[Coco] The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 364, May 25, 2024

Sun May 26 09:18:05 EDT 2024

The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 364, May 25, 2024
===================================================================
Collected by L. Curtis Boyle

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

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

Upcoming conventions/trade shows of interest to Coco people:
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The next Bay Area (San Francisco) Tandy Assembly meetup is June 15 from
1-5 pm at San Francisco 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/

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) The Vintage Geek put up a video showing a bit of the history of X10
controllers, and then demos the Radio Shack Plug 'n Power running from a Coco
2, including showing the built in software and controlling multiple devices:
  https://youtu.be/nkcERvE8bsI?si=gD1tXwFSwaH2oijM

2) Ken has posted parts 3 & 4 of our lengthy interview with Robert
Kilgus. Part 3 covers the main part of his career with the Coco from
1979-1984, including selected as one of the few to get the earliest
prototypes of the TRS-80 Color Computer, the cross development system
he used for the earliest Coco programs, and developing his Coco specific
programs and games:
  https://youtu.be/kJT9T2apvvs?si=6kYwYM_p10q57jtR
Part 4 (the final part) finishes covering the Coco (including the unreleased
OS-9 Scripsit from 1984) and his final home computer (multi-platform) project
- and what went wrong there. And a bit of what he is following these days:
  https://youtu.be/uwuS4dFg93o?si=T3RAXmxPugyQuTsb

3) Aaron Newcomb on his Retro Hack Shack After Hours channel posted a
video of a "mystery mod" that he found on a Coco 1 he purchased from ebay,
which he delves into figuring out what it does (hint: it's video related):
  https://youtu.be/5m_5qh7uI9w?si=mktLb3VxUKxcercq

4) Bob Emery (La Coco Strangiato) posted a video showing some music he
did using the PLAY command several decades ago featuring the music of RUSH
(Good choice!), and explains some of the PLAY commands he used:
  https://youtu.be/zkClAtFq4GM?si=tZKVxYjDOO_fxfRo
He also posted a video about his breaking of his Mini-MPI (2 slot MPI from
Ed Snider/Zippsterzone), and seeing if he can fix it:
  https://youtu.be/xcoV2Kthi6w

5) Jason (cocoman.biz) has put his video about CocoFest 2024 on his Fairly
Amused YouTube page:
  https://youtu.be/bSTmng8zpkU?si=59RH0m7vl5eEk6GF
He also has the jam session for those who want to assault their ears. It
includes our parody of the Tommy Tutone song "867 5309 (Jenny), called
"Upgrading to a 6309" near the beginning. I posted the lyrics (pretty
close to the version used; we were changing it just a few hours before)
in the comments:
  https://youtu.be/eNgbZy6G8O0?si=nu50-AQV9XyUQvUU

6) TRS-80 Retro Programing released a video of his testing his Tales of
Suburbia stage 3 save game feature:
  https://youtu.be/G3OFcmwshCI?si=NitkMV37XzETHdK7

7) Thomas Cherryhomes posted that a new version of TNFSD (24.0522.1) has
been released, which fixed crucial bugs found when they deployed the new TCP
transport, and it is recommended that everyone using Fujinet switch to it
(who is running tnfs servers). Firmware updates for users of Fujinet are
also coming shortly:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161322549042641/
He also put out a request for people to help port 5 Card Stud to the Coco
for Fujinet (it looks like Brendan Donahe may have volunteered to help):
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161315838507641/

8) Mike Rayburn posted a correction (brought to his attention by a user)
to his Coco PS/2 kit, so he has updated his assembly instructions adding
a missing critical step:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161314104987641/

9) "They Create Worlds Podcast" on their 173rd episode is doing part 2
of their "The Computer Price Wars". Just over half an hour in they get
to the TRS-80 Color Computer, although they poo-poo it as not being that
relevant (once again, I wish we could get firm numbers on Coco's sold,
although at least for the Coco 1 I know it was over 500,000). Instead they
place a lot of emphasis on the TI-99/4A - which was blown out at bargain
prices and gone from the market by March of 1984. The Coco, as we know,
lasted from 1980 all the way to 1991; one of the last 8 bits standing:
  https://youtu.be/Ae1NJl8kFhM?si=dTrsg-M7WVeCHflJ

MC-10
-----
1)

Dragon 32/64
------------
1) Julian Brown posted another update to his expanded Dragon 32 motherboard
design for an ATX case. It has enough room for 3 slots for it's built in
MPI, 256K RAM support (he may expand it to 1 or even 4 MB). And Julian -
with NitrOS9 and/or Fuzix there is plenty use for 1 MB of RAM or higher -
like the MOOH board does:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3715303238729318/

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
==========================================
1) CocoTown did a rather different video - using the cheat code that Chris
Latham gave during out interview with him some years ago to his game Sailor
Man, which prevents any collision detection from killing the player. However,
as he soon discovered... it doesn't disable the timer of taking too long
after a heart, note, or letters hits the bottom before the players life ends:
  https://youtu.be/BQxRWrDiDUY?si=bXB1fFEaMDIc58oK

2) Richard Atkinson posted some photos of the manual and disk set for an
adventure game for the Dragon 64 called "The Stone of Magician", although
the main instructions and the game itself is in German. From the responses,
this is a game that has not been seen before, and came out from Dragon
Power Software in 1990/1991:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3712800785646230/

3) Rick Adams, with help from multiple people, has been working on getting
his newly found original Omnistar (not the Coco 3 one released a few
years ago, but a Coco 1/2 not completed version from the 1980's) running
as far as he had gotten back in the day, and has been posting updates and
screenshots of his progress. I don't believe that he has plans to finish
the game at this point:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/colorcomputer/posts/971047051177694/

4) XperTek did another Coco 2/amber monitor game play video, this time
covering Tandy's Tennis, programmed by the Image Producers:
  https://youtu.be/WDuyrJUOC8A?si=82CyPG7iTD7i6ARB

5) Nostalgia Vault (which does gameplay videos for a wide variety of
systems), covered both the Coco 1/2 and Coco 3 versions of Ruptus from
Inufuto with short video clips, which is a Bosconian style game we played
not too long ago on the Game On Challenge (scroll to find the Coco entries):
  https://www.youtube.com/@nostalgivault3439/videos

6) Attempts: A gaming channel (by LRU) put up a quick 2 minute video
showing gameplay and a high score attempt playing S.A.S (Special Air
Service) on the Dragon 32/64. This is not one that I have seen before,
but looks to be a war strategy game. Has anybody in the Dragon community
played this one before (it seems to be a BASIC/ML (sound) hybrid):
  https://youtu.be/QyffpOR46qA?si=kCdtfRUn99h_fu70

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