The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 351, February 17, 2024 =================================================================== Collected by L. Curtis Boyle Special Guests today: --------------------- Tim Lindner, Mark Siegel David Kroeker, possibly D. Bruce Moore (but not until 2 hours in for Bruce) Interviews schedule: -------------------- None upcoming... yet. Upcoming conventions/trade shows of interest to Coco people: ------------------------------------------------------------ VCF SoCal: Feb 17-18, 2024 in Orange, California ON RIGHT NOW! Hopefully somebody was able to attend and take some pictures - Wayne Campbell was unable to make it. 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. Randy Kindig is also confirmed as a speaker now as well. Also, a couple of color computer exhibitors are now listed as well: https://www.vcfsocal.com/exhibitors Interim Computer Festival: March 23-24. Intraspace 3100 Airport Way South, Seattle, Washington This is a pre-announcement for a retro computer show in the Pacific Northwest Area. https://sdf.org/icf/ The Indy Classic Computer & Gaming Expo is April 13-14 in Indianapolis. Crowne Plaza Randy Kindig of the Floppy Days podcast helps with this one - and he was our guest not too far back. https://indyclassic.org/ CocoFest: May 4-5, 2024 in Carol Stream, Illinois (near Chicago) Holiday Inn & Suites https://www.glensideccc.com/cocofest/ Table bookings (the main hall is completely taken up now, and 1 of 14 has been sold for the hall tables already): 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) TRS-80 Retro Programing put up a video that shows a bit of how parenthesis works with math operations: https://youtu.be/eoY4_0rarYg He is also did a short video showing some sounds he is adding to Coco Ultimate (like a high pitched one for a sword swing): https://youtu.be/KpO63HAsOaM 2) George Janssen released his final lesson for the 128 moving stars assembly language tutorial (And the source is available on his channel in the Coco Discord): https://youtu.be/rPxnRBIHww4 3) Frank of retrowind.ca has put up an ANSI BBS (one can log in with both web and with an ANSI compatible terminal program - like Twilight Terminal or Netmate on a Coco 3) that is running on an Amiga 4000. If you would like to try it out: bbs.retrorewind.ca (on port 23) or using an HTML5 client: https://bbs.retrorewind.ca/ 4) A plug for those of you with MM/1's and need a replacement for your SCSI drive - BlueSCSI's can be ordered from jcm-1.com (these are commonly used on Mac's and other computers as well, but Joel Ewy is pretty pleased his on his MM/1, and even has a file for 3d printing an SD card cover plate to make it look clean). I would be interested to know if anyone has tried this on a Coco yet, since we did have multiple SCSI drive systems (Kenton, Diskmaster, etc.) on the Coco back in the 1980's. 5) As promised from his post last week, TJBChris has released an over half hour video "Exploring the TRS-80 Network 3 controller, including getting it working with a Coco (promised by Tandy when it was originally advertised, but never implemented... until now): https://youtu.be/8r2dwGSPvjM?si=Waz-sl33k3zsO9ut 6) Coco Town has released part 3 of his assembly language sound on the Coco 1/2 tutorial - this one covers using HSYNC for timing: https://youtu.be/GqQ6MzE35sc?si=PvUFOuD02AyrEboG 7) Michael Pittsley has posted a series of 16 videos of the Dorsett Courseware Fractions for ages 4-8 on his YouTube channel, joining a lot of other rare educational and multimedia software for the Coco that he has on his channel. The best thing is that his include the audio portions of the original tapes as well as the programs themselves: https://www.youtube.com/@michaelpittsley8323/videos 8) Guillaume Major has patched the Orchestra 90 software to use the DSKCON routines - so you can now access the Orch-90 library with Drivewire, the CocoSDC and DrivePak's (rather than hardcoded to the floppy controller). This is available on the Color Computer Archive (It also uses Michael Pittsley's recently released index for the Orch 90 files - 78 disks in all): https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161159423317641/ 9) Carlos Camacho posted an interesting project link (on the Internet archive) that the Air Force used - that included a Coco as a display