[Coco] The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 357, March 30, 2024

Sun Mar 31 09:48:21 EDT 2024

The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 357, March 30, 2024
===================================================================
Collected by L. Curtis Boyle

Special Guests today:
---------------------
>From the Pixels Addict magazine, we have 3 guests today:
  Paul Monaghan (editor)
  Ian Griffiths (writer)
  Tom Williamson (writer)

Interview schedule:
--------------------

Upcoming conventions/trade shows of interest to Coco people:
------------------------------------------------------------
The Southeast Michigan Vintage Computer Club is having a meeting/swap meet
at their April 6 meeting (12 pm - 4 pm). No admission fee. Ran by Adam
(Commodore Chronicles) and sponsored by Retro Rewind.
Grace Chapel's Gymnasium
2515 N. Williams Lake Rd.
Waterford Twp, MI

https://semichiganvcc.blogspot.com/2024/01/semvcc-ver-311-updated-swap-meet-april.html

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/

VCF-East: InfoAge Science and History Museums in Wall, New Jersey
April 12-14
  https://vcfed.org/events/vintage-computer-festival-east/

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 5 of the
extra overflow tables have now been sold):
  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, which includes a separate hall for just Tandy
machines. The main hall is already sold out for tables, and as of March 6,
only 2 of 21 tables in the Tandy hall were still available:
  (scroll down on the main page)
Jeff Wires (the host of Chronologically Gaming) and Boisy Pitre are both
speakers this year.
Speakers list:
  https://www.vcfsw.org/speakers

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 finally 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, et.c
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/

Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)
-------------------------------
A) (If David Ladd is on, have him give an update on getting the BlueSCSI
and hard drive images working, and some of the quirks found). It looks
like David Graham also uploaded the March 1992 MM/1 ROM images.

1) Ron Klein posted an updated for the Coco-Pi project, including an
installer version that is available for the first time to the public:
  https://coco-pi.com/coco-pi-project-update-2024-03-27/

2) Ciaran Anscomb posted a short but deep dive into how the NTSC Coco 3's
composite signal works (note - this is from the 1987 edition of the GIME;
there may be small differences compared to the 1986 GIME, but hasn't got
one of those to test):
  https://www.6809.org.uk/dragon/coco3-cmp.shtml

3) TRS-80 Retro Programing on YouTube put up a video going back to his
Tales of Suburbia game, showing him debugging the Hobby shop scene:
  https://youtu.be/rW_21pBT6bo?si=HttKQKj6bsw5zPjA
He also put up a little "side project" program for rotating globes in
BASIC. Warning - he has neighbor rant early in the video, and the project
isn't completed yet:
  https://youtu.be/jaLX0kaZ_w0?si=Ow2e7KsVaXD2aQjv

4) Todd Wallace posted some screenshots in the Coco group on Facebook
showing further progress on his Apple II emulator for the 6309 Coco 3 -
this time he has high res graphics (with artifacting) and floppy drive
emulation (currently read only). It is quite slow, but it works to the
point that it can boot DOS 3.3. No new release yet - but he is hoping by
sometime in April (so before the Fest!):
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161228127392641/

5) Carlos Camacho put a post up asking (in a hypothetical world) what
some of other color sets would have been best for making games on the VDG,
given the restriction of 4 colors on the screen at once. In the comments,
Paul Shoemaker put up the raw RGB values (8 bits per), and shows that
orange was an odd one, and suggests that black would have been better (and
I mentioned that would basically match one the IBM PC CGA color sets). But
Paul mentioned something I didn't know - the "pastel" color set actually
looks quite good on a monochrome monitor:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161226144482641/

6) For those on Facebook, Jack Chadwick started a new public group devoted
to Tom Mix Software - both on the Coco and the Dragon:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/773263327604888/

7) Thomas Cherryhomes put up a video showing him using an 8 bit Atari
terminal program that emulates Videotex / VidTex, based on a demo server
for Videotex written by Tim Lindner (based on the Coco terminal program
and actual console):
  https://youtu.be/HpeaYuWS94o?si=CwkBhavu9Uw8Iy-D

8) Neil Cherry is working on porting Peter Stark's HUMBUG debugging tool
for the 6800 (he later ported it to the Coco and 6809, I believe). On the
same Github that he has for HUMBUG is a copy of other utilities, and also
Microware's very first OS - RT/68MX - a real time OS for the 6800 that came
out in 1977 while Ken Kaplan was still in University (and it was because
of this OS that Motorola worked directly with Microware on making the 6809
and the BASIC09 programming language for it):
Post about HUMBUG:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/6809assembly/posts/3337406853219340/
Github readme:
  https://github.com/linuxha/RT68mx/blob/main/README.md

