[Coco] The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 385, October 26, 2024

Sun Oct 27 07:16:03 EDT 2024

The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 385, October 26, 2024
===================================================================
Collected by L. Curtis Boyle

Special Guests today:
---------------------
A follow-up to WORC (World of Retro Computing) with multiple people involved
with show - as organizers, exhibitors, attendees), including Stacey Vetzal
who will be telling us about her Coco exhibits.

Interview schedule:
--------------------
Next week (October 26) -

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. **
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/

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 goes off on another sidebar this week - using Visual Studio
to browse the source for MAME itself... and using the gdb debugger with
it debug MAME itself:
  https://youtu.be/sNYUXBpazDg?si=k6Z_4Pa7cn4YXyal

2) The America Before YouTube channel did a 23 minute video on the history
of Radio Shack, which even includes a snippet from a Coco 3 commercial:
  https://youtu.be/bidLW5x_yyk?si=gYsxpGlIAyFmDvsa

3) YouTube channel Hey Birt! released a video walkthrough of Tandy
Assembly. He was also one of the vendors and presenters.
  https://youtu.be/gucakvZ8Ewo?si=Eei4-h4k9-yPNcS9

4) Userlandia did a 1 hour video recap of VCF-MW, including showing some
Coco's (Phoenix NitrOS9 later at 16:29):
  https://youtu.be/X0boCaSemlM?si=n1L0SI5BS4oShynQ&t=776

5) I think I missed this last week - but CMOC version 0.1.89 was released
on October 16. Updates include:
- Function pmode() does change the screen mode anymore; that is done with
screen() (same as Extended BASIC) which allows double buffering to work
properly amongst other things. screen() also works properly remembering
if the Coco supports true lowercase (like the Coco 2B & Coco 3)
- bug fix to the OS9 version of putchar() now uses carriage return instead
of line feed as the line ending sequence
- switch() statement now supports 32 bit values
Full notes, downloads, etc. can be found here:
  http://perso.b2b2c.ca/~sarrazip/dev/cmoc.html

6) I now have full access to my websites again (finally!) As a quick test,
I uploaded the Preview version of the new BASIC09 manual - with the bonus
that the the small chapter 10 has been added to the original preview:
  http://www.lcurtisboyle.com/nitros9/nitros9_docs.html

7) Henry of The Break Key fame (and regular panelist on the show) released
a video on his YouTube channel called "USB to Coco Keyboard Adapter Part 1:
The Breadboarding" It's an hour plus video of scary hardware stuff:
  https://youtu.be/NGNwJkPQRqU?si=7KQ3YRZE2ZsrMcYO

8) Emerson Costa posted in the Motorla 6847 Facebook group some screenshots
of an optical illusion done on a VDG screen, and included the source from
an MC1000 computer. Since this computer has to POKE into VRAM to draw the
shapes and connectors, this would make a good candidate to port to Level
1 OS9/BASIC09. It POKE's to the screen *much* faster than Extended BASIC:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/173737063356725/posts/1635822757148141/

9) David Collins posted some exciting news in the Motorola 6809/6309/6800
Assembly Language Programming group on Facebook. He sent the 4.1 Gerber files
to his github (to make the board), and has posted the full programmers manual
for his 63C09 based computer that boots from SD cards. This is considered
a pre-release. His hackster.io article on it (includes photos and links):

https://www.hackster.io/514197/hb63c09m-10x10-63c09-expandable-single-board-computer-34904b

10) Chris Marrin posted a blog about his 6809 emulator written for the
ESP32 S2 Mini (he has it working on ESP8266 and ESP32 boards and Macs):
  https://marrin.org/6809-emulator/
He also posted about the 6809 in general, but in addition also about his
C-like language called Clover, which can now use the 6809 as a target:
  https://marrin.org/meet-the-motorola-mc6809/

11) Craig Iannello posted a question in the Motorola 6x0x group as well
about getting faster code than his own for doing annotated Huffman decoding
(he wants to decode compressed graphics faster) for his PUGPUTER single
board project. In the comments people were asking about the PUGPUTER,
so he gave a link to his github. Pretty cool sounding - HD63C09P running
at 3.58 MHz, 1 to 4 MB of RAM, a Yamaha V9958 Video Display Processor
(same as the MSX2+), a Yamaha YMF-262m (OPL3) sound chip, UART, 32K ROM,
RTC. It even includes a 6309 enhanced version of Microsoft's Extended BASIC
and some graphics and sound samples written in assembly and the enhanced
BASIC (Scroll down to see some sample screens):
  https://github.com/caiannello/Pugputer6309

