[Index]
The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 374, August 10, 2024
===================================================================
Collected by L. Curtis Boyle
Upcoming conventions/trade shows of interest to Coco people:
------------------------------------------------------------
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 moved (slightly) again to the 50,000 square foot "Convention
North" space (they sold out of table space with the original "Exploration
Hall" area which was 33,000 square feet at the Renaissance Schaumburg
Convention Center in Schaumburg, IL. Sept 7-8, 2024 (Sept 6 evening (Friday)
is reserved for vendors, etc to set up). They have added multiple hotels
which people can book into, as the original sold out quickly.
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. An update
from Pete on August 9 - they have now sold out of tables for the show!
Courtyard by Marriott Springfield
Springfield, Ohio
http://www.tandyassembly.com/
Also that weekend is the Amigos next live ICC (International Computer
Club), which will be at 4 PM EST on September 28. This is for all retro
computers & gaming consoles. It streams live on their Twitch channel and
YouTube channels)
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) William Astle has released LWTOOLS version 4.23. This update fixes a
stack corruption bug, as well adds the ability to use a 0b or 0B prefix
for binary constants:
http://www.lwtools.ca/
2) Coco Town posted another Game Revolutions episode about his Moon Patrol
style game - this time working on faster gravel scrolling part 2, where he
goes through some suggestions from viewers, including one of mine (spoiler:
I come in dead last as to how much of a speed increase the new routines get):
https://youtu.be/XBS8wV7sN88?si=Mv3OEFkyget8wsij
He also posted a video showing some 6809 optimizations suggested by
@BoscoRetro:
https://youtu.be/S3xCd3r5ayk?si=oh-KbEpE26095dwl
3) Richard Kelly released "Blue/Red" version 1.1. This is a program to let
one select which way the artifact colors are set on a Coco 1 or 2. It can
be downloaded from the Coco Facebook group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161510031212641/
4) Steve Batson posted some photos from VCF West, including some Coco and
MC-10 things:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161508847862641/
5) Sheldon MacDonald posted a video about the new version 0.61 of his Dual
IDE assembly language programming app. The 1st half of the video covers
the 6809 changes with some samples (with the caveat that more extensive
testing is still needed): the ability for IF/OR/ELSE statements directly
in assembly code as well as index addressing into function calls. The
2nd half covers the Sega Genesis, including a couple of games that he is
working on for that platform:
https://youtu.be/h2Src3sc6qc?si=4AZ4NOpxiQdZqisa
6) Stacey Vetzal is planning on having a "prank" style program to show
on her Coco at the World of Retro Computing Show in Kitchener, Ontario
September 14-15. She posted a screenshot (and link to sourcecode) for how
far she has gotten:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161493989932641/
7) Fabio Sturman posted pics of a 6809 based computer he built. It has a
6809, 68681 dual UART, 8K EEPROM, 128 KB of static RAM with a simple page
memory unit, some other support chips and an 8 bit IDE port for Compact
Flash card support. It includes S-BUG 1.8, and he said that Flex 9.1 is
working but not fully tested:
Announcement and a couple of photos:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/flexoperatingsystem/posts/1043333137156137/
Photos of the board:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/flexoperatingsystem/posts/1043490793807038/
8) tsbrownie on YouTube did a video about his history with Radio Shack and
using their products, starting with electronics parts around 1972. About 5:28
he goes into a bit of his history with a Coco 1, which he upgrade to 64K:
https://youtu.be/ttmbOSnLqVk?si=uegzT7zCeaRo3hE0
9) Tim Halloran released his 4th video of restoring/upgrade his Coco 2 for
September's Tandy Assembly, this time working on the keyboard and adding
a 64K RAM upgrade:
https://youtu.be/t-FbOlZOCz8?si=ECQKvBawRw1quJ9N
10) Danny's Vintage Computers on YouTube put up a short video showing the
Radio Shack exhibit at the Computer Museum @ System Source in Maryland -
which has a variety of machine including a Coco 3 (commentary doesn't
really match what they are looking at, so mute the video):
https://youtu.be/byg7EYnObr8?si=0wjLd6srEzlbdpBi
11) This is Retropolis (a Portuguese show from Brazil) episode 155 cover
a few machines in the episode, including the Coco series. Unfortunately it
doesn't seem to be set up for auto-translation (and it's audio only). Coco
part starts at 32:55
https://youtu.be/dC6xkA4apkg?si=Fou4dc9FYwkPba0S&t=1975
MC-10
-----
1)
Dragon 32/64
------------
1) Roy Coates, the original author of the Dragon ports of Manic Miner & Jet
