[Coco] The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 386, November 2, 2024

Sun Nov 3 07:44:10 EST 2024

The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 386, November 2, 2024
===================================================================
Collected by L. Curtis Boyle

Upcoming conventions/trade shows of interest to Coco people:
------------------------------------------------------------
Retro Computer Festival 2024: November 9-10, 2024
Centre for Computing History, Cambridge, England
The largest general retro computing show in the UK (it's their VCF style
show), covering all retro machines. Tickets can be ordered online for
individual days or both days.
** NOTE: AS OF OCTOBER 9, THE SATURDAY SHOW IS COMPLETELY BOOKED AND SOLD
OUT. THERE IS STILL SOME SPACE ON SUNDAY. **
** AS MENTIONED IN THE NEWS, THERE IS A NOW ALSO A COLOR ROBOT BATTLE
TOURNAMENT! **
All of their events (including separate entries for both days) at the
bottom of this page:
  https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/pages/30677/What-s-On/

Retro SC, the retro show in Brazil, is having their 2024 event on November
16. This always has a strong Coco/CP-400/etc. contingent, including multiple
people who have been guests on our show.It is happening at 1670 Haroldo
Soares Glavan road, Cacupé, Florianópolis, Santa Catarina.
  https://retrosc.org/

The World of Commodore 2024 is November 30-Dec 1 at the Admiral Inn in
Mississauga, Ontario. Why am I mentioning this? Well, it's sponsored by TPUG,
and they created the SuperPET (a special PET with a 6809 CPU added...) and
they helped port OS-9 Level 1 to it. So it's a sister computer to the Coco
after those improvements.
  https://www.tpug.ca/world-of-commodore/world-of-commodore-2024/

VCF-SoCal - Feb 15-16 (Hotel Fera in Orange, California.
  https://www.vcfsocal.com/

VCF East has had a date change for next years show due to a scheduling
conflict. It is now April 4-6, 2025 - same facility as this year. Info
Age Science Museum, Wall, NJ.
  https://vcfed.org/events/vintage-computer-festival-east/

CocoFest is May 2-3, 2025 (with takedown on the morning of May 4/Sunday) at
the Holiday Inn & Suites in Carol Stream (Wheaton), Illinois. Hotel rooms
at the special Fest rate are available now ($122/night for two queens or
1 king bed), and apply for May 2-5. You will need to use the Group Rate
code of G30 to get this rate, and getting the special rate ends April
7. Bookings for tables will be going up in January.
  https://www.glensideccc.com/cocofest/

VCF-SW in Texas has been booked with dates: June 20-22, 2025 at the Davidson
Gundy Alumni Center, University of Texas, Dallas, Texas.
Tables & Tickets will go on sale January 2025. $20/adult ($25 if bought
at the door), $10/student ($15 at the door). 17 and under are free (with
accompanying adult). Tables are $50.
  https://www.vcfsw.org/

Tim Lindner let me know that next year's Portland Retro Gaming Expo runs
from October 17-19 in 2025 (they just had this years Sept 27-29).
  https://www.retrogamingexpo.com/

Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)
-------------------------------
1) CocoTown released a video about how to use BCD (Binary Coded Decimal) in
assembly language on the 6809. This is a convenient way to do digits that
can fit two per byte and can do some simple math without much conversion
needed to make into ASCII to put on a screen. He compares the speed of
BCD vs. the more commonly used method::
  https://youtu.be/MspTilYfmX0?si=4b2PcR9EcdL7nJYo

2) Ken of Canadian Retro Things put up a video for getting a couple of
tape recorders working with his Coco 3:
  https://youtu.be/NZ7qMBZXsB4?si=xoAJnDJmIsuDSlZ1

3) Eric Canales has released 6dev09 Build 19, and has also now made it
free & open source:
  https://www.playpi.net/6dev09-build-19-released-now-free-and-open-source/

