The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 331, September 23, 2023 =================================================================== Collected by L. Curtis Boyle - The interview with Doug Masten (author of The Contras) with co-interviewee Glen Dahlgren of Sundogs Systems that was originally going to happen on August 19 is being postponed, due to a fairly major surgery. We are shooting for around October/November depending on doctor's orders. Upcoming conventions/trade shows of interest to Coco people: ************************************************************ Tandy Assembly 2023: Springfield, Ohio U.S.A. SEP29-OCT01, 2023 http://www.tandyassembly.com/ ** REMINDER: TRS-80 Trash Talk Live episode #35 is next Saturday (September 23) at 5 PM Eastern, and it's focus is Tandy Assembly, going through vendors, seminars and more! Live on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/@TRS80TrashTalk Rocky Mountain Pinball Showdown and Gameroom Expo https://www.pinballshowdown.com/index.html Pinball and classic video games - sent in by James Diffendaffer ?-=- The Interim Computer Festival -=- : Seattle, Washington U.S.A. SEP30-OCT01, 2023 https://sdf.org/icf/ Dragon MeetUP 2023 : The Centre of Computing History, Cambridge, UK OCT 07-08, 2023 https://www.facebook.com/events/225011523831254 Portland Retro Gaming Expo: Portland, Oregon U.S.A. OCT 15-18, 2023 https://www.retrogamingexpo.com/ Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform) ------------------------------- 1) Alan of AC's 8 bit Zone put up a video about building a mechanical keyboard for the Coco - from scratch: https://youtu.be/LfPPVcCY15A?si=0x_qOU4NKag5YDJU 2) Mr. Dave 6309 put up a 512K animated page-flipping graphics demo, and shows the source code to do it: https://youtu.be/g2srdceDOx0?si=Uzq4pMnr5mnFTnZv 3) Coco Town added another SepTandy video, this time NOT about resurrecting his Moon Patrol clone that he did as a teenager. No, this time he sees if he can dial into a BBS at 300 baud... in 2023: https://youtu.be/iLK4MqJWNfg?si=iaYfX2QyJjiF0Idm Then of course he got back to his Moon Patrol clone, part 6: Explosions and scoring. This is the final episode covering his original code written as a teenager... but he's not done. The next episode will be adding new code, based on all he has learned since he wrote it originally: https://youtu.be/7HoGbypgK88?si=eyR6_lM2FJFDiC2U 4) 8-Bit Rerun (a new channel on YouTube) posted a SepTandy video about a Coco 2 clean & retrobright. This is a PAL Coco 2 with "Colour" spelled correctly ;-). I am not much into cosmetic restorals, but the method he used to give rid of some of the case damage I am not familar with, and seems to have good results: https://youtu.be/lquotAw3HzM?si=Veu-vwDQrHGeH6Q- 5) 8-Bit Boyz on YouTube finally gets around to opening a box for SepTandy that he got from fellow YouTuber "Geek With Social Skills"... almost a year previous: https://youtu.be/rD62ulRNSZY?si=a67DvK25G3TaxIyO 6) Ken of Canadian Retro Things did a big unboxing for a SepTandy video: https://youtu.be/wD9KdXzcikk?si=AaRHdkxO0tEJeHON 7) ARC Javmaster did a live stream Wednesday night unboxing a Coco 3 that had *never been used* which both Sloopy and I guested on. One of the other people on (Joe of Joe's Computer Museum) got to try NitrOS9/EOU for the first time on his Coco 3 as well. https://www.youtube.com/live/5hvUQLEYLaQ?si=u09cLzzonUABh_3o 8) Drake on YouTube did a SepTandy video as well - a fellow Canadian - did a Coco 1 unboxing (With some extras): https://youtu.be/E_gGFpd6e6A?si=QWVK992GnOyvSCy3 9) The first Tandy Assembly Meetup in the San Francisco Bay area will be November 4, 2023 from 2-5 PM at the San Francisco State University. They have a Google doc where you can sign up to go. This is for people who can't make the track to the central/eastern states for the full Tandy Assembly show. There is talk of eventually making this a Tandy Assembly West: https://forms.gle/Xqc42DNyBPvWnwve6 10) Boisy Pitre has been