The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 367, June 22, 2024 =================================================================== Collected by L. Curtis Boyle and Mark Overholser Special Guests today: --------------------- Interview schedule: -------------------- No official interview, but hopefully Marc Bosley, Ken Waters, Jason Reighard, etc. can talk and share photos/videos from their experiences with both BoatFest and VCF-SW (Dallas/Fort Worth) this past weekend Eddie Malphrus site - shows pics from VCF-SW: https://tandyshowcase.com/events Upcoming conventions/trade shows of interest to Coco people: ------------------------------------------------------------ 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) Since TRS-80 Retro Programing is planning on releasing his various Coco 1/2 games in progress fairly soon, he had to come up with both a name and graphic intro for his software house. He did the latter with a pretty neat effect: https://youtu.be/G27gmPIjvOY?si=SL05qLVU5RQX3Y_z 2) Thomas Cherryhomes issued another update to Fujinet on the Coco in the Coco Facebook group, this time aimed at developers. He is updating the "fujinet-lib" library, which people can look at and learn how to use them as adds more functionality on his github: Facebook post: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161361684907641/ Github example of the Network configuration on the Coco: https://github.com/FujiNetWIFI/fujinet-lib/blob/main/coco/src/fn_fuji/fuji_get_adapter_config.c And the corresponding function in the firmware (written in C++): https://github.com/FujiNetWIFI/fujinet-firmware/blob/master/lib/device/drivewire/fuji.cpp 3) Paulo Garcia is now offering dust covers for the Coco 2/3 cases. These are not see through plastic like the Tandy original ones, but white-ish with black trim: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161361533892641/ 4) Timothy Halloran, an active participant in the TRS-80 Trash Talkers show, is starting a video series on prepping a Coco 2 for the Tandy Assembly 2024 auction that he just purchased. There will be more videos to follow, including upgrading it to 64K: https://youtu.be/1eJzLNnAkoo?si=THnaVdBAEwaaaSb_ Part 2 is up now as well, which involves taking the machine apart: https://youtu.be/coWuJvZgr9o?si=vK5_xQQniXxIaaLO 5) YouTube channel Memoria do Microcomputador ("Micro Memory Channel", a Portuguese channel) did a video about the ProLogica CP400 Color II (use translate & close captioning): https://youtu.be/GAASDNfoBSw?si=839o4u2xfgfViheN 6) YouTube channel "FFF Gaming Emporium" did a video about his Coco 1 that he just set up, including trying some game cartridges and cassettes, etc. Unfortunately he has comments turned off, so we have no way to offer any help: https://youtu.be/bZPg-bKuDa4?si=hJ9tiKzbsIgw7Rng 7) Coco Town released a video called "5 shocking joystick secrets!". Some of these even affect BASIC programs... https://youtu.be/V9k1ntFKYC4?si=Xrn9vrCzSz9Q-sfn He did a follow up video last week - "How much can I speed up joystick reading?". Here he covers using your own routine to speed up joystick reading, including 1) not using the ROM routine, which reads all 4 axis whether you want them all or not, and 2) Only reading enough bits to get the directions you want, vs. all 6 bits for 0-63 on each axis: https://youtu.be/4n4jVRnIoN8?si=z3NC-lOBnh1TeIDq 8) La Coco Strangiato (Bob Emery) put up a video on his YouTube channel showing the bare boards he ordered for making his very own mechanical keyboard for the Coco's 1/2/3 (which he is calling Artemis): https://youtu.be/wEcrLY6kzxU?si=EHcD-0MLPlXEL0IC 9) Pedro Pena (Rocky Hill on YouTube) put up a video about attempting to repair a dead GIME-X (from Bob Emery, I believe): https://youtu.be/jmjGzyv-lB0?si=rRKkvoO8b399D6cR 10) Leslie Anderson posted a link to a YouTube video on the Digicool Things channel (from New Zealand, I believe), which shows a PLCC44 to DIP40 adaptor that he has made for 63C09ECP chips (3 Mhz rated). It should be mentioned that the person who made this is selling these in his Tindie Store, and he has also made the Gerbers available if someone wants to make their own (from his MECB Github). He also runs the 6309 at 4 MHz: https://youtu.be/9G7oKFOl_1E?si=z6pfLyAKA_Zb4qFR 11) Although Bill Hogue and Big Five Software never made any Coco games (just TRS-80 Model 1/3 and Atari 8 bit), the interview with him from The Tandy Assembly Meetup on June 15 does mention that adding voice to their later games was inspired by the Coco game Skiing by Robert Kilgus (and you can watch the interview with Robert that Ken and Curtis did to get the story behind that). Nick Marentes also got some of his questions answered during this interview as well: https://youtu.be/4u1GFxQe7sE?si=WEM9jq1TOIu5Ng89 12) Luciano Scharfe of the Brazilian Coco/CP-400/etc. group posted a video about the VTruccoColorJoyMegaUSBAdapter (that's a mouthful!) joystick adapter board (designed and built by Victor Trucco) that