[Coco] The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 407, April 5, 2025
R. Allen Murphey
exile at weylan-yutani.com
Sun Apr 6 09:14:33 EDT 2025
The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 407, April 5, 2025
===============================================================
Collected by L. Curtis Boyle
Special Guests today:
---------------------
Ron Bihler, Charles "Chuck" West, Terry Trapp .... and Marc Bosley!
Special NOTES:
--------------
If we can't get anyone on from VCF-East, the VCF-East channel (under EVENTS)
on the Tandy Discord has some photos up already
Upcoming conventions/trade shows of interest to Coco people:
------------------------------------------------------------
We will hopefully have a live report, or maybe a bit of live stream,
from VCF East this year
The next Manitoba Retro Computer & Gaming club meetup is at the Fort Rouge
Leisure Center in Winnipeg, Manitoba on April 12. This is the same one I
attended last weekend, along with D. Bruce Moore and David Kroeker. This
next one is more themed around the Commodore 128, but I expect a wide
variety of machines like they had this past one, which was TRS-80 themed
https://www.facebook.com/groups/mbretro/posts/1830196931063991/
The same weekend, the Indy Classic Computer & Video Game Expo is going
on April 12-13, 2025 at the Crowne Plaza Indianapolis-Airport Hotel in
Indianapolis, Indiana. This is the show that has Randy Kindig (of the
Floppy Days podcast fame, amongst others) as one of the organizers, who
we interviewed on our show some time ago. Entry is $5/person or $10/family
https://indyclassic.org/
Saturday April 26 is the next Amigos hosted "International Computer Club",
which has people talking about a variety of hardware, software, collecting,
etc. retro computer & gaming projects. Both Nick and I have been on this
show multiple times, and Nick will be on it to show his Pinball project.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaD3XRYu1lQTWrMYYPmaOa4AIj4xArroD
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 14 (a
week later than previous). Bookings for tables will be going up in January.
https://www.glensideccc.com/cocofest/
Retrofest 2025, organized by Tony Jewell, is a retro computer festival
happening in Swindon, England May 31-June 1, 2025. Some Dragon people (like
Richard Harding and Chris Poacher) have already committed to attending
the show, being held at STEAM (the Great Western Railway museum):
Retrofest website:
https://retrofest.uk/
They even have a promo video:
https://youtu.be/UCZ-BtFW9Ok?si=B441wLvpDI2iekLN
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/
BoatFest (now International Retro Computer Expo) will be July 11-13 in
Hurricane, WV. There is now a promo video for it:
https://www.ticketsource.us/ircexpo2025/t-eanjyje
VCF-Midwest (the largest retro show in North America, I believe) is September
13-14 at the Schaumburg Convention Center in Schaumburg, Illinois. This year
is the 20th anniversary of this show, and there is a lot of collaboration
between CocoFest and VCF-MW, so expect a large number of Coco and Glenside
people at the show! Still free admission, and hotel booking is open already.
https://www.vcfmw.org/
That same weekend, Retro World Expo will be held September 12-14 at the
Connecticut Convention Center in Hartford, Connecticut. Tickets and vendor
applications aren't quite ready yet but will be soon. This is a gaming
oriented retro show (including tournaments) but also includes things
like wrestling:
https://retroworldexpo.com/
Tandy Assembly for 2025 is Sept 26 to Sep 28 at the Courtyard by Marriott
Springfield Downtown in Springfield, Ohio:
https://www.tandyassembly.com/
And they have some exhibitors already (click Exhibitors link)
This year's Portland Retro Gaming Expo runs from October 17-19 in 2025
(they just had this years Sept 27-29). Oregon Convention Center.
https://www.retrogamingexpo.com/
Canada is getting it's own official VCF - Montreal, January 25-26 of
2026. It will be held at the Royal Military College outside of Montreal,
but I don't have any more details (the venue, for example) yet:
https://vcfed.org/vcf-montreal/
Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)
-------------------------------
1) Coco Town went further into showing how he animated the baddies in his
Moon Patrol video blog series with Game revolutions cycle 24 (an assembly
language tutorial series for Coco 1/2). This covers animating the Feeblahs,
how the code generates multiple ones, and more!
https://youtu.be/jQ2NHO3v0tY?si=ktekC4z4JrwaBfSn
2) George Janssen returns to his Coco 3 assembly language source with part
c2 of showing how his TSR style pop up window system works (I believe he
has the DSK image uploaded to the Coco Discord in his channel, to save
you typing). In this short episode, he covers a few things that he missed
earlier, particularly on how to not cause problems with the programs main
tables going missing with MMU block swaps:
https://youtu.be/ObI5jeBt0A0?si=HIxh1K0i9nT31TBc
3) Henry Gernhardt of The Break Key fame (and renowned teacher of all things
Coco in classes at VCF East this weekend) released a video updating his
project of using a USB keyboard on the Coco, this time including alternate
keyboard mappings:
https://youtu.be/aIkOcMBCe0A?si=9E-7OQ-1QyoRWLcq
4) Glen Hewlett continues to improve his BASIC to 6809 compiler for the
Coco 3. He put up a test DSK image that can run on a real Coco 3 or XRoar
in composite mode. This uses smooth color mixing to make more apparent
colors - up to 256 - with a resolution that matches about 160x192. He even
has some of the drawing commands working in this mode, including SET, LINE
(regular line, the ,B option for a box and the ,BF option for a filled box),
CIRCLE, PAINT and FONTS).
