[Coco] The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 398, February 1, 2025

Sun Feb 2 10:38:05 EST 2025

The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 398, February 1, 2025
==============================================================
Collected by L. Curtis Boyle

Upcoming conventions/trade shows of interest to Coco people:
------------------------------------------------------------
VCF-SoCal - Feb 15-16 (Hotel Fera in Orange, California).
  https://www.vcfsocal.com/

VCF East is April 4-6, 2025 - same facility as this year. Info Age Science
Museum, Wall, NJ.
  https://vcfed.org/events/vintage-computer-festival-east/

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/

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/
Tables go on sale this weekend.

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 will be July 11-13 in Hurricane, WV.

Tandy Assembly for 2025 dates have been announced - it will be Sept 26 to Sep
28 at the Courtyard by Marriott Springfield Downtown in Springfield, Ohio:
  https://www.tandyassembly.com/
There were some issues with people getting the room discount for Tandy
Assembly, so a direct link to the Tandy Assembly discount page is available:

https://www.marriott.com/event-reservations/reservation-link.mi?guestreslink2=true&id=1736272541233&key=GRP&fbclid=IwY2xjawHuW9JleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHRD9cHXLrz9m2RLsPGX_Xm-h-vUdAv8vvjVcv-4h8YBQOtvU5qwd2eqQ2g_aem_FQ2XTnEEbx8JK0elPC48xg

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) George Janssen has released part A of Lesson 15 in Coco 3 assembly
language programming. This lesson covers Palette automation (and he has
released the sourcecode on his channel on the Coco Discord:
  https://youtu.be/1-vautQRLRU?si=eqrRf_DUYmrzJ3kD
And part 2 has been uploaded (including source in the Coco Discord):
  https://youtu.be/sEe4jdns-Y0?si=JWNb_W2bpILCC8th

2) Erico Patricio Monteiro posted a photo of an original CP-400 joystick side
by side with Mauricio Matte's modern version, which we talked about recently:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162257376742641/

3) Steve Strowbridge put up a video to the Coco group on Facebook, showing
how to cut/paste source code into XRoar directly using a mouse, from Windows:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162254939087641/

4) Terry Trapp released part 2 of his video about how to hook up a Coco 3
to a VGA monitor on his YouTube channel "Terry's Workbench", with a good
technical explanation of how he got it to work. Note: it does not currently
support artifact colors:
  https://youtu.be/X-hirkximvA?si=HfFGy2jtS9PiDfas

5) John Goodwin posted a photo of himself by his Coco 1 BBS dating back
to 1983, and mentioned that he had even modified the BASIC ROM to add some
commands to help the BBS software (which started a good comment discussion
on using the Coco as a BBS host... something I did myself between early
1983 and 1989):
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162250981407641/

6) More updates to ugBASIC from Marco Spedaletti, who posted about version
1.17 being released, including an updated manual, and some specific things
for the Coco 1/2 and Coco 3:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162250829162641/
Direct link to the Coco version:
  https://ugbasic.iwashere.eu/target/coco?target=coco123

7) Grayson Walker posted BASIC source code for his Q&D maze renderer... which
currently runs in PMODE 0 (so the graphics screen only takes 1.5K of RAM). He
still has more to do on it, but as a proof of concept, it looks good!:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162250454382641/

8) James Jones uploaded a copy of revision H of the BASIC09 manual (as it
was published for OS-9 Level 1) in PDF format, but unlike previous scans
it is text searchable:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162249563667641/

9) Simon Jonassen re-released (in the 6847 group on Facebook) his sample
program for Coco & Dragon that demonstrates page flipping between two
SG-24 screens to get more than 10 colors:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/173737063356725/posts/1700900900640326/

10) David Collins released an update to his 6309 single board computer
project - it now supports the 6809 version of BBC BASIC and the 6850 serial
port with interrupt driven I/O, rather than polled:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/6809assembly/posts/3573756539584369/

11) The InMySpareTime101 channel on YouTube posted a short video showing his
upgrading a 16K Color BASIC late Korean Coco 2 to 64K of RAM and Extended
BASIC. He uses (and is aware of) Color BASIC 1.4 being an un-official hack
to the last official 1.3. The channel has comments disabled, so hopefully
the author is watching this, as I wanted to mention something; one of the
patches done in the unofficial 1.4 is to double the length of a cassette
file header. This was a known patch back in the day to make cassette
saving/loading possible with the high speed POKE (POKE 65495,0) on, giving
a cassette user somewhere around 2600-2700 baud (versus the regular 1500):
  https://youtu.be/OczPIeKx6i8?si=IWodycVKMntdG3TR

