The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 372, July 27, 2024 =================================================================== Collected by L. Curtis Boyle Special Guests today: --------------------- Wayne Campbell with his OS9 version of Sokoban - enhanced from the Coco 3 Super Extended BASIC version Also, wondering who all caught this past Monday's CocoTech, and if anyone has had a chance to try the demo's or start working on their own programs to use the SG12/24 modes in BASIC. Also, any questions? One other mention - for those of you who speak (or at least understand) Spanish, Spanish YouTube channel "La Meca del Clásico" is doing a live stream this morning starting 45 minutes before our show starts (it may still be going on?) titled "First romhacker translations into Spanish in history ~ on a Tandy CoCo ~ with LuisCoCo!" Luis Fernandez & Rod Merida are the presenter and host: https://www.youtube.com/live/U4OIIWCKnOY?si=LASh-oBraQctJtO0 Interview schedule: -------------------- None Upcoming conventions/trade shows of interest to Coco people: ------------------------------------------------------------ VCF-West is next weekend (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/ New England Classic Gaming is having an Electronics & Computer Retro Swap Meet on Aug. 24 starting at 9 AM CST, at the Norfolk Public Library in Norfolk, Massachusetts (2 Liberty Lane): https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61557290357725 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/ The World of Retro Computing 2024 is September 14-15 in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada (west of Toronto). This year it is located in the old Goudies Department Store, 8 Queen Street North. Free admission, and this covers all kinds of retro computers. Some people in the Coco community are planning on going, and I believe that Stacy Vetzal from the Coco Facebook group is planning on having a booth: https://worldofretrocomputing.com/2024-worc-expo 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/ The Dragon Meetup will be October 12-13, 2024 at the Museum of Technology in Cambridge, England: https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=11179&start=10 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. Tickets can be ordered online for individual days or both days. All of their events (including separate entries for both days) at the bottom of this page: https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/pages/30677/What-s-On/ The Saturday event specifically: https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/72253/Retro-Computer-Festival-2024-Saturday-9th-November/ VCF East dates for next year have been confirmed April 25-27, 2025 - same facility as this year. Info Age Science Museum, Wall, NJ. Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform) ------------------------------- 1) Bob Emery released a video on his La CoCo Strangiato YouTube channel introducing his VDG breakout board. This works with multiple VDG & Coco 1/2 motherboard designs, and requires far less soldering than other solutions: https://youtu.be/vqmq6Az9_48 2) TRS-80 Retro Programing did an update video to his earlier "Mario's Magic Mushroom" graphic demo, and talks about his working with the TRS80GP emulator, running under Windows 11. There are some issues he is hitting: https://youtu.be/QhN8yytOSes?si=kwA-FR15hUWhO1xQ Following up on the Mario theme, he also made a Luigi character to animate, and posted the source code in the description. https://youtu.be/frbk4WZQvwM?si=3dl-gGqT8hlMgF2E 3) Coco Town returns to his Moon Patrol style game - this time round explaining how he used physics and math to improve how the buggy jumps: https://youtu.be/-WgtfF1h-pM?si=GHn1LzdzGFuvG_Ne 4) Randy Kindig (of Floppy Days podcast fame) had a seminar on modern storage and video output options for retro computers, where he covered 24 different platforms, including both the Coco 1/2/3 and the MC-10. Since he had so many to cover, he only covers a few options for each machine, usually ones that he has in his possession. (Coco section linked here): https://youtu.be/pk3vv-IhJTI?si=HdN49sw0iaFAz-nc&t=1981 5) A bit of a teaser for an upcoming video (hopefully within the next two weeks) from TJBChris. To quote his post on the Tandy Discord: "Hey all, I’ve been following up with my experimental Network 3 network with a 8" system as host and CoCos as the clients. To that end, I ported over my old prototype XENIX dload server to CP/M (handling keyboard and serial IO myself via the Z80 ports for the CTC, SIO, etc. as z88dk doesn’t support the serial port for MII CP/M). Unlike the Model III/4 implementation, you have to select ports Network 2-style as the CoCo lacks the serial handshake lines for determining service needs, but it works and lets you access resources on the 12 from a CoCo over the DLOAD protocol. Hopefully I’ll get a video up in the next couple weeks…busy times" 6) Jason Reighard uploaded his Day Two video for BoatFest that took place last month in Hurricane, West Virginia: https://youtu.be/8ElFzSOOf9o 7) The Capixaba Computer Museum in Brazil posted some