Mount disk "DISK1_BASIC-TO-6809.DSK" from my Coco Nation News folder,
and run in XRoar with:
Machine -> Coco 3 NTSC
View -> Composite Rendering -> Simulated
LOADM"TEST3":EXEC to run.
5) ugBASIC also got some Coco 3 updates this past week, including first
support for hardware horizontal scrolling. Two short videos were released -
one to show some sound playing while it is scrolling, and a faster silent
demo:
Play the "ugbasic*.mp4* videos in The Coco Nation folder.
6) TRS-80 Retro Programing on YouTube has started a new port project - Cosmic
Ark. He put up a first level video for it, and explains a bit about the game:
https://youtu.be/kcLcyqsUG_4?si=daCNnQzNn6KaL4cA
7) Panorama Computer on YouTube did a quick video about the history of
the Coco 3:
https://youtu.be/e0gGcERXnls?si=5h4fdLsL8W4I9nIg
8) Abraham Moller put up a video testing the color and sound functions on
his Tandy Coco 2 with Extended BASIC, although his test demos only require
Color BASIC:
https://youtu.be/eTLyi6Dfrnk?si=kUPFz36hJipFDy5X
9) Thomas Cherryhomes released a one minute video explaining the updates
with version 1.5 for the Fujinet firmware (available on Atari & Apple II
8-bits, the Coleco Adam and the Coco - the video shows it on the Atari)
which now adds case insensitive recursive search (ie sub-folders) to CONFIG,
support for QR Code generation, and more:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162467519147641/
Full update notes here:
https://fujinet.online/2025/04/02/fujinet-firmware-1-5-released/
10) James Jones found an interesting hack/trick for BASIC09 to do the
equivalent of TAIL$ (getting the end of a string from a specified start
position), which it normally doesn't do on it's own. Wayne Campbell and
I are going to be mentioning this trick in the new BASIC09 manual, still
being worked on:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162449600267641/
11) Henry Strickland announced on his nekot-game-os channel on the Coco
Discord that he has an new release (and then some other changes), which is
his network Coco OS designed for game writers and players. He also posted
some release notes:
http://pizga.net/releases/nekot-bonobo-quick-release/nebo-2025-04-03-063522/README.txt
MC-10
-----
1) Have an MC-10 and having trouble trying to get the rarely available
MCX-32SD? If you mainly need it for storage, Jerry Kurtz posted a reminder
in the MC-10 Facebook group that the readily available BackBit Pro will work
on the MC-10 for loading .c10 cassette files from an SD card... and will
also work with many other retro machines with adaptors (including Coco's
and Dragons - which can accept up to 80 track double sided (720K) images):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/9310554689071270/
Details on all of the machines it supports:
https://store.backbit.io/product/backbit-pro/
NOTE: This does NOT give the MC-10 extra RAM or Extended BASIC like the
MCX does... if you need that functionality, you will need to keep checking
zippsterzone.com for the next available batch. (I did a check yesterday,
and not a single item for the Coco or MC-10 is currently available. Has
Ed completely stopped manufacturing?
Dragon 32/64
------------
1) YouTube channel Cybercrime Debunkers put up a video that rapid fires
scans of pages for the September/October 1982 until March 1984 issues of
french video game magazine Tilt (it covered electronic games, home consoles
and home computers). At 5:24 there is a review of the Dragon 32 - anybody
watching who reads French - can you translate it and let us what it says?
https://youtu.be/BMWkI0Tyz4s?si=cYASvltTlYVHm0NB&t=324
2) Julian Brown has another update on his new Dragon using a modern
case/power supply - the backplane is basically ready to go (he has a picture)
and he is waiting for the latest revision CPU/SAM card for further testing
(Dragon Facebook group):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3989043981355241/
3) John Whitworth posted a spreadsheet to the Dragon group on Facebook that
helps determine which RAM bits are not working correctly when testing bad
RAM chips:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3987816124811360/
Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
==========================================
1) Renga in Blue did a review of the adventure game Danger island, published
by Software for All (formerly Syntax Software), for the Dragon 32... and
figures out that part of it is pretty heavily based on an earlier game by
another company:
https://bluerenga.blog/2025/03/29/danger-island-1982/
2) Jeff Noyle, the author of the Windows/Coco 3 RPG game Mythwalker, was
on the Retro RPG Roundtable's 6th episode, where shows both the game in
action, his editing tools, and explains how the engine works. He even goes
through some of the design decisions and the basic plot (without trying to
be too spoilery). We talked about this last week, and he is hoping to the
the game out in about a year, for both Window and the Coco 3 (you can even
save games in progress on one platform and pick it up on the other). On
the Coco side, the game will require a 512K Coco 3 and disk drive minimum:
https://youtu.be/ETSo46f534k?si=xgbKsWY7enH9IK7Z&t=646
3) Pere Serrat has announced another games pack, but this time around,
pack #68 is MPAGD games. As Pere explains:
"Lately we are only finding games developed with MPAGD instead of AGD.
