The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 353, March 2, 2024 =================================================================== Collected by L. Curtis Boyle Special Guests today: --------------------- Interviews schedule: -------------------- None upcoming... yet. Upcoming conventions/trade shows of interest to Coco people: ------------------------------------------------------------ TRS-80 Trash Talk is live tonight at 9PM Eastern, streamed on youtube. They are thinking of doing a magazine walkthrough (like they used to do on their podcast way back), and the issue they are doing today is the August 1982 80 Micro. This is one I actually own (and bought it at the same time as the very first Rainbow I got, from the same month) and has multiple Coco programs, plus interviews with the people making graphics for TRON, and with Leo Christopherson, from when he was working on his first Coco game, Klendathu: https://www.youtube.com/@TRS80TrashTalk/streams 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) The Taylor and Amy Show did an episode on the Color Computer Mascot - including making him/her - bow tie and all!: https://youtu.be/lsOtBIVRnyE?si=KMcDB7gJfUed_H6w 2) George Janssen has posted episode 9 of his Coco 3 assembly language programming series, this time explaining how the keyboard matrix works, and how to read it: https://youtu.be/B_RgJVTTm6Y?si=KeGJK_aQ8qAR6Tjc 3) TRS-80 Retro Programing posted an update to his Coco Ultimate project, and now has the hit detection working: https://youtu.be/Hsqo_HLEif4?si=NbgaB-TzySj51bsY 4) Coco Town released part 4 of his working with Coco assembly language sound, changing to fixed point to replace his original oscillator routine to get much better quality sound: https://youtu.be/2l6sm3blGJw?si=BscU_e_H0JdBn5b8 5) The Break Key (Henry) has released his next episode of making a Forth ROM for the Coco 1/2 - now implementing some math routines with base 2 to 36, and the first few word tokens in FORTH as well: https://youtu.be/_d234i7g62s?si=1VKJ6FdQuocRaxPF 6) The individual videos for each presentation at the Virtual CocoFest are up on YouTube, and Marc Overholser will quickly go over which presentations we had last weekend: https://www.youtube.com/@The_CoCo_Nation/streams 7) Grant Leighty posted an update on CocoFest 32 on the Glenside site: https://www.glensideccc.com/cocofest-32-update/ 8) Joel Ewy posted in the MM/1 group on Facebook that the BlueSCSI's SD cards are, in fact, hot swappable (although don't try writing or reading anything to the SD card when it's not actually there). These lets you add files, etc. on another machine without have to reboot the MM/1 from scratch: https://www.facebook.com/groups/3194643584094250/posts/4405166233041973/ 9) David Collins posted an update to the 6309 based homebrew computer that he is working on. He has it working with "Self staging". This allows his board to load code to the 6309 CPU at boot up with RAM only pulling in a small relocatable, self modifying loader in the 48 byte space of the AVR. (Details in his post): https://www.facebook.com/groups/6809assembly/posts/3320545464905479/ 10) Michael Pittsley has posted another set of long form videos covering some of the multi-media educational programs for the Coco from Dorsett Educational systems. This includes a 2 part Algebra course, a 2 part Reading Comprehension course, a 2 part Spelling course, and 2 more parts (9 and 10) of the United States History course: https://www.youtube.com/@michaelpittsley8323/videos 11) The Hayden Walt Bradley Channel on YouTube did a review of a collection of things. This time around covers some computer books including the Coco 2 BASIC manual, and a 64K Coco 2 itself, amongst other things: https://youtu.be/7Y5djKD1S9E?si=s0ob2tA59adZJFPY 12) Terry Steege's YouTube channel Retro Tech Time put up a quick video of 2 rather damaged/dirty Coco 2's that he received. He is going to try to restore them: https://youtu.be/2T6D8ymq2YA?si=IDE_slbYkz3CkoUR 13) Suburban Relic's on YouTube posted a short video showing a Coco 1 he picked (with an HJL-57 keyboard, no less) and runs the Radio Shack Diagnostic cartridge on it to test graphics, sound, etc.: https://youtu.be/-1-mJwElz7g?si=9UJdEGGszJbf2aci 14) Allen Huffman posted part 5 of his series on converting Rick Adams Coco 3 game Lights Out to regular Color BASIC: https://subethasoftware.com/2024/02/27/lets-write-lights-out-in-basic-part-5/ MC-10 ----- 1) For those who want to try a homemade composite video/audio out mod for the MC-10, Mark Dusko posted his on the MC-10 Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/7079721405487954/ Dragon 32/64 ------------ 1) Mostly Horses and Retro Computing on YouTube (MHARC for short) posted a First Look video of the Dragon 32 he recently picked up, and what he got with it: https://youtu.be/t56UaTXYfGU?si=dxreC1-Ix-V4S0qV 2) In a reverse conversion from normal, JSW Central presented a walkthrough of John Elliot's 2006 conversion of the Dragon 32 version of Manic Miner (originally by Roy Coates in 1984, and itself based on the original 1983 version by Matthew Smith) to the Spectrum 128K. He also showed Jetset Willy that went through the same porting process: https://www.youtube.com/@jswcentral/videos Game On news (all Coco related platforms): ========================================== 1) Jim Gerrie ported the CryptoQuote from Syntax ZX80 magazine's very first issue from 1980. It helps one solve substitution cyphers: https://youtu.be/d_fVtmnAWAY?si=q0dDC8lHPGOQ11Bf He also posted "Cape Breton Song" - featuring a nice low res graphic homage to his home and the lyrics to Island Song appearing on the bottom (no actual music): https://youtu.be/JBifyfm9I1o?si=iae8gnIvnBUsD_C4 He also ported "Escape from Monster Manor", originally by Jim McLellan in 2020, from the MC10 to the MC10. No, that's not confusing - Jim wrote the original game requiring MCX BASIC (the Extended like BASIC Darren Atkinson made for the MC10) and converted it back to run on a regular Microcolor BASIC machine (although you will need the 16K RAM expansion or higher): https://youtu.be/HvwdhvFgR34?si=zZ8P3d5_K4QHPkwC 2) Animation Plus did a video reviewing the top 12 ports of Arkanoid - Steve Bjork's Coco 3 port made the list (Coco version is the 2nd one shown): https://youtu.be/Hn3pX3eSZHY?si=w5UqIDffOdtaLUJI Speak your mind! Let us know what you think at: ============================================================================== feedback at TheCoCoNation.com Get connected with more of the CoCo, Dragon and MC-10 community here: ============================================================================== https://thecoconation.com/community/