ad copy for the Codimex cd 6809 (A Coco clone from Brazil) on it's birthday to the Coco Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161463441077641/ 8) Glen Hewlett has uploaded a video showing his Coco 1/2 BASIC cross-compiler in action, using Scott Cooper's (Tazman) Maze generator program (I don't know if you will be able to hear Glen - his audio is very quiet on the clip). https://youtu.be/47dkLLUU9OQ And just this morning he has uploaded the compiler and installation instructions. This is still considered a beta at this point, and also requires some 3rd party packages installed as well (namely William Astle's fantastic LWASM as well as QB64pe (Phenix Edition): His blog entry which explains the compiler and it's current limitations/differences from regular Extended BASIC https://nowhereman999.wordpress.com/2024/07/27/coco-basic-to-6809-compiler/ 9) And speaking of BASIC compilers - microgames BASIC (ugBASIC) also had updates this past week. The beta branch has had several sets of updates, including things like: added D!POKE & D!PEEK (I assume that this is 16 bit word POKE/PEEK?) added PROC, NRM, AT, SWAP (swapping strings), KEYGET, DO NULL The official release is now up to v1.16.3, which is primarily bug fixes (and most for the other platforms that ugBASIC supports) Main branch updates: https://ugbasic.iwashere.eu/changelog/main Beta branch updates: https://ugbasic.iwashere.eu/changelog/beta 10) And now, an update to a FORTH compiler (in ROM). Henry Gernhardt III posted his next FORTH ROM update on his "The Break Key" channel on YouTube, this time he has gotten variables, constants & data memory working. There is a also a shoutout to his mom and her birthday this weekend... and she used to be a Tandy engineer: https://youtu.be/bF-MC-9azIM?si=Klj8leNxnCGI-NpS (she called while he was recording - his funny reaction is around 38:49 in, and also his shoutout to her and the Coco Nation, so play that) 11) Portuguese speaking YouTube channel did a short video talking about the 6809 and it's history, which machines it was in, etc. (includes the Coco). It does have some mistakes unfortunately (like showing a TRS-80 Model 1 instead of a Coco): https://youtu.be/5ksc7sV32Wg?si=QebnT8lAXaHrUEkZ 12) Pascal Vrancken posted a scan of an ad for a Coco 16K standard BASIC bundle, including the tape recorder and black beauty joysticks. But this is in French and is from Tandy's 1985 catalog in Belgium: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161468533777641/ 13) New channel on YouTube "Recycled Game Room" released his first video entitled "Small bedroom turned to Game Room! - Game Room Tour 2024". He is obviously big into console gaming, but he also has tucked away a Coco 2 and a Commodore-64, as shown in the clip. Might he do some game demonstrations/reviews in the future? https://youtu.be/kg5YCT1yzHc?si=xQ8MeIS6v_2VdEx9&t=1013 MC-10 ----- 1) Dragon 32/64 ------------ 1) Julian Brown has a Dragon RAM updates: Issue 6/Mk2 board - SRAM upgrade up to 64K on a late model Dragon 32 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3760328360893472/ Game On news (all Coco related platforms): ========================================== 1) Jim Gerrie, literally a few hours after he converted *2* games over to the MC-10 while our show was live, did an update to "The 6 Lilies" 3d adventure game that was originally published by Infogrames for the Alice (and in French). This video is also a complete walkthru, if you worry about spoilers: https://youtu.be/PdQDy7yIHbs?si=wlI551sgm2MQiphg He also ported the game "Shut up, and follow me" (with some enhancements) originally for the Japanese NEC PC-6001, and published in the March 1990 issue of MiComBASIC magazine in Japan. His son Charlie helped translate the original Japanese to English: https://youtu.be/CQWp-wdDEq4?si=Ia-uCRywfpJ0nOok And of course, he converted the Game challenge game, converting "Dang It!" originally by Richard Ramella from his column in Hot Coco magazine, during last weeks show. Now with a video to show it in action: https://youtu.be/Yl4WkSfbHTM?si=1NrNJD44zrFcBEwT He also converted the Coco game Devastator (written by Charles Brannon in COMPUTE! magazine, August 1984) from the Coco to the MC-10. He did do some modifications (speeding it up, high score feature, etc.). Also note on the program listing the fact that BASIC handles multiple CHR$'s in a row without semi-colons; this works on the Coco as well (and I had forgotten about this trick!): https://youtu.be/_K0fl_MIygs?si=023QlQzs1C9Bnifm 2) Jim Mullis has a video update to his DC Comics based Super Powers game, using Sundog's GrafExpress 2.0 package. He also shows off some of the new hero animations that it has (Note, fast forward past loading screens for the latter 2): Firestorm: https://youtu.be/hh7m6vlTZxg?si=tUTD7r5Y9OSD-lrE Green Lantern: https://youtu.be/F0PTwUz95EE?si=uvDKS31JcHOwa0e_ Martian Manhunter: https://youtu.be/V8Y8aWoRP5o?si=qWq1MwI81uLVeVBp 3) Italian YouTube page RetroTrailer-2 put up a quick video showing Computerware's Q*Bert clone, Blochead: https://youtu.be/LyxwrSWZe7s?si=5K-sFmlg1uF0_7wr 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/