[Index]
The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 366, June 8, 2024
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Collected by L. Curtis Boyle
Special Guests today:
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Interview schedule:
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Upcoming conventions/trade shows of interest to Coco people:
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There are **FOUR** events happening next weekend!
The next Bay Area (San Francisco) Tandy Assembly meetup is June 15 from
1-5 pm at San Francisco State University. There is an online signup sheet
to join the event, and they have announced that Bill Hogue of Big Five
Software fame is the Special Guest speaker:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc9ZDlEGBrd6okI9xIoKPjwLb4kHmdVFPvNog4lOUPEe5NaLQ/viewform
Terry Steen has organized a new retro club called "Richmond Retro Computer",
and they are having their first meeting is June 15 at the Richmond Public
Library on Patterson Avenue, from 2 to 3 pm. They plan on discussing future
meeting dates, events, tech talks, etc.:
https://www.meetup.com/richmond-retro-computers/events/301122005
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, which includes a separate hall for just Tandy
machines. The main hall is already sold out for tables, and as of March 6,
only 2 of 21 tables in the Tandy hall were still available:
(scroll down on the main page)
Jeff Wires (the host of Chronologically Gaming) and Boisy Pitre are both
speakers this year.
Speakers list.
*** NEW = TJBChris will be doing a seminar as well about the model
2/12/16,etc 8" drive "big iron" TRS-80's.
https://www.vcfsw.org/speakers
Retro-Computing Expo '24 is on June 22 from 11 am until 7 pm at Anvil Center
in New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada. It is actually 2 shows in one:
the Retro-Computing Expo and the Retro-Gaming Expo. They already several
presenters lined up, including 4 people to talk about the NABU, including
Leo Binkowski who was an engineer at NABU. George Philips, the author of
the TRS-80GP emulator and a regular on the TRS-80 Trash Talk podcast is
also presenting, amongst others. This is supported by the Chilliwack Retro
Computing Club, which has it's own Facebook Group:
(show the copy of the "poster" that I was sent from my local desktop -
"Retro-Computing_Expo_24.jpg").
Facebook group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/ChilliwackRetro/
The Canberra Vintage Computer Exhibition 2024 (supported by VCF) takes
place in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia is a 1 day event
from 10 am to 3 pm on June 29 at Radford College. They are going to have a
wide variety of machines on display, and Ian Maveric (of the Trash Talkers
podcast, Coco RS-232 pak clones,etc.) is one of the people helping from
the TRS-80 & clone side:
https://www.facebook.com/events/s/canberra-vintage-computer-exhi/693500242752070/
They did a live stream with several of the people in charge, for those
who want to find out more about the show:
https://www.youtube.com/live/vSnWzH-k8h8?si=eXotYeTxuNr4Qtvo
VCF-West looks to be happening August 2-3 (Fri-Sat) at the Computer History
Museum in Mountain View, California. This year they are a full partner with
the museum, so that admission for both the museum and VCF can be done with
one purchase, and the are taking people booking to be speakers/presenters
now as well.
CHM (Computer History Museum)
1401 N. Shoreline Blvd.
Mountain View, CA
https://vcfed.org/2024/03/14/vcf-west/
VCF-Midwest has announced their new, larger venue for this year (#19)
- the Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center in Schaumburg, IL. Sept
7-8, 2024 (Sept 6 evening (Friday) is reserved for vendors, etc to set
up). Unfortunately, their original block of rooms already sold out in 3
hours after they announced yesterday. VCF is working with the hotel to
get more, but that won't happen until Monday)
https://vcfmw.org/
Tandy Assembly for 2024 has been announced for Sep 27-29, 2024. UPDATE:
THEY HAVE STARTED POSTING EXHIBITORS ON THEIR WEBSITE
Courtyard by Marriott Springfield
Springfield, Ohio
http://www.tandyassembly.com/
Retro Computer Festival 2024: November 9-10, 2024
Centre for Computing History, Cambridge, England
In the early stages of planning for this year, this is (I believe) the
largest general retro computing show in the UK (it's their VCF style show),
covering all retro machines. NOTE: thanks to Randy Kindig, it is confirmed
that it is a 2 day show.
https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/72253/Retro-Computer-Festival-2024-Saturday-9th-November/
Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)
-------------------------------
1) Coco Town put up a different kind of video - How a warning message in
Color BASIC "breaks the rules" and frightened him when he was 10:
https://youtu.be/xDHwzg3lvO0?si=kSBYC24cGzNe0OZc
2) RetroAndGaming on YouTube did a short summer holiday special video,
recapping what his channel has done recently (including his Coco 1) and
that he is taking a break from retro stuff for the summer... but when he
gets back to it, he plans on working on the Coco again:
https://youtu.be/7B9oXfYXz3U?si=2pGBLbzmY5PBAld2
3) Thomas Cherryhomes has another Coco related update that he posted about
in both the Coco Discord and the Coco Facebook group, adding Becker port
support to Fujinet PC, which allows hooking up to Fujinet from any Coco
emulator that supports the port (and includes a video):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161357678617641/
4) Luciano Scharf & Daniel Campos both posted some photos from the 8th
Color Rio Club meeting (which was held on June 1) in Brazil:
Luciano's:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161356223832641/
Daniel's (includes a group photo):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161348018112641/
5) Jason Reighard announced that the domain issues (nothing that he did)
are fixed and his site is back to where it should be: http://cocoman.biz
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161346158717641/
Jason also attended Hamvention 2024 in Xenia, Ohio, and his two part
coverage can be found on his Fairly Amused YouTube channel. No Coco finds
this year from what I saw.
