[Coco] The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 363, May 18, 2024

Sun May 19 06:54:53 EDT 2024

The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 363, May 18, 2024
===================================================================
Collected by L. Curtis Boyle

Special Guests today:
---------------------
Peter of 8bitsinthebasement will be here to show and talk about his new game
(currently in beta) that is for all 3 Coco models and the Dragon 32/64. It
is based on a game he wrote for the Atari VCS earlier, and both versions
are the very first assembly language programs he has ever written!

Interview schedule:
--------------------
Parts 1&2 of 4 part Robert Kilgus interview from Ken on his Canadian Retro
Things YouTube channel are now up (see news).

Upcoming conventions/trade shows of interest to Coco people:
------------------------------------------------------------
The Festival of Portable Computing is on today and tomororw (May 18-19, 2024)
Centre for Computing History, Cambridge, England
This show is dedicated to portable computers. With Frank Swygert, Taylor
& Amy, and now portacoco.com, we actually have portable Coco's and
MC-10's... we should qualify for this show, right? :-)
https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/72231/The-Festival-of-Portable-Computing-18th-19th-May-2024/

The next Bay Area (San Francisco) Tandy Assembly meetup has been
announced. June 15 from 1-5 pm at San Franciso State University. There
is an online signup sheet to join the event, and they have announced that
Bill Hogue of Big Five Software fame is the Special Guest speaker:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc9ZDlEGBrd6okI9xIoKPjwLb4kHmdVFPvNog4lOUPEe5NaLQ/viewform

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

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/

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) Coco Town has posted Game revolutions cycle 10, where he follows up
with the actual cause/solution of the slowing down/speeding up of the
scrolling in his Moon Patrol game:
  https://youtu.be/HBK0xeoamFU?si=7ocOy6-Jn9BWR9Tp

2) TRS-80 Retro Programing released a video to show running total numbers
on the screen:
  https://youtu.be/bp1TXmJXduQ?si=vuQ5k1qpBgjCBaG3

3) Our very own Ken Waters of Canadian Retro Things has been extremely
busy this week.
First, with a quick review of CocoFest 2024:
  https://youtu.be/wzQYNZjpNKo?si=cdIYQYaYxgriF_8I
And then, with parts 1 and 2 of our lengthy interview with Robert Kilgus:
Part 1: The Early Years:
  https://youtu.be/zQAq5wNLcCo?si=hkDXXGssA93To7Vq
Part 2: The TRS-80 Model 1 Years:
  https://youtu.be/gAqG0lSyuLs?si=woaTCgeCWxUi3h-m

4) Frank Linhares of RetroRewind.ca has public service announcement:
"We had a small number of Diagcarts that left here with a beta of the code
accidentally. The ones in question are rev 2.1, the rev number is on the
main screen.
If anyone got one, take a screenshot of it showing that it’s 2.1, send
it to us so that we can send them the proper rev 2.2 one. This affects
the RAM & 6309 tests in particular."

5) Peter of 8bitsinthebasement (who was on earlier to show the game in
question) put up a video on using assembly code written for the Coco, and
getting it working on a Dragon (for his game Bob and the Alien Fireflies),
which he tests with a ROM hack on a Coco to run the Dragon ROM's:
  https://youtu.be/lBtHfmC17-E?si=3zVO5djjwBwql_K6

6) John Linville posted that they are inviting speakers for Tandy Assembly
2024, and that they also would like some volunteer contestants for the
Saturday night Tandy trivia game - they need 3 in all that have not played
it before. They are also adding "an expert round for each contender,
[who will need to tell John] their area of Tandy/TRS-80 expertise... the
more niche the better:

https://www.facebook.com/tandyassembly/posts/pfbid0243qkkm28phhYCFXeVURnPiELb5Hb6FGmyLTti98JPLuAXS5u2xuJ76EfWrkdEuQnl