terminal: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161156374547641/ 10) For those of you who have wanted a PDF version of the full version of the original Coco Color BASIC manual - it's finally available on the the archive. Much thanks to Tim Lindner for scanning and making the PDF: https://colorcomputerarchive.com/repo/Documents/Manuals/Hardware/Getting%20Started%20With%20Color%20Basic%20-%20TRS-80%20Color%20Computer%202%20(Tandy).pdf 11) 8bitsinthebsement on YouTube has released a video showing his work in learning Coco assembly language, and converting Bob and the alien fireflies to the Coco, and explains the journey he took over the past few months in doing so: https://youtu.be/ymiLb73U6uM?si=IajhXwLdW-Ip3UfV 12) Uno Caraway put up a video on working with BASIC for several computers (different projects - a little beginners BASIC Coco, starting around 33:32). He has a real one, but does the demo using XRoar: https://youtu.be/75K_CeROXH8?si=yi12eg082aqneSIG 13) Primal-bits4777 did a youtube short about a Coco 2 that he has gotten that has a keyboard problem - and he is going to do a full video including try to fix it with a conductive pen and/or a replacement keyboard mylar: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/hIl_ryv7HbY 14) Bolling Holt (whom we covered recently when he got a Tandy DMP-133 printer) put up a video showing his logging into a BBS on a Color Computer 3 using another bit of hardware he had as a kid - the Direct Connect Modem Pak: https://youtu.be/YR7sXCdnlbM?si=vAeOvPOiMO1jRglL MC-10 ----- 1) Dragon 32/64 ------------ 1) Julian Brown posted an update to his upgraded Dragon project - he is working on a redesign of the PAL board: https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3645092879083688/ 2) TôBach on YouTube has a little graphics demo clip called Munch my Bricks that is an ML program that is only 64 bytes long, that he did for the lovebyte 2024 Demo competition, for his Dragon 32: https://youtu.be/g3udVipItwg?si=H4UaSlkkHfebkGFw Game On news (all Coco related platforms): ========================================== 1) CRPG Addict has released his lengthy review of the 1982 Coco game Sceptre of Kzirgla. He was not too impressed: https://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2024/02/game-502-scepter-of-kzirgla-1982-and.html 2) Jim Gerrie released an MC-10 port of "Swordsman" originally by H. Walwyn in 1983 for the Coco and Dragon 32. Jim did some modifications from the original as well: https://youtu.be/46n8jTyl3CY?si=Q6VTZ6iqMtaqzbuw He also ported "The Wizard's Tower" CPRG from the Coco, originally by Steven C. Mitchell in 1992: https://youtu.be/SioIs0KkBFM?si=_8Lydg-W3k6q7ajb 3) Chronologically Gaming covered the 2nd last September 1982 Coco entry - and a game that I did not realize was the *1st* version of the game released on a home computer (although multiple game consoles already had versions)... Tennis from Tandy. I should also mention that he is now doing 1/2 hour episodes each weeknight (vs. full hour shows): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKHl0Pefmik&t=561s 4) Tricob1974 (Richard Kelly) put up some long play videos of both his Ladderman 2 game, and one of this week's challenge games, King Tut. Unfortunately his version of MAME used to record them is quite old and stretches the screen to twice it's normal width: https://www.youtube.com/@Tricob1974/videos 5) www.ElkSoft.com has released an updated Demon Attack X, which is a port of the Coco version of Imagic's Demon Attack to modern machines. It now includes a top 100 score table, 2 player simultaneous mode, new EGA color mode and more. He released a video on YouTube showing it in action with the new menu options (unfortunately it doesn't show an example of the 2 player simultaneous mode): https://youtu.be/xXKe7GyitNI?si=IHdP1VYnl2BtVj-O 6) Marco Spedaletti has released (on his itch.io page) the free download for his entry for this years BASIC 10 liner contest, with a game called "Falling Balls". He wrote it under the cross platform ugBASIC compiler, so it is also available for other machines like the Atari 8 bit, and it shows what he ugBASIC compiler is capable of: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161167116507641/ Download page: https://spotlessmind1975.itch.io/falling-balls-10liner Speak your mind! 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