9) Ciaran Anscomb released version 1.5.5 of XRoar, which when tied with
a bugfix to SDL 2.29.3 for Windows, should hopefully smooth out some of
the audio glitches that Windows (and Mac) users have reported:
Announcement on worldofdragon forums:
  https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=11152
Ciaran's site with download link:
  https://www.6809.org.uk/xroar/

10) Allen Huffman delved into Steve Bjork's TRS-80 Model 1 software in
his blog, including 2 videos we showed last week (Space Ball and Soft
Music Editor), both from 1980. He mentions in the blog that there is a
Space Ball 2, which was basically the same Circus type game, but with an
added countdown timer before the next ball drops. He also found a screen
shot of Galactic Fighter. Allen notes that in an interview that Steve
game in 1997, Steve said that his game came out about 3 months before
the arcade smash Galaxian (which played similarly and came out in the
U.S. in November of 1979), but Roger hasn't transferred that one over yet
(and it sounds like he has to be extra careful with that one). Also found
were 2 Model 1 BASIC programs (one of which we will talk about shortly,
as Jim Gerrie ported it to the MC-10): Perpetual Calendar and Bio-Rhythm,
as well as his light pen software extensions for BASIC:
  https://subethasoftware.com/2024/03/26/steve-bjorks-trs-80-model-1-days/

11) Marco Spedaletti has released a new version of ugBASIC (microBASIC)
- version 1.16. This update affects all the computers it runs on, but
particular attention was made to the Ccoo 1/2 and Coco 3:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161232434407641/

MC-10
-----
1) Jim Gerrie ported "Planets" originally by Gordon Speer for Computronics
magzine issue #28 (1980) to the MC-10, adding some color to the original
TRS-80 Model 1/3 program. This shows the relative locations of the Earth,
Mars, Jupiter and Saturn around the sun, showing their different speeds
in orbit:
  https://youtu.be/g3nLz-M2dDE?si=Rc10IMaC9K5QA_ct

2) Jim also ported an early Calendar program originally written by Steve
Bjork to the MC-10:
  https://youtu.be/Fo_O0Jb0Yyo?si=I39z2-UJpZAmRVvG

3) He also pored "Testamour" which is a program to test the users knowledge
of BASIC, originally published by the editorial team in the April 1985
issue of the french Micro 7 Magazine. Looks a bit buggy at the moment:
  https://youtu.be/LSDfcshWD1k?si=1s-00NQkOwTU7391

Dragon 32/64
------------
1) Phil Harvey-Smith in the Dragon Facebook group, has also been playing
with his 3D printer - And posted some photos:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3674562179470091/

2) Julian Brown has started working on little sound chip daughterboards
for his Dragon 32 repro project, and posted a photo of one he started 2
years ago, and a very recent one:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3674434182816224/

3) John Whitworth of DragonPlus Electronics has posted a PDF document that
compares his replacement power supply board for the Dragon, with a Spanish
made one based on an MP1584 made by Ant Goffart. There is also comments
between Ant and John on the original Facebook post:
Facebook post:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3673993559526953/
PDF direct download:
  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iOR5R4TVqRTpUlpOZOgE_RQ0JS-tueJo/view

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
==========================================
1) Jim Gerrie converted Nanochess's 10 liner BASIC program Tentris to the
MC-10 (it was originally for GW BASIC on an IBM PC). Jim did have to expand
it to 20 lines to work on the MC-10. Jim's version, because of the way it
uses SET/RESET to draw, has an interesting effect as each piece moves down:
  https://youtu.be/u03S6GKk_9Q?si=K3DXud1KLWbTLh9L

2) Renga in Blue (the Interactive Fiction All the Adventures text adventure
game site) did a review of the text adventure ENO from PAL Creations from
1982 (using the Dragon version):
  https://bluerenga.blog/2024/03/22/eno-1982/

3) The Russian game playing YouTuber we showed a few weeks ago has added
some more Dragon and Coco gameplay content this past week:
Laser Run for the Dragon by Blaby Computer Games:
  https://youtu.be/NJAWYo8jX5s?si=jSHmFkolPqU6VCN3
Return of the Jet-I from Thundervision on the Coco":
  https://youtu.be/iyWi9s_sSpw?si=zUQvd4ZXiHkxCVyD

4) Tim & AJ on episode 128 of Sibling Rivalry take on one of Dave Die's
earliest games - Fight Pilot - on the Coco:
  https://youtu.be/ia9QJE8aXJE?si=97AcMEaEhdWI-9Up

5) Pere Serrat has released the Supersprite FM+ required AGD games pack #10,
featuring 4 new games:
Astronaut Labyrinth
Doom Pit Part I
Doom Pit Part II
Doom Pit Part III
  http://www.retrowiki.es/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=200040290
(not on worldofdragon.org yet; Pere couldn't upload)

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

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