we saw in the photos from 8th meeting of the Color Rio Club that took place in Rio de Janeiro on June 1, 2024. This adapter has two standard Coco joystick output ports that one plugs in at the same time, and has 3 joystick inputs: a standard Coco analog joystick, an Atari style DE9, and a modern USB joystick port. There are switches to change 1) which joystick port you will be using on the Coco, and 2) whether it gets redirected to the left or right Coco port. This should work on Coco's, the various Brazilian clones, and the Dragons: * NOTE: Use YouTube CC with auto translate from Portuguese to English) https://youtu.be/Ti94n5zAN-s?si=ko1cDxsUeai_Vnav 13) Our very own Ken Waters has put up a video about last weekends 3rd annual BoarFest retro gaming show in Hurricane, West Virginia. There was a bigger Coco presence this year with both Jason "Cocoman" Reighard and Henry "The Break Key" Gernhardt attending for the first time: https://youtu.be/zt0aoi8QlgY?si=ByImGO5mPVx79EVo 14) Simon Jonassen's Demo for The Mark Siegel challenge: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161388066407641/ 15) Rob O'Hara's Boatfest 2024 Blog: https://www.robohara.com/?p=14723 MC-10 ----- 1) Jim Gerrie ported another Artificial Intelligence demo program, this time "Perceptron" (originally by Richard Forsyth and Chris Naylor from the 1986 book "The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to Artificial Intelligence": https://youtu.be/_GNdexEnhuM?si=i5fvMW8grjJQXPB- 2) David Maunder has posted a ZIP file to the MC-10 Facebook group that contains 5 songs for the MC-10 that use Simon's assembly language multi-voice / 1 bit play routine: https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/7568323129961110/ Dragon 32/64 ------------ 1) For those using Ciaran's XRoar with the DREAM assembler, apparently one of the latest updates fixed a problem where DREAM files would not load properly, according to Facebook Dragon group member Kataja Kirjuri: https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3728183694107939/ 2) Tony Jewell posted in the Dragon Facebook group (and the World of Dragon forums) that they are working on dates for the next Dragon meetup, to be held at the Centre of Computing History in Cambridge. A tentative weekend date of September 7-8 has been mentioned, but is not set in stone yet. If you have alternate dates that would work better, now is the time to suggest them! An update on Facebook sounds like it might be at the Museum of Technology with possible dates of October 12 or October 19th. If one of these works better than the other for people planning on attending, join the vote to pick the date on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3736013723324936/ Vote: https://doodle.com/meeting/participate/id/bqMByLrb/vote 3) John Whitworth announced that the Dragon PSU (Power Supply Unit) fully built board is now back in stock at his online store, DragonPlus Electronics (it is also available in kit form): https://dragonpluselectronics.com/product/dragon-psu-board-built-version Game On news (all Coco related platforms): ========================================== 1) XperTek returns with another Coco 2 / amber screen monitor gameplay video, this time Birds by Tom Mix Software: https://youtu.be/EeSe1f7dqC8?si=V-9hviyzEHNlgrrI He also did Bustout from Tandy/The Image Producers (Glenn Sogge in particular): https://youtu.be/hj2B9EPjdfk?si=nJuO67Px491Y2VcG 2) Jim Gerrie put up his English conversion of the Alice (a later model with upgraded graphics) RPG game originally called "Le Jeu des 6 Lys", which translates to "The Game of 6 Lys". This was originally done by a rather famous video game company that originally started on the Alice/MC-10... called Infogrames in 1984. The game layout seems pretty advanced for this time. (Please note that Jim's MC-10 programs recently moved to the Internet Archive, so you can look for this program, and many others, by looking up his name on the archive): https://youtu.be/YjEfdqMgADU?si=bJunp3i3yGuRgTG4 He also posted a blog about the conversion, and some bugs he found in the original Alice version: https://jimgerrie.blogspot.com/2024/06/the-six-liliesle-jeu-de-six-lys-by.html 3) Lee Perkins is now asking for people to try his new game engine test program via the Facebook Coco group (he has already had a few testers in the Coco Discord. This requires a Coco 3 with 2 MB of RAM and a 6309, but features full speed 4 hardware scrolling of large levels. He would like to get testers that have an 86 GIME, 87 GIME, and a GIME-X to compare results: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161386004117641/ 4) Retrogames-co-uk on YouTube did his weekly game pick ups and top 10 - and he picked up some Dragon games (the URL below will jump straight to that part of the show). As usual - game packaging for the Dragon was *way* better than most Coco releases: https://youtu.be/h5soKaGywMs?si=WhBr9cjTg4cdOT65&t=346 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/