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 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/