[Coco] The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 353, March 2, 2024

Sun Mar 3 07:49:59 EST 2024

The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 353, March 2, 2024
===================================================================
Collected by L. Curtis Boyle

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

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

Upcoming conventions/trade shows of interest to Coco people:
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TRS-80 Trash Talk is live tonight at 9PM Eastern, streamed on youtube. They
are thinking of doing a magazine walkthrough (like they used to do on their
podcast way back), and the issue they are doing today is the August 1982 80
Micro. This is one I actually own (and bought it at the same time as the very
first Rainbow I got, from the same month) and has multiple Coco programs,
plus interviews with the people making graphics for TRON, and with Leo
Christopherson, from when he was working on his first Coco game, Klendathu:
  https://www.youtube.com/@TRS80TrashTalk/streams

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) The Taylor and Amy Show did an episode on the Color Computer Mascot -
including making him/her - bow tie and all!:
  https://youtu.be/lsOtBIVRnyE?si=KMcDB7gJfUed_H6w

2) George Janssen has posted episode 9 of his Coco 3 assembly language
programming series, this time explaining how the keyboard matrix works,
and how to read it:
  https://youtu.be/B_RgJVTTm6Y?si=KeGJK_aQ8qAR6Tjc

3) TRS-80 Retro Programing posted an update to his Coco Ultimate project,
and now has the hit detection working:
  https://youtu.be/Hsqo_HLEif4?si=NbgaB-TzySj51bsY

4) Coco Town released part 4 of his working with Coco assembly language
sound, changing to fixed point to replace his original oscillator routine
to get much better quality sound:
  https://youtu.be/2l6sm3blGJw?si=BscU_e_H0JdBn5b8

5) The Break Key (Henry) has released his next episode of making a Forth
ROM for the Coco 1/2 - now implementing some math routines with base 2 to
36, and the first few word tokens in FORTH as well:
  https://youtu.be/_d234i7g62s?si=1VKJ6FdQuocRaxPF

6) The individual videos for each presentation at the Virtual CocoFest are
up on YouTube, and Marc Overholser will quickly go over which presentations
we had last weekend:
  https://www.youtube.com/@The_CoCo_Nation/streams

7) Grant Leighty posted an update on CocoFest 32 on the Glenside site:
  https://www.glensideccc.com/cocofest-32-update/

8) Joel Ewy posted in the MM/1 group on Facebook that the BlueSCSI's SD
cards are, in fact, hot swappable (although don't try writing or reading
anything to the SD card when it's not actually there). These lets you add
files, etc. on another machine without have to reboot the MM/1 from scratch:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/3194643584094250/posts/4405166233041973/

9) David Collins posted an update to the 6309 based homebrew computer that
he is working on. He has it working with "Self staging". This allows his
board to load code to the 6309 CPU at boot up with RAM only pulling in
a small relocatable, self modifying loader in the 48 byte space of the
AVR. (Details in his post):
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/6809assembly/posts/3320545464905479/

10) Michael Pittsley has posted another set of long form videos covering
some of the multi-media educational programs for the Coco from Dorsett
Educational systems. This includes a 2 part Algebra course, a 2 part
Reading Comprehension course, a 2 part Spelling course, and 2 more parts
(9 and 10) of the United States History course:
  https://www.youtube.com/@michaelpittsley8323/videos

11) The Hayden Walt Bradley Channel on YouTube did a review of a collection
of things. This time around covers some computer books including the Coco
2 BASIC manual, and a 64K Coco 2 itself, amongst other things:
  https://youtu.be/7Y5djKD1S9E?si=s0ob2tA59adZJFPY

12) Terry Steege's YouTube channel Retro Tech Time put up a quick video
of 2 rather damaged/dirty Coco 2's that he received. He is going to try
to restore them:
  https://youtu.be/2T6D8ymq2YA?si=IDE_slbYkz3CkoUR

13) Suburban Relic's on YouTube posted a short video showing a Coco 1
he picked (with an HJL-57 keyboard, no less) and runs the Radio Shack
Diagnostic cartridge on it to test graphics, sound, etc.:
  https://youtu.be/-1-mJwElz7g?si=9UJdEGGszJbf2aci

14) Allen Huffman posted part 5 of his series on converting Rick Adams
Coco 3 game Lights Out to regular Color BASIC:
  https://subethasoftware.com/2024/02/27/lets-write-lights-out-in-basic-part-5/

MC-10
-----
1) For those who want to try a homemade composite video/audio out mod for
the MC-10, Mark Dusko posted his on the MC-10 Facebook group:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/7079721405487954/

Dragon 32/64
------------
1) Mostly Horses and Retro Computing on YouTube (MHARC for short) posted
a First Look video of the Dragon 32 he recently picked up, and what he
got with it:
  https://youtu.be/t56UaTXYfGU?si=dxreC1-Ix-V4S0qV

2) In a reverse conversion from normal, JSW Central presented a walkthrough
of John Elliot's 2006 conversion of the Dragon 32 version of Manic Miner
(originally by Roy Coates in 1984, and itself based on the original 1983
version by Matthew Smith) to the Spectrum 128K. He also showed Jetset
Willy that went through the same porting process:
  https://www.youtube.com/@jswcentral/videos

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
==========================================
1) Jim Gerrie ported the CryptoQuote from Syntax ZX80 magazine's very
first issue from 1980. It helps one solve substitution cyphers:
  https://youtu.be/d_fVtmnAWAY?si=q0dDC8lHPGOQ11Bf
He also posted "Cape Breton Song" - featuring a nice low res graphic
homage to his home and the lyrics to Island Song appearing on the bottom
(no actual music):
  https://youtu.be/JBifyfm9I1o?si=iae8gnIvnBUsD_C4
He also ported "Escape from Monster Manor", originally by Jim McLellan in
2020, from the MC10 to the MC10. No, that's not confusing - Jim wrote the
original game requiring MCX BASIC (the Extended like BASIC Darren Atkinson
made for the MC10) and converted it back to run on a regular Microcolor
BASIC machine (although you will need the 16K RAM expansion or higher):
  https://youtu.be/HvwdhvFgR34?si=zZ8P3d5_K4QHPkwC

2) Animation Plus did a video reviewing the top 12 ports of Arkanoid -
Steve Bjork's Coco 3 port made the list (Coco version is the 2nd one shown):
  https://youtu.be/Hn3pX3eSZHY?si=w5UqIDffOdtaLUJI

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

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Weylan-Yutani Corporation