12) TJBChris returns to the Coco with his latest YouTube video. In this one,
he shows how to get Tandy's CM-11 monitor to work on a Coco 3... which
normally can only use Tandy's special CM-8 monitor. It's a higher dot
pitch than a CM-8, so text is even more readable - but one loses some of
the colors:
  https://youtu.be/VmyT75ch9zc?si=fh9L9CmrUpLg66vB

13) XRoar 1.8 has been released, which has several updates:
 - automatic config saving
 - hard drive image mounting from the UI
 - MC-10 now has MCX-128 support
I will mention that Erico Monteiro mentioned on the Coco Discord that he is
having crashes when he tries to use ZOOM IN or ZOOM out, and is wondering
if anyone else is seeing this?
  https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=11235

MC-10
-----
1) PortaCoco released a video of their portable MC-10 - with screen and
battery:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktIpDVj9tZk
They also released a promo video for the Coco version:
  https://youtu.be/rr4WvFcuUr4?si=DHawpbMWzvK2KWLS
And finally, some background on the MC-10 and a list of some other great
hardware upgrades for your MC-10:
  https://youtu.be/o22rWQI-xGM?si=K9zTGKmdmYRxRheC

2) Jim Gerrie ported David William's "Adventure Shell No. 1", originally
published in Your Computer magazine's June 1986 issue. Jim added color, and a
special lowercase semi-graphics SG-6 font (so 64x48x4 pixels, if I remember
right). The program itself is a simple text adventure demo program. Jim
is contemplating using this engine to make a larger adventure game:
  https://youtu.be/EsVq7y4Rzsc?si=3aaA0Q7Ulp4dNwEk

3) Following up from last week, Robert Sieg posted the source code for his
128x96 24-bit BMP to MC-10 2 bit BASIC converter program. It requires the
MCX-128 ROM (maybe it works with the MCX32-SD?):
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/8919798368146906/

4) The Clueless Engineer on YouTube released part 2 about his Matra Alice,
where he is working on problems with the keyboard - which might not actually
be a problem with the keyboard itself:
  https://youtu.be/W2BdekgW1rA?si=LiM8qxKl3OUujoEf

Dragon 32/64
------------
1) The Mastertronic Collectors Archive website has published an updated and
more detailed history of the company, which produced programs and games for
a variety of platforms, including the Dragon. I should also mention that
Neil at RMC on YouTube (and runs the Retro Cave museum in England) has also
acquired the rights to the Mastertronic name and branding, and it interested
in selling/packaging original games for various retro micocomputers:
  https://mastertronic.co.uk/a-history-of-mastertronic/

2) Julian Brown posted some updates to his replacment/augmented Dragon
32 motherboards:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3929574710635502/
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3929422980650675/

3) Richard Harding posted photos of a recent pickup he got, which is a
"missing link" version of the Dragon 32. This is from before the Dragon 32
production model came out, but after the original "Pippin" prototype... and
since only once such prototype exists, this is the 2nd oldest known Dragon
32 in existence, dated from May 27, 1982 (production models were released
in August of 1982). There are some differences compared to the production
version, which he describes in the post:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3926580054268301/

4) Zephyr on the World of Dragon forums re-uploaded a modified Dragon
ROM (which allows auto-running BASIC programs from tape, amongst other
enhancements. The original upload got corrupted:
  https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=6002
He also uploaded a Dragon/Coco utility to disable cartridges by patching
the ROM into RAM. This requires 64K on both systems. One nice feature is
being able to switch between the patched version and the original ROM at
will (Assuming a 64K program hasn't trashed the upper bank of 32K):
  https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11236
And finally one more utility he uploaded: Cartridge ROM size detect. This
utility detects and shows the ROM size, and the start/end addresses to
save the ROM to cassette. Includes a manual:
  https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11237

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
==========================================
1) "8bit's basement gaming base" channel on YouTube (this 8 bits in the
basement's gaming channel) is having a restart (after being dormant for 2
years), and is switching to using emulators vs. real hardware (for better
quality video capture). He is planning on doing a retro game once per week
on a variety of systems... starting with the Coco version of Canyon Climber:
  https://youtu.be/5EE1ZQKCwp8?si=Z8Q2DcscJSa2hTeo