active on our Discord about a new OS-9 Level 1 port to a project called Foenix F256 Jr, which is real hardware using the equivalent of a 6MHz 6809. Level II is up next. This system features advanced graphics and sound compared to a Coco 3. Boisy posted a quick video on Facebook showing it talking to a Drivewire 4 server and running programs from that: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160919924427641/ And a quick description of the system: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160919017012641/ And the manufacturers site: https://c256foenix.com/f256k/?v=3e8d115eb4b3 11) The Dithertron website we covered last week (for converting modern picture formats to dithered formats for retro computers has now officially released it's first 6847 support. It supports 128x64, 128x96 and 128x192 4 color modes, and both colorsets: https://8bitworkshop.com/dithertron/#sys=c64.multi&image=seurat.jpg MC-10 ----- 1) Dragon 32/64 ------------ 1) John Whitworth posted on Facebook that Dragon PSU boards are back in stock at his online store (16 as of his post on Friday): https://www.dragonplus-electronics.co.uk/product/dragon-psu-board-kit-version-jan-2022/ 2) "Doc Feelbad" on the Dragon Facebook group posted a link from the Home Computer Museum in the Netherlands (that we have covered before), where they have apparently found out they possess a rare Dragon 32 Demonstration cartridge: https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3552416985017945/ 3) Richard Harding posted a poll in the Dragon group on Facebook, asking people if they use of their Dragon's helped launch their career, or if they just played games, etc. I think they have an even higher ratio of people who's careers started because of their Dragon usage than us Coco people - 80% said it had: https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3551879625071681/ ***** And, although this isn't Coco related (or even 6809), but since they are great friends of the show, I thought I would close out with a great song by Taylor and Amy that was partly recorded at VCF-MW. Plus we have quite a few cross platform people on our panel and in our audience too: https://youtu.be/LrPxM-qYNTI?si=yTxTQZRcdd35fn7Z Game On news (all Coco related platforms): ========================================== 1) TRS-80 Retro Programing put up an update video of his Tales of Suburbia graphic adventure style game, covering a new music option and changing tapes between the chapter segments: https://youtu.be/N65VLs6yLio?si=vEzNLvaj9bgTOn7- 2) Jim Gerrie returns with a backport from the Metra Alice to the original MC-10 of the game "Third World War" originally by Free Game Blot in 1985: https://youtu.be/gG2R28Rlwj0?si=fJeayf5QJaSxXfF7 3) Retro Gaming Nook on YouTube did a long play video for SepTandy, playing Imagic's DragonFire - as he puts it - "on an original Tandy Color Computer in all it's RF Glory", since it didn't play properly on his Coco 3. He gets to the 11th round, when things are really speeding up: https://youtu.be/YT6Vemgg_io?si=xZjN2LjVmgtyVJGs 4) "Attempts: A gaming channel by LGR" on YouTube posted a 12 minute video of gameplay playing Nick's Donut Dilemma, and from what I can tell is meant to be an official entry for high scores on multiple high score sites (including Twin Galaxies): https://youtu.be/ySKTCOSZ_JY?si=z0qEw2Yq-1NqBL8M 5) Brian Palmer (Briza) has resurrected a BASIC Coco game from Australian magazine SoftGold - World Weight Lifting originally written by Duncan Fenn (14 at the time). Brian had been trying to get this one typed in for awhile, but he was missing a page in his copy. Thanks to Raechell Tony Hobart, he got the missing page and typed it in. I don't think he has uploaded the DSK image yet (probably still testing it): https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160911200122641/ Get connected with more of the CoCo, Dragon and MC-10 community here: ======================================= https://thecoconation.com/community/