the people helping from
the TRS-80 & clone side:

https://www.facebook.com/events/s/canberra-vintage-computer-exhi/693500242752070/
They did a live stream with several of the people in charge, for those
who want to find out more about the show:
  https://www.youtube.com/live/vSnWzH-k8h8?si=eXotYeTxuNr4Qtvo

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/

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/

Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)
-------------------------------
1) Since TRS-80 Retro Programing is planning on releasing his various
Coco 1/2 games in progress fairly soon, he had to come up with both a name
and graphic intro for his software house. He did the latter with a pretty
neat effect:
  https://youtu.be/G27gmPIjvOY?si=SL05qLVU5RQX3Y_z

2) Thomas Cherryhomes issued another update to Fujinet on the Coco in the
Coco Facebook group, this time aimed at developers. He is updating the
"fujinet-lib" library, which people can look at and learn how to use them
as adds more functionality on his github:
Facebook post:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161361684907641/
Github example of the Network configuration on the Coco:

https://github.com/FujiNetWIFI/fujinet-lib/blob/main/coco/src/fn_fuji/fuji_get_adapter_config.c
And the corresponding function in the firmware (written in C++):

https://github.com/FujiNetWIFI/fujinet-firmware/blob/master/lib/device/drivewire/fuji.cpp

3) Paulo Garcia is now offering dust covers for the Coco 2/3 cases. These
are not see through plastic like the Tandy original ones, but white-ish
with black trim:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161361533892641/

4) Timothy Halloran, an active participant in the TRS-80 Trash Talkers show,
is starting a video series on prepping a Coco 2 for the Tandy Assembly
2024 auction that he just purchased. There will be more videos to follow,
including upgrading it to 64K:
  https://youtu.be/1eJzLNnAkoo?si=THnaVdBAEwaaaSb_
Part 2 is up now as well, which involves taking the machine apart:
  https://youtu.be/coWuJvZgr9o?si=vK5_xQQniXxIaaLO

5) YouTube channel Memoria do Microcomputador ("Micro Memory Channel",
a Portuguese channel) did a video about the ProLogica CP400 Color II
(use translate & close captioning):
  https://youtu.be/GAASDNfoBSw?si=839o4u2xfgfViheN

6) YouTube channel "FFF Gaming Emporium" did a video about his Coco 1
that he just set up, including trying some game cartridges and cassettes,
etc. Unfortunately he has comments turned off, so we have no way to offer
any help:
  https://youtu.be/bZPg-bKuDa4?si=hJ9tiKzbsIgw7Rng

7) Coco Town released a video called "5 shocking joystick secrets!". Some
of these even affect BASIC programs...
  https://youtu.be/V9k1ntFKYC4?si=Xrn9vrCzSz9Q-sfn
He did a follow up video last week - "How much can I speed up joystick
reading?". Here he covers using your own routine to speed up joystick
reading, including 1) not using the ROM routine, which reads all 4 axis
whether you want them all or not, and 2) Only reading enough bits to get
the directions you want, vs. all 6 bits for 0-63 on each axis:
  https://youtu.be/4n4jVRnIoN8?si=z3NC-lOBnh1TeIDq

8) La Coco Strangiato (Bob Emery) put up a video on his YouTube channel
showing the bare boards he ordered for making his very own mechanical
keyboard for the Coco's 1/2/3 (which he is calling Artemis):
  https://youtu.be/wEcrLY6kzxU?si=EHcD-0MLPlXEL0IC

9) Pedro Pena (Rocky Hill on YouTube) put up a video about attempting to
repair a dead GIME-X (from Bob Emery, I believe):
  https://youtu.be/jmjGzyv-lB0?si=rRKkvoO8b399D6cR

10) Leslie Anderson posted a link to a YouTube video on the Digicool Things
channel (from New Zealand, I believe), which shows a PLCC44 to DIP40 adaptor
that he has made for 63C09ECP chips (3 Mhz rated). It should be mentioned
that the person who made this is selling these in his Tindie Store, and
he has also made the Gerbers available if someone wants to make their own
(from his MECB Github). He also runs the 6309 at 4 MHz:
  https://youtu.be/9G7oKFOl_1E?si=z6pfLyAKA_Zb4qFR

11) Although Bill Hogue and Big Five Software never made any Coco games
(just TRS-80 Model 1/3 and Atari 8 bit), the interview with him from
The Tandy Assembly Meetup on June 15 does mention that adding voice to
their later games was inspired by the Coco game Skiing by Robert Kilgus
(and you can watch the interview with Robert that Ken and Curtis did to
get the story behind that). Nick Marentes also got some of his questions
answered during this interview as well:
  https://youtu.be/4u1GFxQe7sE?si=WEM9jq1TOIu5Ng89