Set Willy, has been digging out boxes of historical things for the Dragon:
a) He uploaded Rebellion.cas to the files area. This is a game cowritten with
a student of his named Chris Larkin, dating before he ported Manic Miner. It
was submitted to Microdeal, but was rejected. It requires a joystick:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3773006602958981/
b) Rebellion download link:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3773004619625846/
c) Roy found an award he received from Microdeal - "the broken dongle award"
- for breaking the copy protection hardware dongle scheme that Microdeal
used for their version of Buzzard Bait. And he tells the story about why
he entered the contest and got the award...:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3772091476383827/
d) Roy found notes and data for Jet Set Willy II - which he never finished
porting back in the day. If his old system will boot and disks can be used,
he is seriously considering finishing it now:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3771220156470959/
e) Boxes of stuff he found:
Box #4 - original cassettes with inserts - including a game he wrote
that had not been previously archived - Stargate sold by Abacus software
(in the comments he posted a picture of the letter from Abacus):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3768749020051406/
Box #5 has a bunch of paper - hand written notes, graphics designs,
notes on games, etc.:
(sprite structure table, screen table information)
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3768758906717084/
(graphics for Manic Miner hand drawn from looking at the Spectrum
version):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3768758080050500/
(source listings for Jetset Willy, Manic Miner, The Talisman):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3768756893383952/
Box #6 (The Holy Grail as Roy calls it): about 200 floppy disks,
including commercial disks for things like the Flex operating system,
BASIC utilities, Flex C compiler, assemblers, editors, diagnostics and
much more):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3768808636712111/
2) Phil Harvey-Smith uploaded some photos of a new Dragon 64, based on
Ciaran's Dragon 64 motherboard and Julian Brown's keyboard, with photos:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3772986126294362/
3) Richard Harding, Dragon historian, has uploaded scans and pictures of
the Dragon Data dealer application pack, including multipage full color
artwork for a variety of programs and games... and even including the
dealer price list:
dragondata.co.uk/adverts/Dealer-app-pack/index.html
Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
==========================================
1) Jim Gerrie continues porting games to the MC-10. This week, he ported
Laser Tank, originally written by John P. Grillo & J.D. Robertson in
1983 in their book Color Computer Applications for the Coco. Jim added
some features to the original, including target direction from commander,
decreasing that amount of enemy fire as enemies are eliminated, turret speed
readout, adding scoring (and keeping track of the high score for the current
session), in game instructions, and game re-start at the end of a round:
https://youtu.be/32vzvyhA5Bg?si=by1113jq65bE3kxP
He also ported the Coco game Wheel of Fortune (originally by Harold Schneider
in Rainbow magazine's April 1984 issue. He did some minor edits and fixed a
bug (if one guessed the same consonant twice), and also changed it so the
screen background colors are assigned specifically assigned to player #'s
(up to 8), rather than being random. He also sped up the wheel rotation &
added a simple title screen:
https://youtu.be/bLej3fsN2Z0?si=1WndkF549bH1Qkcf
And updates as well: Jim updated his MC-10 port of Nightmare Park (originally
by Bob Chappel in 1980, likely for the PET). Jim added his improved inverse
video text routine:
https://youtu.be/_8g_6D6UzoQ?si=XBvHLlwyuwnLFJTB
2) Lee Perkins has released a video showing his current progress on his
6309/2 MB RAM Coco 3 version of Cloud Kingdoms that he is ported from
PC/VGA. This shows the 9 way scrolling, animated characters and several maps:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpFaeTvC-YA
3) Tim & AJ cover the new game Goop Rush (which just finished being our
Game On Challenge the past two weeks) on their Sibling Rivalry show. AJ
has been on a streak lately; will it continue?
https://youtu.be/JFa5rj5zFS4?si=XCXmPC-TWzhQ-YVM
4) XperTek does his Coco 2/amber monitor thing and tries out King Tut from
Tom Mix Software:
https://youtu.be/bMPbX6xfR60?si=23Ro3RhsL2AG0WMa
5) R. Allen Murphey let me know that Stefan Vogt has a devlog started to
Hibernated 2 - a sequel to his Infocom engine game Hibernated one which
was available for the Coco:
https://8bitgames.itch.io/hibernated1/devlog/779289/hibernated-2-devlog
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