2) PatmanQC on YouTube did a history of Arkanoid, including official
ports. It's one of the very few that I have seen that actually showed play
footage for both the Coco 1/2 and the Coco 3 versions, although it sounds
like he thought that they were two separate releases (it was actually a
"fat binary" cartridge that included both versions... which means if you
bought it for your Coco 1/2 and later upgraded to a Coco 3, you get a
"free" upgrade to the game as well):
  https://youtu.be/KwAEZCkUDps?si=GPpmEJTm8kwL0ZHR&t=1795

3) YouTube channel Olipix Retrotech did a large collection video of Donkey
Kong clones and copies. This even includes Jim Gerrie's MC-10 port from
2016 (see comments for direct links to each version). Beside's Jim's, it
includes Donkey King (although it shows the Coco artifact color version
labelled as Dragon 32), Dunkey Munkey, (played with a hacked version and
the wrong artifact color set) and Monkey Kong. Unfortunately, they didn't
play the Coco 3 transcode.:
  https://youtu.be/sKsGj7nVObU?si=oW6XQ94zk2aDGDPy

4) Chronologically Gaming is now on the alphabetical list of games released
"some time in November 1982" which has included a fair number of Coco
games this week:
Battle of Gettysburg:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNEFwFtDw_A&t=1039s
Beyond the Cimeeon Moon:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOXKA8cXsKE&t=39s
And a Coco extravaganze episode with 3 Coco games: Catch 'Em, Caterpillar,
and Chopper Rescue:
  https://youtu.be/N1MoTJta9qM?si=bF3WUJ-C-Zx7m2T5
And finally, the first modem head to head game on the Coco that I know of -
Color Modem Chess:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ljxjg2RCYAE&t=930s

5) Nostalgivault on YouTube played some more MC-10 Inufuto game ports this
past week:
Hopman:
  https://youtu.be/8aAssEb1fhQ?si=nO6MICMMNl7WAj8i
Anti Air:
  https://youtu.be/Hekjc9t3RoQ?si=Il5PqEUcGHEPT1Ky

6) Jay Mundy, author of the recent boxed game for the MC-10 T.H.E.M.,
released an over hour and a half video showing his reaction to watching
TJ Ferreira's gameplay video (that we talked about on the show recently)
of his game. Lots of comments from the author of the game, including
technical details on how he got certain graphics effects:
  https://youtu.be/Q2Qls5BHBK0?si=Csvukgju46rsv1_G

7) Non Maskable Interrupt on YouTube posted some more YouTube shorts of
Coco gameplay on his real Coco 3 with a CM-8 monitor (with a real door!):
Astro Blast:
  https://youtube.com/shorts/N54UcAiFbLo?si=PLaavA5ZASQHs4za
Birds:
  https://youtu.be/4Pexs3gCQvg?si=HXoTUz4f3SHbN1hS

8) Canadian Retro Things (Hi Ken!) released a video about the what turns
out to be the first home arcade game based on Robert Heinlein's Starship
Troopers - the Coco's very own Klendathu:
  https://youtu.be/52oBmMxJgGw?si=mrVRX5L3kkpBsk7X

9) As promised, gamehuggers on YouTube posted his hour long play video
of Downland (which is a recording of a live Twitch stream he did earlier
under his Twitch channel JoshuaTurbo):
  https://youtu.be/cYnuoukx_FA?si=vce0_3eAwF_KJOFr
Checking his Twitch channel, he just did another Coco video this week with
more Downland, plus Zaxxon, Temple of ROM, Skiing, Berserk, Tut's Tomb,
Whirlybird Run, Dungeons of Daggorath (with no instructions), Quix, The King,
Gold Runner, Ms. Maze, Marble Maze, Polaris, The Black Sanctum, Sea Search.
(Temporary link:)
  https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2368227771

10) Tim & AJ return to the Coco on their Sibling Rivalry show - this time
playing Nick Marentes Coco 3 game Pop Star Pilot:
  https://youtu.be/CrQUOSG7FFw?si=Tcu7Z1soec9dXZSH

11) Jim Jewett uploaded another text based space game he wrote back in
the day - Empire-X, which one can download from the Coco Facebook group:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162259517857641/

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

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Get connected with more of the CoCo, Dragon and MC-10 community here:
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-- 
R. Allen Murphey <exile at weylan-yutani.com>
Weylan-Yutani Corporation
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