MC-10
-----
1) Simon Jonassen put up a video on Facebook showing his first try at a 4
voice 1 bit music player on the MC-10. As he mentions in the description,
it is a work in progress and will get better:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/7438579222935502/

Dragon 32/64
------------
1) The "You Make Robots" channel on YouTube put up an instructional
video for using an SD card reader to load programs on a Dragon 32, using
a Dragonuitape(Maxduino):
  https://youtu.be/KQPC7vQ0PWg?si=Cm4IHjtTO1XKNjDw

2) Paco Blasco Abril proudly shows off his Dragon tattoo in the Dragon
Facebook users group:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3706591666267142/

3) "Mostly Horses and Retro Computing" (MHARC) on YouTube posted a video
followup of trying to get software to load on his Dragon 32 from cassette
files. He gets it working (demonstrating Frogger), but he is not getting
sound and the colors aren't right. If anyone has suggestions on things
for him to check, feel free to leave him a comment:
  https://youtu.be/zAIE0-60y0U?si=51vKIVOCzwZ81fYr

4) For those interested in "general" home computer magazines from the UK
(like BYTE, Creative Computing, etc. were in North America), The Laird's
Lair went through some of "Your Computer" in a video that is part 1 of
a magazine retrospective. They published both ads and programs for many
earlier UK computers, including the Dragon. In this video he covers the
December 1983 and April 1984 issues:
  https://youtu.be/oylrL_KV4l0?si=dPaRUYdRQQko9IVk

5) Julian Brown put up an experimental board layout on the Dragon group
in Facebook. If one did away with the original case, how much could he
squeeze in to an expanded Dragon, while retaining all of the original
features? What he has listed (and I am not sure what size the board design
is), he has added:
up to 3.6 MHz 6309
256K of RAM
Dual AY sound chips (6 channels total)
"fast" UART serial (I assume he means buffered, like the 16x50 series?)
Expanded video options (addressable VDG) - not sure what this means
2 button joystick support
(He answers my questions about the above in the comments)
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3711178192475156/

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
==========================================
1) YouTube channel Nostalgiavault posted 2 videos showing the Coco version
of Kindercomp - a series of 6 educational games from Spinnaker software:
  https://youtu.be/erZchLTXtyA?si=Orh6sJkKjoe6no92
  https://youtu.be/XbWtf5wVuLQ?si=zZNP_ZJ47KHPxSGn

2) Chronologically Gaming on YouTube is still continuing with all video
game releases from October 1982, and covered a few Coco ones this week:
Protectors (by Tom Mix):
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltLVMdMZAO4&t=65s
Tank (from T&D magnazine):
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLRGpj-o7dQ&t=1462s

3) XperTek covered Pooyan on his real hardware/amber monitor Coco 2
setup. The amber monitor makes it *really* hard to see what one is doing
on this game, unfortunately:
  https://youtu.be/sochL2l8WQg?si=xKIg_-CQToyojx7i&t=45

4) RetroGamerDiaries did a history & comparison video on their YouTube
channel, covering the History of the Horace games (which the Dragon
received several ports of) from Melbourne House - an Australian software
company. Gameplay for the various platforms is shown, including Hungry
Horace and Horace Goes Skiing for the Dragon:
  https://youtu.be/KG67XDZFYiw?si=RYHOED3NSOPccaUd

5) Tim & AJ return to the Coco with a Sibling Rivlary episode with one of
the Coco's earliest titles, Super Bustout (written by Glenn Sogge of The
Image Producers on the original prototype TRS-80 Color Computer):
  https://youtu.be/8hb5GD6NQZc?si=7_PdYf7e5KYH7V8S

6) Richard Kelly has released "Monsters And Magic" 64K Edition Beta
6. This is Richard doing reverse engineering, updates and bug fixes to
the original Mike Snyder version that originally appeared in an issue of
T&D tape magnazine (and Mike was an interview guest of ours a year or so
ago). You can download it from the Coco Facebook group. Richard provides
some details to the updates (including screenshots) in the comments:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161313663772641/

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

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