4) Pedro Pena (Rocky Hill on YouTube) posted his SepTandy... errr,
OcTandy video about a project that he has been working on for some time:
An ATX style backplane Coco 2/3 that works with a standard ATX case/power
supply. Coco 2 is working now, Coco 3 is a work in progress. Each slot
has a card for a different function of the Coco, and it supports things
like modern wireless keyboards, etc.:
  https://youtu.be/f3vT7OViMJw?si=luk4xhIDNoIH1S3t

5) Multiple people mentioned a Jason Scott podcast episode about the
MC-10, where he talks about being pestered by James "Jim" Gerrie to
add online emulation support for the MC-10 on the Internet Archive (via
online MAME), and then goes into how much Jim has uploaded for the MC-10,
and how impressed Jason is with the effort:
  https://youtu.be/1BW973pX6BE?si=-kCkCbVp4NYUXDNh

6) Retro Fox on YouTube attended the VCF East Swap Meet last weekend
(like Henry did) and managed to get some Coco items:
  https://www.youtube.com/live/i5kKm1LtGKo?si=IIp1SxBfvx11emGP&t=1133
And one more:
  https://www.youtube.com/live/i5kKm1LtGKo?si=X2F5SC0NMdozQl3z&t=1898

7) Tazman (Scott Cooper) has been learning a little ML, and has a low res
maze solving program that has a cool animated background now:
  (show file "scott cooper (tazmn) assembly maze version 2.MOV" from
  my desktop

8) Glen Hewlett posted another update to his BASIC to 6809, to which
has added the faster floating point library that we mentioned last week,
written by Lennart Benschop. He mentions some benchmarks vs. the Microsoft
Extended BASIC floating for comparison:
  (show file "glen_hewlett_basic_compiler_update.png" from desktop)

9) RI Computer Museum did a quick video of a Coco 1, including showing
brief gameplay of Downland:
  https://youtu.be/L6vzWwKtJsM?si=Xc0tO1VMkY1-SxW9

10) Jim Brain, owner of Retro Innovations and president of the Glenside
Color Computer Club, posted two articles on how the external character ROM's
work with the 6847 VDG chip used by the Coco, Dragon, MC-10/Alice and other
computers work. Part of his research involves the original LowerKit done
by Dennis Bathory Kitz back in the 1980's, and he shows some alternate
character sets:
Part 1: Understanding external character ROM functionality on the 6847:
  https://www.go4retro.com/2024/10/29/how-low-can-you-go-2/
Part 2: Expanding the MC6847: Deciphering Fonts:
  https://www.go4retro.com/2024/10/31/expanding-the-mc6847-deciphering-fonts/

11) Carlos Camacho on the Coco Facebook group pointed to a cool auction
that has the manual for a rare operating system for the Coco called SOS,
and hoped that somebody in the community managed to get so it could be
scanned and preserved. We got lucky this time - David Collins won the
auction and will be receiving it soon. The community still need to find
the software itself. From the Hot Coco ad (see comments on the post),
it sounds like a real operating system with many calls, 35,40 or 80 track
single or double side drive support, and included patches for running with
Telewriter-64, Elite Word, and the Microworks Editor/assembler package:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161768509597641/

12) Martin Brossman posted a half hour interview with Steve Baker who is
the manager of Expert PC & Radio Shack in Elizabeth City, North Carolina,
and talks a little about his history selling Coco's, and his guest talks
about how the Radio Shack comeback is going, from his point of view:
  https://youtu.be/zEfA0_tt6j0?si=EeXQdI9ep0Gviy4W

13) ugBASIC continues to get multiple updates per week. This week included
some Coco fixes for the VDG (graphical position calculation) amongst
other things:
  https://ugbasic.iwashere.eu/

MC-10
-----
1)

Dragon 32/64
------------
1) Richard Harding, the historian of the Dragon community, is offering
some original artwork for sale that Dragon Data used for their "Selection
Four" software package. I don't normally list items for sale, but Richard
uploaded multiple pictures of the original artwork so I think it is worth
looking through:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3856198444639796/

2) Tony Jewell is doing a 6847 demo at an upcoming tradeshow, and he uploaded
some sample pictures to the 6847 group on Facebook (these all will work
without a SAM chip, so on things like the MC-19/Alice, VZ200, etc.):
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/173737063356725/posts/1641155646614852/