AGD was created by Jonathan Cauldwell in 2008 and we can work with the
Spectrum snapshots and extract the AGD source file,
that's to say a sequence of high level commands defined by the author,
thanks to a C converter (special for every CPU).
MPAGD (Multi Platform Arcade Game Designer) was also designed by Jonathan
Cauldwell in 2019, this time the tool uses the
project data to create an assembly file instead of saving a 'tokenized'
version of the data as AGD does.
We could not extract data from these snapshots because our Converters only
understand the data from std AGD files.
Fortunately, Kees van Oss has created a new converter that can deal with
these MPAGD games.
I have been beta testing the output files and that way we have found some
cases that had to be added to the converter.
The MPAGD games will be published in packs as the AGD games, to differentiate
them I will add (***) after the game name
to denote that it is an MPAGD game in the list of games per pack."
The games in pack #68 (all of them are MPAGD):
Jet Set Steamboat Willie
Mushroom Soup
Savage Princess 2
The Relic
http://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11272
Pere also released the NP14 games pack, which has 5 games that are Dragons
& Coco's with the SuperSprite FM+ board, with corrected palettes. The game
in this package are:
Mojoni in the Sewer World (Easy)
Mojoni in the Sewer World (Hard)
Monty's Honey Run
Nixy and the Seeds of Doom
Toofy's Nutty Nightmare
https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11274
4) Jim Gerrie released The Devil's Dungeon (originally by C. William Engel
in the 1978 book "Stimulating Simulations". This is an early RPG type game
that was ported to numerous early 8 bit computers, and as usual Jim took
the time to fix a few bugs while porting it over:
https://youtu.be/KRgIbIiv8ko?si=_kq4bYCpomFQwM0_
He also did a low res graphics game called "Drakulas Diamanten", orginally
by C. Seibt from the October 1983 issue of Home Computer magazine for the
Sinclair ZX-81. Jim not only ported it into color on the MC-10, but also
translated it to english based on the early Laser/VZ200 version of the game
(done by Wolfgang Wesemann in 1985). Jim did fixes & tweaks to this game
as well, including adding synonyms. This video is a complete walkthrough,
so if you want to solve it on your own, don't watch the entire video:
https://youtu.be/xLDRdiLSB8Q?si=Zp9HiXwadPdHJfDq
5) Ellimist on YouTube did some more adventure game speedruns this past
week. One that caught my eye is "Feasibility Experiment" by Brian Howarth &
W. Barnes for a variety of platforms as part of their Mysterious Adventure
series (published by Digital Fantasia). From the show notes, it sounds like
there was a Dragon 32 version, but he couldn't find it (and neither could
I), so he didn't cover it. Does anyone in the audience know where to find
the Dragon version of this game, or perhaps knows for certain that it was
never completed or sold?
https://youtu.be/aR3gI3qTeZM?si=OZ0VXmmYhG9gsL0A
He also did speed runs of Pyramid 2000 (sold by Tandy) - both the original
Model 1/3 version and the Coco version (and a modern Windows version!):
https://youtu.be/MYOfjR8wRTA?si=T7KTSPMF_UBfAvW-
And a speed run of Glen Dahlgren/Prickly-Pear Sofware graphical adventure
game, Dragon Blade:
https://youtu.be/goVJrLI1YFA?si=bQSyaEde9LmfA__C
6) jeo paps on YouTube released a gameplay video of Dave Edson's Catch
'Em, an Avalanche / Popcorn style game from Aardvark Software for the Coco:
https://youtu.be/Mr5DjaVXIqU?si=o1iYkTVQAcD0QGsY
7) Esperanto Arcade did an almost 20 minute video showing emulated Dragon
games along with artwork from the original packaging and the original
cassette tapes through the Hyper Spin front end, giving a nice wide
variety. Gameplay is fairly quick for each game - just a few seconds
for each:
https://youtu.be/M0E8K0sIJwU?si=r_tn7YwCmqGcfFHb
8) Yesterdane Xtra on YouTube posted a multi-part, very long gameplay
video of Robin Hood for the Dragon from Microdeal, written by Mike Chilton.
Part 1:
https://youtu.be/-o9ArtCY3Ww?si=208AtPHyZdbk3euz
Part 2:
https://youtu.be/JDgCn62SR1U?si=mcKioyF3yJnuJk7c
(to see the bonus screen, use):
https://youtu.be/JDgCn62SR1U?si=DC7dNSyWZ7YLL5qH&t=2661
9) ZXFrankie played Cuthbert Goes Walkabout on the Dragon 32 on his YouTube
channel... and on real hardware:
https://youtu.be/6WXlWIfDY6E?si=QYnPMsL4FwaAGgWH
He also played Cosmic Cruiser:
https://youtu.be/4wj_st-H3z0?si=_jbq3fZEmgst3-gp
==============================================================================
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--
R. Allen Murphey <exile at weylan-yutani.com>
Weylan-Yutani Corporation
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