12) Luciano Scharfe of the Brazilian Coco/CP-400/etc. group posted a video
about the VTruccoColorJoyMegaUSBAdapter (that's a mouthful!) joystick adapter
board (designed and built by Victor Trucco) that we saw in the photos from
8th meeting of the Color Rio Club that took place in Rio de Janeiro on June
1, 2024. This adapter has two standard Coco joystick output ports that one
plugs in at the same time, and has 3 joystick inputs: a standard Coco analog
joystick, an Atari style DE9, and a modern USB joystick port. There are
switches to change 1) which joystick port you will be using on the Coco,
and 2) whether it gets redirected to the left or right Coco port. This
should work on Coco's, the various Brazilian clones, and the Dragons:
* NOTE: Use YouTube CC with auto translate from Portuguese to English)
  https://youtu.be/Ti94n5zAN-s?si=ko1cDxsUeai_Vnav

13) Our very own Ken Waters has put up a video about last weekends 3rd
annual BoarFest retro gaming show in Hurricane, West Virginia. There was a
bigger Coco presence this year with both Jason "Cocoman" Reighard and Henry
"The Break Key" Gernhardt attending for the first time:
  https://youtu.be/zt0aoi8QlgY?si=ByImGO5mPVx79EVo

14) Simon Jonassen's Demo for The Mark Siegel challenge:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161388066407641/

15) Rob O'Hara's Boatfest 2024 Blog: https://www.robohara.com/?p=14723

MC-10
-----
1) Jim Gerrie ported another Artificial Intelligence demo program, this
time "Perceptron" (originally by Richard Forsyth and Chris Naylor from
the 1986 book "The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to Artificial Intelligence":
  https://youtu.be/_GNdexEnhuM?si=i5fvMW8grjJQXPB-

2) David Maunder has posted a ZIP file to the MC-10 Facebook group that
contains 5 songs for the MC-10 that use Simon's assembly language multi-voice
/ 1 bit play routine:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/7568323129961110/

Dragon 32/64
------------
1) For those using Ciaran's XRoar with the DREAM assembler, apparently
one of the latest updates fixed a problem where DREAM files would not load
properly, according to Facebook Dragon group member Kataja Kirjuri:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3728183694107939/

2) Tony Jewell posted in the Dragon Facebook group (and the World of Dragon
forums) that they are working on dates for the next Dragon meetup, to be
held at the Centre of Computing History in Cambridge. A tentative weekend
date of September 7-8 has been mentioned, but is not set in stone yet. If you
have alternate dates that would work better, now is the time to suggest them!
An update on Facebook sounds like it might be at the Museum of Technology
with possible dates of October 12 or October 19th. If one of these works
better than the other for people planning on attending, join the vote to
pick the date on Facebook:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3736013723324936/
Vote:
  https://doodle.com/meeting/participate/id/bqMByLrb/vote

3) John Whitworth announced that the Dragon PSU (Power Supply Unit) fully
built board is now back in stock at his online store, DragonPlus Electronics
(it is also available in kit form):
  https://dragonpluselectronics.com/product/dragon-psu-board-built-version

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
==========================================
1) XperTek returns with another Coco 2 / amber screen monitor gameplay
video, this time Birds by Tom Mix Software:
  https://youtu.be/EeSe1f7dqC8?si=V-9hviyzEHNlgrrI
He also did Bustout from Tandy/The Image Producers (Glenn Sogge in
particular):
  https://youtu.be/hj2B9EPjdfk?si=nJuO67Px491Y2VcG

2) Jim Gerrie put up his English conversion of the Alice (a later model
with upgraded graphics) RPG game originally called "Le Jeu des 6 Lys",
which translates to "The Game of 6 Lys". This was originally done
by a rather famous video game company that originally started on the
Alice/MC-10... called Infogrames in 1984. The game layout seems pretty
advanced for this time. (Please note that Jim's MC-10 programs recently
moved to the Internet Archive, so you can look for this program, and many
others, by looking up his name on the archive):
  https://youtu.be/YjEfdqMgADU?si=bJunp3i3yGuRgTG4
He also posted a blog about the conversion, and some bugs he found in the
original Alice version:

https://jimgerrie.blogspot.com/2024/06/the-six-liliesle-jeu-de-six-lys-by.html

3) Lee Perkins is now asking for people to try his new game engine test
program via the Facebook Coco group (he has already had a few testers in
the Coco Discord. This requires a Coco 3 with 2 MB of RAM and a 6309, but
features full speed 4 hardware scrolling of large levels. He would like to
get testers that have an 86 GIME, 87 GIME, and a GIME-X to compare results:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161386004117641/

4) Retrogames-co-uk on YouTube did his weekly game pick ups and top 10 -
and he picked up some Dragon games (the URL below will jump straight to
that part of the show). As usual - game packaging for the Dragon was *way*
better than most Coco releases:
  https://youtu.be/h5soKaGywMs?si=WhBr9cjTg4cdOT65&t=346

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

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