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
==========================================
1) Nick Marentes and Jim Gerrie have been talking about some updates to
Jim's MC-10 (soon Coco) port of Nick's original October 1982 TRS-80 Model
1/3 release "Stellar Odyssey", including some screen layout changes that
Nick suggested. Jim release an update video showing some of those changes:
  https://youtu.be/sxMyQe-vcMs?si=9F_YarpMCQ1YHnNd
He also released a quick video of the first Alpha of the Coco version of
Stellar Odyssey:
  https://youtu.be/xF2R8Jrcpv0?si=biqsYwDjJHn0gIl7
And he just released a video this morning showing it running under VCC, and
he mentions in the comments that he thinks he has loading/saving working,
so now it is bug testing (something Nick never had to do on the original):
  https://youtu.be/1CDM2MWAm3I?si=oH82dtfoM5-r4a-g

2) Tim & AJ return to Dungeons of Daggorath for part 7 (G) on their YouTube
My Drunk Sibling channel. By the end of this episode, an ecstatic AJ manages
to completely clean out level 4, and gets both the Mithril Shield and the
Elven Sword:
  https://youtu.be/ebujIXBlARI?si=Sg34g3D6tAh3MnQo

3) The non_maskable_interrupt channel on Youtube release a YouTube short
of playing Donkey King (on a CM-8 so it's in black and white):
  https://youtube.com/shorts/4b5LkMbLBxE?si=xnp0-DlkVWNbHswo

4) Thomas Cherryhomes of Fujinet fame has announced (and with a screenshot)
that a new cross-platform game for the Fujinet is getting a Coco version
soon - Fujitzee (a Yahtzee style game). Currently in alpha testing:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161752761667641/

5) For those of you familiar with the programming robots game Color Robot
Battle, John Metcalf is running a tournament at the Retro Computer Festival
in Cambridge, UK November 9-10 (next weekend!) (the same convention/trade
show that we have been plugging in our Convention/Trade show segment). Full
details are available here:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161751404172641/
Mini-Manual for this interested in entering:
  https://corewar.co.uk/colorrobotbattle.htm
They are accepting entries as plain text or saved on a .CAS file from one
of the emulators. The rules for the tournament are:
1) no pacifist robots, it must fire the laser and/or missiles
2) robots must contain at least one random condition =? or #?
3) please give your robot a name 🤖
4) each robot will battle every other robot over multiple rounds in
a round-robin
5) robots will be published at the end of the tournament
6) entries can be sent by Facebook Messenger, there's no need to attend
the event, deadline 8th Nov (I will acknowledge all entries)

6) Jim Gerrie pointed out on that a YouTube channel called "HiGuyInTheDark"
on YouTube did a video gameplay video of his port of the ZX-81/Spectrum game
"Alien":
  https://youtu.be/k_TPfaZuoxw?si=QnoAFwmj3NEZQ2Rq

7) The Wargaming Scribe has put out another Dragon war game full review and
write up, for Kriegspiel. Originally written by Ron Potkin for the TRS-80
Model 1/3 in late 1979, he ported it to the Dragon in 1983. As usual, he
does a very thorough review, including screen shots and even animations
showing game play:
  https://zeitgame.net/archives/15767

8) Retrogames-co-uk did another updated of stuff he has gotten 0 and this
week he got a Cuthbert Club badge:
  https://youtu.be/kxPaO5Ti2zw?si=jRSmhd_XsOMyMCtk&t=567

9) Steve Rasmussen (alias Buck Owens) put up a an hour long play video of
Nick's H.E.R.O. game run in VCC at 2.68 MHz (so close the speed a GIME-X
and GIME-Z will do). If you don't like spoilers, don't watch it all the
way through - Steve goes on to beat the game:
  https://youtu.be/anb5Q_1PWLY?si=lLAE9eXBlSRn32zq

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

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R. Allen Murphey <exile at weylan-yutani.com>
Weylan-Yutani Corporation
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