12) There are some updates in several areas for ugBASIC:
Beta branch changes Coco related:
- SYS fixed under 6809
- Debugging out fixed on Coco and Coco 3
  https://ugbasic.iwashere.eu/changelog/beta
Main branch:
- fixed PRINT at end of screen for Coco 3, Coco, Dragon 32, Dragon 64
- fixed reset YCURSYS on scrolling on 6809 (DP Register)
  https://ugbasic.iwashere.eu/changelog/main
Brand new: 1st revision of the User manual is available on the author's
twitch.io page:
  https://spotlessmind1975.itch.io/ugbasic-user-manual

MC-10
-----
1)

Dragon 32/64
------------
1) Mike Miller posted some photos and a video of his iKON
Hobbit/Ultradrive/Dragonfly micro cassette system for the Dragon on the
Dragon Facebook group. This setup originally came out in 1983/1984 (version
2.3 in 1984). This micro cassette system was originally owned by one David
Rothery, who wrote articles for both Dragon User and 6809 User magazines,
including OS9 and hard drive articles:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3848498195409821/
He also posted a PDF to the Dragon group on how to make a cable between
the iKON and the Philips Digital Mini Cassette driver board:

https://www.facebook.com/download/549896360978317/Dragon%20Hobbit%20_%20ikon%20connections.pdf
The World of Dragon forums now have some uploads for the Ikon Ultradrive
Dragonfly OS and manuals:
  https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11199

2) Julian Brown posted a photo of the open frame setup version of his
Dragon 32 motherboards that he showed at the Dragon meetup, including his
256K RAM board which he said worked "great throughout the day". The new
revision he is working on now adds a new sound generator:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3845552459037728/
He is also now offering his Dragon 32 reproduction board for sale for £17
+ shipping. This version is more strictly a Dragon 32, although it does
include an additional connector for the keyboard to make it run as a Coco
(as long as you swap the ROM's as well). It also has an option to run as
NTSC in addition to PAL (this requires a bit more technical skill):
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3845476892378618/

3) Fix or No Fix on YouTube released a video about a Dragon 32 he got
from a local auction, that is quite yellowed. He tries retrobriting it,
recaps it and then tests to see if it works:
  https://youtu.be/oC-TbLCjUi8?si=3-ftbiiCvw8jby3N

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
==========================================
1) David Bean posted a screenshot of him winning the text adventure game
The Immortal Strain originally by Michael Edwards for Broomsoft (This game
uses the PMODE 4 screen for the text, so one gets a nice 32x24 screen with
true lowercase and bolded letters). One cool the thing - the original author
(who now goes by Eddie Edwards on Facebook) showed up in the comments to
talk about the game, that he originally wrote when he was 16:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3845844572341850/

2) Jim Gerrie released another video about his conversion of Nick Marentes
Stellar Odyssey - the Final Scene. Not going to spoiler it on the show,
but the link will be in the show notes if you want to see it:
  https://youtu.be/5vP6kqiIdJA?si=Ysgx_kFEySXRGG1d
He also released a blog post bout porting it:

https://jimgerrie.blogspot.com/2024/10/stellar-odyssey-by-nick-marentes-1982.html

3) The Laird's Lair did a comparison of 4 platforms playing Smurf based
games - for the Atari 2600, Colecovision, Atari 8 bit and Tandy Coco 3
(which is 1990 T&D Software game written by Mike Snyder, whom we had as
an interview guest some time ago):
  https://youtu.be/ZgWhM1OxSXQ?si=DbL4xFm9t11E6NMR

4) Retrogames-co-uk covered the Retro Videogames Show, and had a section
on the Dragons including a Dragon software catalog from April/May 1985,
and Dragon's Berzerk game (Mark Data's original):
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cc938gxGaD8&t=445s
He also did another video where he found a Dragon 32 machine language
tutorial package, but he liked the fact that it came in with a paper to
join the Cuthbert club, and then goes through some of the history and
Cuthbert games:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBlAMPrUp6Q&t=88s

5) The Non-Maskable Interrupt channel on YouTube did some more Coco 3 game
YouTube shorts this past week:
Leisure Suite Larry:
  https://www.youtube.com/shorts/EXBLuLghAXc
Joust (transcode):
  https://www.youtube.com/shorts/4EHJ1gV3K_w

6) RetroTrailer-2 posted a video of the Demolition Derby:
  https://youtu.be/QL5aFu5oQAg?si=ozTK0B1DOSjdvgzA

7) The Wargaming Scribe posted game #152, which does an in depth review of
"Up Periscope", a 1983 game for the Dragon from Beyond Software:
  https://zeitgame.net/archives/15712

8) AJ & Tim return to the fourth level of Dungeons of Daggorath for another
2 hour episode of AJ's frustration and rage:
  https://youtu.be/sBfMH6vvUyg?si=WuEQ7HxcgYm-JmX7

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

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Weylan-Yutani Corporation
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