[Index]
The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 347, January 20, 2024
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Collected by L. Curtis Boyle
Special Guests today:
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Henry Gernhardt
https://www.youtube.com/@thebreakkey
Interviews schedule:
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- February 3 (NOTE DATE CHANGE) Glen Dahlgren comes back - he has the final
book in his Chaos series coming out, and possibly some further Coco stuff
as well.
https://mysteriumstoryworks.substack.com/p/want-a-free-copy-of-the-realm-of
Upcoming conventions/trade shows of interest to Coco people:
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VCF SoCal: Feb 17-18, 2024 in Orange, California
Hotel Fera - Events Center
100 The City Drive, Orange, CA 92868
https://vcfsocal.com/index.html
It should be mentioned that Thomas Cherryhomes will be a speaker at the
show, going over Fujinet - including the Coco version that is currently
a work in progress
Interim Computer Festival: March 23-24.
This is a pre-announcement for a retro computer show in the Pacific
Northwest Area. Details (specifically where, etc.) will be coming later,
and registration will open in January.
https://sdf.org/icf/
CocoFest: May 4-5, 2024 in Carol Stream, Illinois (near Chicago)
Holiday Inn & Suites
https://www.glensideccc.com/cocofest/
Table bookings:
https://www.tandylist.com/
BoatFest 3: June 14-16, 2024
Social Event Space
Hurricane, WV
https://www.ticketsource.us/boatfest2024/boatfest-retro-computer-expo-2024/e-raedpb
VCF SouthWest: June 14-16, 2024 (same weekend as BoatFest)
Davidson-Gundy Alumni Center at University of Texas - Dallas
Dallas, Texas
https://www.vcfsw.org/
UPDATES:
Also this year they are doing "Shows within the Show", and one of those
is a Tandy Assembly meetup:
(scroll down on the main page)
Jeff Wires (the host of Chronologically Gaming) is also one of the speakers
at VCF-SW this year!
Speakers list:
https://www.vcfsw.org/speakers
Tandy Assembly for 2024 has been announced for Sep 27-29, 2024.
Courtyard by Marriott Springfield
Springfield, Ohio
http://www.tandyassembly.com/
Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)
-------------------------------
1) Bob Emery (La Coco Strangiato on YouTube) is doing a live stream while
we record today - building a custom Coco keyboard:
https://www.youtube.com/live/HQS54b91V7Y?si=qiGCQLeGts8f1rDc
2) Frederic (MicroHobbyist on YouTube) has uploaded the part 3 video of
his building 6309 based computer:
https://youtu.be/ofQKpRu238Q?si=DxCxCUsxhdv34vov
3) Coco Town put up a video where he shows how he sped up MAME build times:
https://youtu.be/j8xBZYpxRu4?si=xZUtxqNdrBP22nWp
4) For those of you who may have missed my showing of Steve Bjork's OS9
bouncing ball demo during our memorial episode, Allen Huffman posted a
video of it on the Coco Facebook group, which started a healthy discussion
on how to do directly mapped graphics under OS9, and the differences in
doing so between level 1 and level 2:
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1041976246891587
5) Bill Pierce released both a document on how to use the SuperIDE compatible
driver in VCC, and the dll for itself, in the NitrOS9 page on Facebook:
HDB DOS ROM upgrade image:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1929079184021683/posts/3556314621298123/
Instructions:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1929079184021683/posts/3556288964634022/
6) Brenda Make has some photos of a 3D case she is working on that she
calls a "Coco 5" case, which is kind of a modernized version of the Coco
3 case, although it won't work with either a Coco 3 motherboard, or the
Athena board by Pedro Pena. She has more details in the text accompanying
her post in the NitrOS9 group on Facebook, as well as photos for proposed
extended keyboards, etc.:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1929079184021683/posts/3554693781460207/
7) Allen Huffman has been busy with posts this week:
He has put up a bunch of his source code (mostly for the Vic20, but also
some of his Coco stuff including his all RAM BBS & game project called
Lights Out for the Coco:
https://subethasoftware.com/2024/01/18/my-old-and-new-vic-20-stuff-is-now-on-github/
He also did 8x8 and 16x16 tank graphics (tile style) demo on Extended BASIC:
https://subethasoftware.com/2024/01/16/simple-8x8-tank-on-256x192-screen-in-color-basic/
He also posted a video of the 8x8 running in the Coco group on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161120068647641/
And just last night an updated based on suggestions from multiple people
to eliminate the flicker, add tire tracks, add some sound, and so on:
https://www.facebook.com/watch?v=1574313010038470
8) Thomas Cherryhomes has made more progress on his Coco part of Fujinet,
and has released a YouTube Short video update showing that the network
sub-device is fully implemented and is currently debugging that:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ayTA0GtqmyY
9) The TRS-80 Trashtalk live podcast is on this evening (earlier than last
time) at 5:00 pm Eastern:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdYw6schmIo&ab_channel=TRS-80TrashTalk