Part 1:
https://youtu.be/dPDMNggdbr0?si=svQUkAMZ-_4KN_YX
Part 2:
https://youtu.be/0fwYsUSXYJw?si=k3UREt7m2JhBz52o
6) Our very own Ken Waters posted a photo of a couple of musical legend
celebrities who got their picture in front of the Dino Wars posted:
pianist Todd Hunter (who plays with Dionne Warwick) and Antonia Bennett,
daughter of Tony Bennett and a famous jazz singer in her own right:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161346085102641/
7) Tim Lindner posted a link to a YouTube video where Usagi Electric (David)
has started a new experimental series with longer episodes interviews AJ
of Forgotten Machines (whom a lot of us saw at CocoFest last month). One
of the topics that comes up - the flashing "eye" on KITT from the TV series
Knight Rider originally used a 6809 to control it (6:44):
https://youtu.be/E3EIbhImXrM?si=-y_9buQg4EGtl4SW
8) Henry of The Break Key (and our panel) released a video on his YouTube
channel with an update to his ROM Forth project - adding in error messages
(and scrolling):
https://youtu.be/WDoWlSgZ3F8?si=VPXAZsrSg1UcHh0y
9) Pierre Sarrazin posted an update and question for the public who use
his CMOC C-compiler on the Coco, to the cocolist email group:
"Hi. I'm in the process of adding a second calling convention to CMOC,
a C-like compiler that targets the 6809.
I have seen C programs for the 6809 that had some code written in
assembly that assumed a calling convention where the first parameter
of a function is received in register B or X, depending on its size,
instead of on the stack, as in CMOC's default convention.
platotermCoCo is such a program:
https://github.com/beretta42/platotermCoCo/tree/master/src/coco2
I'm looking for a detailed description of that calling convention,
with the goal of clarifying a few questions that I have on corner cases.
1. Is the first parameter still passed in B or X when the parameter is
a 1- or 2-byte struct or union?
2. When the return value is one or two bytes, which register is it
returned in?
3. When the function must return a struct, a union, a long, a float
or a double, does it receive a hidden first parameter that points
to the location to be filled with the return value?
If so, is that hidden parameter received in X?
What if the return type is a 1- or 2-byte struct or union?
Thanks for any leads..."
You can email him your opinion at:
sarrazip at sarrazip.com
10) "Leep" on the Coco Discord is working on a massive multi-level, 8 way
scrolling graphic arcade game for the Coco 3. He needs some people to test
the graphics engine, with high system requirements:
Coco 3, 2 MB RAM, 6309. Both 1986 and 1987 versions of the GIME. This
is to ensure that the precise timing of switching the GIME mode from
320x200x16 color to hardware text is timed properly to look smooth. He
has some details in his post in the "hardware general" channel on the Coco
Discord, and a link to download and try it:
(Show Discord message & screenshot)
MC-10
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1) Jim Gerrie released an update to his "Texted" text editing utility
for the MC-10. This one runs in SG6 (64x48x4) and supports lower case
characters, with a 16x7 editing screen:
https://youtu.be/IWHtO05TYCI?si=DZ6GZJv4_z1U82cO
He also released "Robot Maze Learner", originally by Richard Forsyth and
Chris Naylor for the IBM PC in 1986, which was written to demonstrate
simple AI machine learning techniques:
https://youtu.be/2YGKnrYUIoI?si=AJZgHJxOSxc-Iv62
Dragon 32/64
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1) Italian YouTube channel "Thousand and One Adventure" did a 1/2 hour
video about ugBASIC, and includes compiling/running the same "random dots"
program on multiple platforms, including the Dragon 32. Turn CC on to get
the translated close caption text:
https://youtu.be/SXIlrrj7u0Q?si=HGq4rXBh8d9bHtqo
2) Phil Harvey-Smith posted a teaser of a replacement, 3D printed case
bottom for a Dragon (sounds like it needs a larger than average 3D printer
to do it as a one piece):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3725214617738180/
3) Julian Brown posted an update on his SAM rewrite for the RevX4 board,
where he mentions he may need a bigger CPLD to include all the features
that he wants to add (I will read post for full details):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3723708431222132/
He posted this morning that he is going for a bigger chip with possibly a
Spartan-6 FPGA being his choice, with some more details on what he wants
built in:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3726507497608892/
Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
==========================================
1) Olipix, a French channel on YouTube, put up a video of their pick of
the top 30 games for the MC-10 and Alice 4K:
https://youtu.be/YhLn5F0Am_g?si=gWanlGMhyxjyuazA
2) Jim Gerrie updated his 2010 game Snakebite for the MC-10 (originally
inspired by a Sinclair ZX-81 game). This version adds new key input methods
from Greg Dionne (creator the MC-10 BASIC compiler), the ability earn
extra lives and some other minor updates:
https://youtu.be/6vxURN9NKHo?si=vLznE7hHPrIzgiyI
3) Spanish YouTube channel XperTek released a longer game play video this
week - "80's Games Volume 3", featuring 12 Coco 1/2 games that he plays
on his amber monitor equipped Coco 2, and includes both Tandy and 3rd
party released titles. Some of these he hasn't played in quite awhile,
and remembers how to play them on the fly:
https://youtu.be/N9G87EEQocQ?si=n2lYldeswyQ_rU11
4) YouTube channel "Ultra Gamer81" did a video playthrough of the Coco
version of Zaxxon:
https://youtu.be/4ce8lXbpeXA?si=2OnddjW1LTk7sxpX
Speak your mind! Let us know what you think at:
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