10) TRS-80 Retro Programing put up two videos this week - one on Coco
Ultimate (The Essence of Turn-taking), and some questions that he has on
Coco 3 and emulation:
https://youtu.be/fXH--TINEHY?si=FwcfDTelXIT9Ii9C
The 2nd is a Coco Ultimate walkthrough and Ghost Saga retrospective:
https://youtu.be/x6gnSrzFdxo?si=tBXD5UB37yTNJHul
11) RetroMels on YouTube (a Dutch channel) put up a video about digitizing
Coco tapes... which he is calling "Adventures in Archiving Episode 1". While
learning how to work with the cassette tapes, he also learned how to use
his CGP-115 printer:
https://youtu.be/B1h3tiWqq6E?si=fMX7_YmzLmh5bDdA
He also has a website set up that has the archive images he made, including
the ones that at least partly in Dutch:
https://www.retromelsarchive.com/coco.html
12) George Janssen put up lesson 6 of his Coco 3 assembly language
tutorial, covering simple graphics (a multi-plane scrolling starfield). The
sourcecode as usual is available in his channel (#assembly-with-georgej
under PROGRAMMING AND DEVELOPMENT) on the Coco Discord as well, to save
you typing if you wish:
https://youtu.be/nX938ql2y5I?si=7VNutGAeO9SQPJLx
MC-10
-----
1) John Linville has been blogging about some Unix style assembler binutils
he is writing to make a new toolchain for developing for the 6801/6803 chips
(including the MC-10 and Alice):
https://mc6801-tools.blogspot.com/2024/01/unix-style-binutils-for-motorola-mc6801.html
And an expanded tool demo, where he gets more into the linking (those of
you familiar with RMA in OS-9 level 2 already have experience with tools
like this):
https://mc6801-tools.blogspot.com/2024/01/expanded-tool-demo.html
2) James Host posted a PDF to the MC-10 group on Facebook that has an
annotated disassembly of the Microcolor BASIC ROM:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/6943369675789795/
3) Retro Krazy on YouTube put up a video of his repair/restoration of a
Dragon 32 - one that he has had around but never touched for 5 years:
https://youtu.be/nIG4paT9alc?si=V0F-NOvz4xe3XSYT
Dragon 32/64
------------
1) Julian Brown is working on an FPGA replacement for the VDG, that sounds
like he is shooting for similar enhancements as the CocoVGA. He has done
some progress reports on the Dragon group on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3628326937426949/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3629016237358019/
2) Ismo Utrianen on YouTube shows a weird problem that he has with an Altai
joystick on his Dragon 32. If any of our viewers/listeners have any ideas,
please leave him some comments:
https://youtu.be/o16gJGRw5tM?si=WpxTmS5542d_F6kl
3) Lovebyte Demoparty on YouTube put up a quick little video demo by ToBach,
as a teaser of how long until the upcoming Lovebyte 2024 demo show, on a
Dragon 32:
https://youtu.be/rbzvxphFxMs?si=79A-MUDc6PEwFWMg
Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
==========================================
1) The Wargaming Scribe released a two parter covering Ark Royal games
Guadal Canal, written by Phil Keller:
Part 1:
https://zeitgame.net/archives/12313
Part 2:
https://zeitgame.net/archives/12462
The author of this blog reached out to me, and has asked me to ask the
Coco community if they can help him find some other Coco wargames and
documentation. The two that he is currently look for are:
The Battle of Tunis (needs the manual)
Legatus - needs both the game and manual)
2) Allen Huffman put up a video comparing an old game on the Vic-20 he did,
that he is duplicating on the Coco 1/2 using GET/PUT graphics instead of
the Vic-20's reprogrammable text character set (Note, Allen shows a low
res text version video clip on the Coco in the comments):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161114625182641/
3) Jim Gerrie has converted a few more MC-10 games this past week:
Eights originally by Mike Costello in the August 1982 issue of Practical
Computing magazine. The original article was more on the AI routines
themselves, so Jim added to the code to make a functional Crazy Eights game:
https://youtu.be/zRjV5vq5mZM?si=GFTgLcoWZ2glcwr0
He also ported Snertle (and educational game) from the May 1984 issue of
Compute! magazine... and education game for both the Coco and the MC-10:
https://youtu.be/J8FHjXbldj8?si=EgP1BCOdR0dM2tun
4) XperTek does another of his Coco 1/2 games played on real hardware
on his amber monitor. This time around he covers one of the Coco's TRON
clones, Kron:
https://youtu.be/kcZjmuIAaDw?si=jVJXZ6ewswT9nswv
5) Chronologically Gaming covered another Coco game game - VC by Britt
Monk and Avalon Hill (along with several other versions of VC):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSXoRIWRYQI&t=2919s
And Robot Bomber:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_j-rDls_p0&t=3037s
6) PatmanQC on YouTube put out their History of Rampage video - which
covers the history of the famous game, it's sequels, and it's ports to
various home consoles and home computers... including the Coco 3 (@31:38):
https://youtu.be/MRelJj-1MWc?si=iUPLX2mb3SOoGfq8
Speak your mind! Let us know what you think at:
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